Monday, April 06, 2009
Time for a green bottom line
Source: Canwest News Service
Date: March 28, 2009
Ecological economists say that rather than patching up the current economic system, we should take the crisis as a wake-up call that endless growth isn’t possible on a finite planet.
‘Energy is almost all sunlight,” remarks Peter Brown, a professor of environmental studies at McGill University.
Plants, like the grass, convert the sun’s energy into sugar, creating the food that supports nearly all life on Earth.
Fossil fuels like oil and coal are also a form of sunlight. Stored in the Earth’s crust, they formed millions of years ago from decayed plants and animals.
“What industrial civilizations run on is the stocks of old sunlight,” Brown notes.
Brown is a philosopher, a Quaker and co-author of a new book that argues that humans have made the tragic mistake of separating economics from the laws that govern the natural environment.
With the global economy spiralling into recession, governments around the world are slashing borrowing costs and flooding credit markets with billions in emergency loans. But ecological economists say that rather than patching up the current economic system, we should take the crisis as a wake-up call that endless growth just isn’t possible on a finite planet.
Posted by Ida Kubiszewski on 04/06 at 04:34 PM
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