Underlying Assumptions Addressed by

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

        You can’t keep producing and consuming anything¾goods or services¾in perpetually increasing amounts, because (1) there are only so many raw materials available; (2) the raw materials are only replenished by nature at a certain rate, and some not at all; (3) there is only so much room in which to conduct economic activities; (4) there is only so much space in which to store the waste products of economic activity (28).

                                                              Brian Czech

                                          Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train

Assumption 1:

Economic paradigms that are based on continued growth are taking the environment and the world’s people to economic and environmental catastrophe.

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

        Sustainability is code for "perpetual growth."

Bill Willers

Sustainable development:  a new world deception

        Just what constitutes the needs of today’s people remains blurred, out of focus, even usefully ambiguous:  everyone has become adept at talking about sustainability without having to wade into the treacherous waters of consumption (1).

Princen, Maniates, and Conca

Confronting Consumption

Assumption 2:

With very few exceptions, sustainability is a canting term (the insincere use of pious words) used disingenuously by environmental profiteers, chief among which is The Nature Conservancy in league with the current cadre of lumber barons, as well as other exploiters, to deceive society in the presentation of novel ways to define or structure exploitation of the environment while claiming doing so can be continued without harming the future of the world’s people or their environments. *¹

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

        With consummate skill, the mass media whip up material longing, destroy peace of mind, direct our attention only to the external aspects of our being.

        Mass communications have eroded to become little more than the delivery of ears and eyes, minds detached to the manipulations of commercialism.

Donella Meadows

The Global Citizen

January 13, 2000

       Economic growth in the western world today is benefiting only the richest people alive now, at the expense of nearly everybody else, especially the poor and the powerless in this and future generations.

Robert U. Ayres

Limits to the growth paradigm

Assumption 3:

That individuals must repudiate the prevailing media-shilling for consumption becomes apparent to any unbiased observer of American mores, yet we must go beyond acting in isolation because no rescue is forthcoming from  environmental organizations whose purposes serve only their organizations’ interests.  We must connect with small-scale enterprises and create institutional structures that establish communities focused on producing and supplying the basic human needs of food, housing, and fuel within a local environment that can support and renew them.

_________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

        To come to a meaningful understanding of complex matters like industrial wind power, open-minded people need to do a thorough examination of all major components of the issue. . . .

        Such an analysis will lead to two fundamental conclusions: 1) there is no consequential environmental benefit to industrial wind power, and 2) it is being promoted because it is an extremely lucrative business opportunity.

John Droz, Jr., physicist

“Profit, not power, the major goal behind wind farms”

Utica NY Observer-Dispatch

November 6, 2007

Assumption 4:

Ethanol from corn and electricity from wind turbines *²  offer appealingly simple but fundamentally bogus solutions to American energy demands.  In the end, the production or capture of energy and its wise use will require restructuring of social, economic, and transportation systems, including mass transit and drastic reductions of consumption, that will be difficult to accept because of their major impacts on standards of living but essential for social equity at home and abroad, indeed, for the survival of our species on this planet.