Looking at news.com.au today, they had a piece about Kevin Rudd writing an essay about “Stopping Capatilism Canabilising Itself” . It looks like it is going to make interesting reading when it is released later this week.
The leaders of the world are starting to realise that you can run an infinite, ever growing system on the top of a finite resource (the earth.) With more people than ever, this may be the first wakeup for modern western people that they cannot continue to consume the resources of the rest of the world, and the resources of the future people of the earth. They are simply going to run out of ’stuff’ to commoditise, reprocess and sell to the masses.
I think the current world leaders have inherited some massive problems from the cut and run, slash and burn neo conservative style that has dominated politics for the last two decades in the worlds leading countries. Complete free market capitalism has burnt every resource until in becomes no longer renewable, a barren wasteland that can not be re-used, re- farmed, re-mined etc.
The modern world as it stands now offers people so much, but also takes so much. We need to find a way to keep the parts of it we like, and get rid of the parts that cost way to much to justify… fast.