Is the growth model bankrupt?

A Durhamanian friend of the Clarion Content who is currently going to school in Buenos Aires sent us a fascinating piece that jives with a worry that has been clanging about in the back of our minds for sometime. Is growth, as we have known it since the Industrial Revolution, sustainable? Have we whacked the big blue Gaian ball out of balance? Is it elastic, will we see it come rushing back into balance with a cataclysmic sixth extinction?

The piece is from a blog haughtily titled, God's Politics. Nonetheless it is surely food for thought...

Here is an excerpt that made us think

I am...reminded of what G.K. Chesterton once said when asked what was most wrong with the world. He reportedly replied, “I am.” Already, we are hearing some deeper reflection on the meaning of this daily disaster. Almost everyone now apparently agrees with the new direction of a “clean energy economy.” And we know that will require a re-wiring of the energy grid (which many hope BP will have no part in). But it will also require a re-wiring of ourselves -- our demands, requirements, and insatiable desires. Our oil addiction has led us to environmental destruction, endless wars, and the sacrifice of young lives, and it has put our very souls in jeopardy. New York Times columnist Tom Freidman recently wondered about the deeper meaning of the Great Recession when he asked, “What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last fifty years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall -- when Mother Nature and the market both said, ‘No More.’” The Great Spill makes the point even more.

Read the whole article here.