Beyond growth

At the recent G20 meeting, there was a "very broad consensus that growth remains the dominant policy imperative across our economies," according to US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Damn!

When will we, and our leaders, learn that an economy that depends on never-ending growth is doomed to failure (as is the environment and the people depending on it.) There is enough to go around, but not enough to keep extracting more and more and more. Check out this audio blog by Chris Martenson that makes the fallacy so clear.

We don't need a trillion-dollar band-aid to sustain the old failing methods. We need a new system based on sustainability, on living in right relationship with the earth and each other. An economic system where we address the needs of everyone, not the wants of the privileged few. A system that leaves a future for our children.

I don't know what that system really looks like, in spite of having read the most amazing edition of "YES!" magazine dedicated to the new economy. I just do know that our political leaders, including Obama, are not leading us in the brave new direction that so many of us crave and all of us depend upon. We need to show them through our activism and our personal example and our voting that sustainable change is the only reality we'll accept.