The Rape and Murder of Mother Nature

Civilization as we know it is built on the ruins of Nature. More than half of Nature has been cleared away to enable economic growth. What remains will be gone in just 80 years' time. This book addresses what is perhaps the biggest question of all - why does no government plan economic expansion and the ever-expanding population that drives it. They simply do it, as if it was written in stone that it must be done without reason or planning or goals or prudent limits. Even though huge, unmanageable consequences are looming, the pursuit of ever more economic and population growth accelerates. This can only be understood by treating it zoologically, the inevitable behaviour of a highly evolved, competitive animal. For a zoologist, economic growth is a euphemism for aggressive competition. Inevitably, leaders submit to the competitive instinct, because power is the soft word for egoism; and politicians are the quintessential egoists. The combination of power and competition is, to a zoologist, a force way too strong for our cultural controls. Something as effete as reason could never surmount it. Climate change is just a symptom; there are much bigger problems to be solved.