My wife and I have purchased two hybrids. We bought a 3 kw photovoltaic unit. We recycle and offset our carbon emissions on the Internet. We turn things off. But we also spend two nice salaries every year, and here's the dirty little secret - our environmental footprint is HUGE, I'm sure. We've all got to do what we can in our individual lives, but we've also got to drive the systemic changes that will make the big differences.

Materialism is toxic to happiness, and we are losing our connection to the natural world.

My wife and I have purchased two hybrids. We bought a 3 kw photovoltaic unit. We recycle and offset our carbon emissions on the Internet. We turn things off. But we also spend two nice salaries every year, and here's the dirty little secret - our environmental footprint is HUGE, I'm sure. We've all got to do what we can in our individual lives, but we've also got to drive the systemic changes that will make the big differences.

Value change can change our pathetic capitulation to consumerism, which will help us psychologically as well as environmentally.

The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is crashing against the earth - the Great Collision.

If some of these answers seem radical or far-fetched today, then I say wait until tomorrow. Soon it will be abundantly clear that it is business as usual that is utopian, whereas creating something very new and different is a practical necessity.

Poverty, in the end, is a state of dispossession and deprivation in which people are not only deprived of their income, but also of opportunity, empowerment and, most important, dignity.