Western nations are far too focused on quarterly economic growth - ironically, growth that is increasingly decoupled from any standard of living measures domestically - than they are with the long term ecological sustainability.

This is double-edged, as its accelerating our development and deployment of green fuel alternatives and battery technologies. But it is also accelerating our consumption of existing fossil fuel reserves and our production of waste product across nearly every conceivable economic sector.

Even setting aside the looming climate catastrophe, we’ve got a problem of trash production that we seem content to resolve by shuttling off mountains of refuse to impoverished island nations and Pacific garbage patches. The need to dig shit up and turn it into disposable crap so we can collect a vig on labor and repeat the process exceeds any sane plan of what we’d do with our monumental excess.