The latest article on The Earth Blog is something that flies in the face of the, largely manufactured, panicked frenzy surrounding the global economic situation: in short, we need the economy to shrink if we are to stand any chance of having a safe future on this planet…

Credit crunch; economic crisis; financial meltdown…2008 became the year of monetary superlatives – and for good reason because, as far as most objective economic observers can tell, this is one event that is going to stretch well into the future, leaving no national or regional economy untouched. The Western capitalist economy is in meltdown – its financial rivers running drier by the month, it’s consumers having to climb higher and higher to harvest the fruits of their labours. Banks are swallowed, smothered or die. Chain stores cry out for customers. Politicians urge us to spend not save; to keep the wheels greased and the sputtering engine charged with just a little fuel. The media shouts as LOUD as it can: we are in CRISIS! Times are BAD!!

We concur.

Meanwhile, in the Amazon rainforest, close to the Brazilian / Bolivian border, an undiscovered tribe of semi-mobile hunter-gatherers feel no pain from the downturn; sense nothing of the slump; are blissfully ignorant of the financial despair beyond their sensory horizon. Their world (rapidly being approached on all sides by the tide of “progress”) has only one economy that matters: the economy that mattered long before money was ever exchanged, saved, spent and lost; long before interest, tax and inflation were ever conceived; and long before “resources” were extracted (stolen) and transported from far away to create the illusion we call growth. Their economy is simply the ability to manage what they need to live from day to day: no money, no interest, no tax, no imports and exports.

But for now we will, as we should, leave them alone and ponder the unreal economy, the Economy that was capitalised in the Industrial Revolution and has danced for the entertainment of the privileged few ever since.

It’s no surprise at all to find that the Amazonian tribal economy is totally sustainable, while the profit and growth driven industrial Economy always, by chance or design, leads to environmental degradation; and the bigger the economy gets, the worse the environmental damage…period.

Don’t believe me. Read the full article, and if you disagree (or even if you agree) then let me know — I’m yet to hear a sound defence of the Culture of Maximum Harm.