LifeItself

Here is what David Attenborough, the most trusted person in the U.K. and a great naturalist, told the space aliens that descended in 1500 private jets on Davos: "I am quite literally from another age, I was born during the Holocene - the 12,000 [year] period of climatic stability that allowed humans to settle, farm, and create civilisations. That led to trade in ideas and goods, and made us the globally connected species we are today. In the space of my lifetime, all that has changed. The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more . We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are in a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the age of humans." He added: "[The economic] growth is going to come to an end, either suddenly or in a controlled way. Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in finite circumstances is either a madman or an economist ." ( The Guardian , 01/21/2019) This is precisely what I have been saying, writing and teaching...

Tonight, I switched from al Jazeera International to BBC World Service.  It took about twenty minutes before I quit with disgust and switched back. Here's what I saw.  Somewhere at the World Economic Forum in Davos, there was a stage lined with eight armchairs ready for a live BBC program.  Seated on the stage were Christine Lagarde, the current IMF director, a pretty African woman, likely representing the developing world, and several very important looking white men. I started watching the BBC Davos report when Ms. Lagarde made her points:  IMF is now anything but business as usual.  Three IMF economists did a lot of analytic work and arrived at the following conclusions: (1) Extreme income inequality is bad for economic growth , (2) income redistribution is good for growth , and (3) jobs for the masses keep people engaged and are good for sustainable growth . She told us that these points were met with great disbelief and scorn by her IMF colleagues, ...