"0tterbot" wrote in message
...

one last tiny rant: one thing i would love to see, which i can't see
happening yet (but is probably going to have to happen very soon) is that
governments need to put their foot down re overconsumption. according to
statistics (tee hee) something like a third of westerners have an
anti-consumerist mentality & tend not to participate in rabid consumption.
governments think this is Bad & want people to consume until they drop (then
consume something else to get them back up again). the day that govts get
the brainwave that overconsumption itself is what is bad, things are going
to change very much for the better, for everyone, because they have the
power to legislate and we do not. in the meantime it is up to individuals to
buy local, to limit consumption of stuff they don't need, etc; but people
who do so find a lot of support with like minds (of which there are actually
many).

all these things are interrelated. thank you for reading my rant! :-)
kylie



Current economic dogma says you must have growth around 3% per year for a
healthy economy. Nobody knows how to do it with much less without having
unacceptable unemployment. Thus the current model condemns us to be
constantly expanding: population, energy use, mineral use, land use, must all
grow indefinitely. Except that obviously in the real world they cannot.

Political systems around the world that reward short term popularity and
punish long term planning don't help.

David