OPINION|
I walk down the hobbit trail in the bitter cold, crunching frozen brown oak leaves and taking note of the frost flowers extruding from yellow ironweed stalks.
The Oracle is singing softly.
Her breath condenses as it leaves the cave entrance and mixes with mine: twin columns of smoky moisture entwined and climbing into the trees above her home.
The Oracle says: “There is a word that will replace Economics.”
There is a word that will replace Economics and change everything. Pity the poor economist with a Ph.D. She’s spent years studying and all anyone wants to know is this: Are we growing?
“ARE WE GROWING?” is the only phrase that everyone in the world can agree on. It’s the rising tide that raises every bass boat. It’s in every business plan, every politician’s speech, every budget, every stock market report, every media outlet in every home, business and government every single day.
Are we growing?
Growth is a big priority for plants and because we are descended from them, this may explain our infatuation. Oddly, our ancient, and innovative mobility on the savanna required bodies built for speed and agility which gave us dominion over plants, but now, apparently, we cannot escape our roots.
Young trees make this mistake. They grow new leaf-layered limbs all willy-nilly until snow loads, strong winds or falling trees rip off their new projects exposing their cambium to life-ending infection. Older and wiser trees start limbs high in the forest canopy and in so doing, they sacrifice a certain growth rate for a longer and healthier life.
As the world gets smaller, hotter and less hospitable, we will learn we cannot grow our way out of disasters. Our new word will be ECOLOGY. As the crowd-sourced Wikipedia explains: “Ecology is the study of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment.”
We routinely ignore our physical world, living in cowboy fantasies that we can always find a new frontier when the old one lies in ruins.
But the space ships headed to Mars will only issue tickets for the Billionaire Playboy Libertarian class and the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves with only one home, one planet and one chance to get it right.
Most holidays, when we board an airplane, we jam ourselves into a thin metal tube that is completely full. We negotiate the armrests of the middle seats, we shove and tug to make space in the overheads and we share our oxygen with a stranger breathing inches away. There is no growth strategy that works here.
Similarly, our future will be a continual shuffling of people, land and resources on the only place in the universe where we are absolutely sure life can exist.
Ecology, not growth-at-any-cost, will be our new favorite word and our future will depend on our understanding of limits as well as opportunities.
We’ve been talking for hours and I’m cold and stiff. She sings me goodbye and her voice harmonizes with the songs of wrens and the dance of squirrels jumping in crunchy brown leaves.
