OK Monica, you win!
There are the external costs of liquidating our assets and drinking deep from the chalice of rich finite fossil fuels that the climate scientists are telling us is a poisonous chalice.
Our forebears lived for thousands of years simply but sustainably. We in the rich North of the planet are living very richly and comfortably but unsustainably and very briefly in the geological time scale of things.
Financial costs of our activities do not accurately reflect the impact of our unsustainable and very energy rich lifestyles on the planet's life support systems, as Mrs Thatcher rightfully reminded us in 1988. She said "We have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself."
The blessed Margaret said that we must live within our means, our limits and our boundaries. How right she was but, such a pity she didn't put any of it into practise!
We never factor in any cost for the impact of our human activity on the planet's ecosystems. Never factor in the cost from the sheer numbers of us on the planet. Or, even on burning up a one off geological inheritance that took 350 million years to form, in about 350 years - 1750 to 2100. In other words, we get everything on the cheap without the slightest thought for how future generations are going to get on. Live now, pay later economics!
Our money, all our riches and all the wealth in the world, even our ever so smart technology can't change the weather from day to day or the climate from one season to another. Can't stop wildfires and floods or volcanoes erupting or sea levels rising as the Arctic melts and the glaciers disappear. We humans are so clever we invent and build WMD that can wipe us all out many times over and take every other life form with us, too!
So clever we can send our machines to far flung planets in our solar system but find it impossible for us all to migrate to another planet once we've well and truly mucked up this one.
We can even calculate how our sister or twin planet has an atmosphere so concentrated in CO2 that some scientists say is from a runaway greenhouse effect, as we are probably doing to earth.
Foote and Tyndall in the 1850s showed how CO2 heats up more than air. However, we know better and we simply cross our fingers and hope for the best with all our rapid conversion of fossil fuels into CO2 to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere - and not for the better..
What is the matter with us extremely intelligent humans?!
From the 5 April to 22 August 2022 with Octopus, my wife and I had total gas and electricity bills of only 75p/day for the two of us. We just live frugally, simply but still very comfortably. And we both think we lack for nothing!
"Either we get our numbers and our activities into harmony with the powers of the earth to support life or, collapsing ecosystems will do the job for us." (1970s or 1980s Green Party Manifesto)
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