Eating the Earth

Money talks, but it doesn't always tell the truth ...

Although it has generated riches for billions, industrial capitalism is underwritten by a planetary pyramid scheme. In the global equivalent of selling the furniture to pay the rent, we are destroying natural assets and calling the result 'income' while failing to account for the corresponding decline in underlying wealth.

Investment banker Justyn Walsh argues that this failure to properly value the natural world is more than just a glitch in the system, but in many ways is the system - one enabling a 'cowboy economy' that relentlessly rolls forward to new frontiers of exploitation, and benefits those who can capture the greatest bounty from nature regardless of wider costs.

As the planet's life support systems increasingly need to be placed on life support themselves, a new story is needed. Stark in its warnings but hopeful in its prescriptions, Eating the Earth is an entertaining and accessible explanation of why we must live off nature's dividends rather than eat into its capital.