A New Financial System
This Graph tells a story.
These are greenhouse gas emission numbers over the last 2000 years. And the curve starts to go straight up in the early to mid 18th century period. (Another curve we must flatten if we want to survive)
That’s sometime around the start of the industrial revolution.
Strangely enough, to solve the climate crisis we must look at our economy, and the way it has taken shape over the last couple of centuries.
The idea of capitalism has baked into it, the idea of continuous conspicuous consumption, decade after decade. That is how a modern economy functions in our world.
(Checkout this cool video from hedge fund investor Ray Dalio to understand how the economic machine works. Also checkout Wisdom Letter 11 where we talked in detail about how money runs in our system.)
In short, the economy runs on debt. Or credit in fancier terms. “Bankers minting money out of thin air” in crude terms.
Debt is essentially a bet on the future, its a bet that our children will grow at a faster pace than we ever could, and pay it off by increasing the size of the overall economic pie.
Currently, if we don’t double the size of our economy every 20 years then we face economic collapse, global panic, recessions and depressions. Its a tight rope we are walking.
Credit, as some might say, is a tax on the future.
And the only way the future generations can pay this tax is through more and more growth and consumption.
But what fuels this growth? Who bears the toll of this consumption?
The Earth of course.
Think about it, any material thing that you consume is ultimately sourced from the planet and its natural resources.
The planet is a finite resource, its HUGE, but still, its finite, and one day it will run out of stuff to fuel the infinite growth our economy seems to deem necessary.
This article from The Guardian dives deep into this problem and offers a few solutions as well. It argues that to save the planet, we must completely change our financial system.
Its short, to the point, and controversial.
Check it out —
To deal with climate change we need a new financial system
You are the average of the 5 types of content you consume most online.
Subscribe to The Wisdom Project to receive a curation of the best that the internet has to offer.
We send 1 Email every Sunday.
