Since World War II, the human race has consumed as many goods and services as all previous generations combined. Unsustainable consumption is the root cause of our planet's most pressing problems, resulting in deforestation, depletion of our oceans' fisheries, loss of biodiversity, and increased pollution and global warming from a continuing reliance on fossil fuels.  We don't think about our consumption patterns as exploitation, but instead seem them as "normal" and a "right". 

Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.

- Victor Lebow

Economist.  1955

Can We Re-Imagine and Re-Make Our Future?

It's important to educate ourselves, our families, our workplaces and our places of worship about how our lifestyles are  affecting the earth, the rest of the world, and future generations.  But it is even more important to adopt new ways of thinking and acting to bring about environmental and social changes that restore our planet.  We need to re-imagine our future and then collectively work to restore and infuse new life into our planet, so that all may live.

We may tell ourselves that this is the history of the human race and there's nothing to be done about it, but it's actually the history of only one culture. There are thousands of cultures around the planet that have had stable populations, and who have not spoiled their environment, thereby putting their own lives, and all life on earth, at risk."
                                                                              

                                                                      - Thom Hartman

                           The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.  2004