We have an economy that tells us it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet.

While there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.

The bottom line is down where it belongs – at the bottom. Far above it in importance are the infinite number of events that produce the profit or loss.

That appropriation of resources and the transformation of them into goods and services through the European production system characterized, and characterizes to this day, all industrial systems including the information age.

Only caring individuals can restore the places we inhabit. The 'simple act of planting a tree' not only restores the places we live, but makes us whole and powerful again.

We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good.

Being in business is not about making money. It is a way to become who you are.