Debt to the Earth

2012-07-16 22:09:19-0400

Somehow, the most important motivation for activity in the world has become to service debt. It is not to build the infrastructure for a more efficient future, to repair and improve housing and transportation options, or otherwise create a basis for sustaining a productive balance between living things and the resources they consume.

Of all the laws to be broken -  a state of war, say , is an example of sanctioned law breaking, defaulting on a financial debt is taken to be unquestionable.

But there are greater debts: they are the debts we owe the earth, the air, the water, and the living things of the earth,  and these debts we pass on to our progeny more tangibly than the wholly statutory debts of the economic system. 

With this in mind, we now are free to declare a war on financial debt, similar to the war on another abstraction,  terrorism. Once it is defeated, we can go on to the more pressing business of securing a sustainable future. Indeed, securing that future would mean the end of financial debt, and go a long way toward paying back the more substantial physical debts previously mentioned.