environmental lessons from economic collapse

Everyone agrees that our economic crisis is in large measure anthropogenic, that is, due to human behavior, living larger than we could afford, taking more than we could return, wanting more than is either reasonable or fair to expect. That is, we loaned more than was just so we could reap more than we sowed; borrowed more than we could replenish with what we can earn; divvied up, spread out, and pawned off the responsibility so that no one truly could be blamed, or could even have been moved to care.

Now we are paying the price.

And the price is very steep. It was forced on us by these regrettable circumstances. But I can't help imagining for a moment, what if, way before the crisis, independent of any impending crisis, say two years ago, we had taken $350 billion dollars and spread it around to invent 98% efficient solar energy conversion panels, electric cars and the infrastructure to support them, fixed all our bridges, roads, schools; built amazing inter- and intra-city public transit; increased teacher salaries; improved our social services to our nation's most needy. How much good - economic, environmental and social - would that have done?

Nope. Too expensive. So instead we lost billions in the stock market, and are spending billions more to bail out a profligate market with uncertain returns.

Now, translate all these lessons into the environmental problem. It too is anthropogenic, human-made. Here too we are living larger than we can afford, taking more than we can return, dipping into the principle when we should be living off the interest, forgetting that the atmosphere and sea are finite and not endlessly able to absorb our waste.

Scholars, analysts, prophets tell us we do not make radical changes unless faced with crises. But here is the bright side. Perhaps in this one instance, we can use the lessons of the financial crisis to motivate us to respond to an impending yet still avoidable environmental crisis. For the truth is, we will one day soon recover from this economic crisis, hopefully even in the next year or two. But we cannot and will not speedily recover from the crash of the environment, not in our lifetime, or the lifetime of our children, not even in this century.

These dual crises we face are not only similar in their structure, but gratefully and blessedly also in their solutions. By using green technology to fuel economic health; producing goods in a cyclical, no waste, cradle-to-cradle style; living wisely - consuming only what we can appropriately replenish - we can build an enduring, sustainable economy and environment; tending more to service - being with, educating, doing for and tending to each other - can build an economy pegged to human welfare and not collection of stuff.

Erich Fromm and Abraham Joshua Heschel among thousands of others have taught it: our culture needs to change from a predominant mode of stuff and "having" to a predominate mode of relationship and "being." That is good for what is called the triple bottom-line: people, planet, and profit. One integrated solution for one just, healthy, good world.