I agree with most of what you say,
however, I cannot see with the present
level of populations how to realise any
sort of return to "traditional" methods.
I think integrated use of resources still
will be necessary and the use of all the
science and technology we can get -
but used solely for the satisfying of human
needs and with all the safeguards for
the survival of all the necessary/sustainable
environment.
With global (democratic, relying on transparent
direct, instantanious controls) planning, all
the wasteful transport,
repetition/secretive research, expense on military,
environment-destroying production can be stopped.
And we can all live a much better quality life,
even us, allegedly rich westerners.
We cannot go back to hunter/gatherer or irrigation/
floodplate "economies", even if it worked - which
it does not. It can't deliver the universal freedom
the "human rights" we aspiring to, e.g.
freedom from tedium.
Eva
...
>
> This tastes like more of the same: global development and
> integration. However, not the poor are underdeveloped, we are
> overdeveloped. It is our globalisation and the unrestrained
> so-called "market economy" that raptured many hundred millions
> of their traditional ways of living and livelihoods. It is the
> integration in the cash crop world economy that is hitting the
> poverty-struck masses in Africa, not the lack of "economic
> growth to meet needs".
>
> The Worldwatch Institute must be thanked again for its
> unrelented work and warnings. But the proposed solutions
> must be challenged and replaced by something more realistic,
> breaking with conventional economic "wisdom".
>
> Willem Georg
>
