Eco 'crunch'

(((Maybe this new framing of the crisis will persuade the currently unemployed financiers who stumble over it while web-surfing in their pyjamas. An eco-finance crunch. Yeah. There's no "lender of last resort,"
as you don't get to create a new planet during a Bretton Woods meeting.)))

(((Which makes one wonder what "eco panic" is gonna look like.
Maybe they can leverage new laws of atmospheric physics.)))

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7696197.stm

Link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Earth on course for eco 'crunch'.

The planet is headed for an ecological "credit crunch", according to a report issued by conservation groups.

The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.

The Living Planet Report is the work of WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network.

It says that more than three quarters of the world's population lives in countries where consumption levels are outstripping environmental renewal.

This makes them "ecological debtors", meaning that they are drawing - and often overdrawing - on the agricultural land, forests, seas and resources of other countries to sustain them....

(((We're clearly heading for a historical period which is gonna be just outright bizarre. Definitions of consensus reality are just melting right left and center. It's gonna take the expansive capacities of a great novelist just to be an everyday working journalist. Google News this morning looks like somebody thoroughly whacked an anthill with a stick and the ants are all standing around their rubble awaiting some distant election.)))

(((Maybe some noble soul will show up out of nowhere and just design everybody a new post-economic lifestyle. Since we've all been fired – bankers, oil men, journalists, neocons, whomever – we'll all just retire. THAT sure oughta drive down eco-consumption. You know what it takes to be happy? Six friends who drop by and somebody who can change lightbulbs.)))

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/27/style/design27.php

LONDON: What's the secret of a happy, healthy old age? Money? Grandchildren? Great doctors? They all help, but not as much as the two most important ingredients: a social network of at least six people who you see regularly and freedom from worrying about everyday problems like leaking taps and broken light bulbs.

That's the conclusion of Hilary Cottam, co-founder of the social design group, Participle, after a year of analyzing the lives of the elderly residents of Southwark, one of London's poorer boroughs....