If you were presented with a forced choice, which do think would collapse first: The Human Global Economy OR God’s Creation?

Never in human history has so much wealth been concentrated in the hands of so few people. A tiny minority of people in the human family have accumulated a gigantic portion of the world’s wealth. What could be wrong with this picture?

At least to me, a pyramid-like scheme is not a satisfactory system for organizing the human family’s world economy or for distributing the world’s wealth because such a “trickle down economy” is unfair, grossly inequitable and soon to become patently unsustainable. The limited resources and frangible ecosystem services of Earth cannot sustain much longer the way the global political economy is currently grown without regard to biophysical limits to its seemingly endless growth.

After all, the air, land and seas are being relentlessly polluted with human waste products; fresh water, fish stocks, food reserves, fossil fuels, and wetlands are being depleted at an alarming rate; the catastrophic effects of massive over-consumption and unrestrained hoarding of resources cannot be sustained much longer by our small, finite, fragile planetary home.

If the environment is being irreversibly degraded and natural resources are being dissipated recklessly, how can human civilization, life as we know it and the integrity of Earth as a fit for human habitation be maintained much longer?

Something new and different needs to be done. The wealthy and powerful leaders among us have unwelcome responsibilities to assume and duties to perform. If these leaders continue to adamantly insist that we keep producing endlessly as we are doing now and if we keep getting what we are likely to keep getting by overproducing as we are now, then the unbridled growth of the global economy, in all likelihood, will soon precipitate a colossal ecological wreckage unless, of course, the ever expanding global economy proceeds like a runaway train, barreling headlong into a sharp ‘turn’ called “unsustainability” where the manmade global economy crashes and destructs before rampant economic globalization destroys the Creation.

In the preceding paragraph I make reference to “unwelcome responsibilities to assume and duties to perform.”

Those “unwelcome” responsibilities and duties are only unwelcome to people who are idolaters of the global economy, who count its many material ‘blessings’ first, last and always. And what are these ‘blessings’ but products of avarice borne of greediness for personal gain and riches.

Leaders of human civilization have spoken loudly, clearly and often with one voice through human history about eschewing the insatiable passion for acquiring, consuming and/or hoarding every object of personal desire.

All this is to say that what is “unwelcome” in choosing to live differently is only apparently unwelcome…..not really unwelcome. Necessary behavior change is actually something to be welcome, I believe, because making needed changes in behavior is somehow the right thing to do. At least to me, it appears the leaders of human civilization have harmoniously exemplified for all of us how to live well…..in a way that is somehow right.

Perhaps there is another way, a better way to communicate what I am trying to say here.

It is the Creation that is being overwhelmed by the unrestrained over-consumption, unbridled overproduction and unrestricted overpopulation activities of the human species, which can be seen so clearly overspreading the surface of Earth in these early years of Century XXI.

In our time, sacrificing the Creation on the altar of the seemingly endless, distinctly human-driven expansion of economic globalization is what concerns me.

How can the human economy exist without the Creation? Surely we can agree that the Creation will likely go on long after the last idolaters of the global political economy have somehow determined to end their pursuit of a fool’s errand: dominion of the Earth and everything we derive from it.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001