Real change doesn't come without crisis. Childbirth doesn't come without crisis. I think that's happening with humanity now. Our growth has generated multiple crises...and these are the contractions that are propelling us into a new world, whether we like it or not, but I think we're going to like it.

What you're looking for, you won't find. But only by looking for it can it find you.

We in the richest societies have too many calories even as we starve for beautiful, fresh food; we have overly large houses but lack spaces that truly embody our individuality and connectedness; media surround us everywhere while we starve for authentic communication. We are offered entertainment every second of the day but lack the chance to play. In the ubiquitous world of money, we hunger for all that is intimate, personal and unique.

When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature’s gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart’s desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature’s gifts, to use them well.

Contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.

What makes you care about nature, about the planet? Is it really that you're afraid of what's going to happen if you don't take care of it? Or is it that you actually love the planet, and regardless of your self-interest and regardless of its instrumental use to you, you want to take care of it?

Non-inflationary economic growth - an increase in the production of goods and services - is structurally necessary for the current money system to exist. That is what drives the relentless conversion of life into money.