Why Not Sustainability?

To the reader who sent me the meme here: It depends on whom you mean by “we.”

Most of us would love to have the “sustainable version of human activity” you mention.  But there is a small group of extremely powerful people on Earth, that, speaking generally, would rather get richer than implement anything remotely like this.

The saddest part of all this is that human civilization is actually fairly close to sustainability.  All we really need to do is a) decarbonize our transportation and energy sectors, b) stop destroying our rainforests, and c) move to the form of government that we see in places like Iceland, Scandinavia, New Zealand, and so forth, that have been successful in all but eliminating poverty, and where everybody abides by rule of law.

I was pleased to see what Iceland did following the banking-fraud-driven economic crash of 2008.  They rounded up those responsible, charged them with crimes, put them on trial, convicted them, and sent them to prison. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to rich white men here in the U.S. — especially now that Trump is in power.