I listened to another TED talk the other day. This one was more substantive and relevant than the last one I mentioned in here. This one treated the topic of endless growth and how we’ve been conditioned to treat it as just the way things should be.
The featured presenter spoke in terms of GDP and the mindless consumption of resources in a linear fashion, which is unsustainable. For anyone who thinks we haven’t traveled too far down that road, this model, by Kate Raworth, is at least worth a look.
Raworth considers herself a “renegade economist,” a proponent of a circular model of sustainability based on how the earth itself operates. I’m sure in some circles she’s viewed as just the next tree-hugging lunatic, but what she says makes perfect sense to me. At least the part about having to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can keep consuming with no expectation of consequences- as if the earth is our oyster and we can just keep picking it clean.
