Friedman is good and getting better on global warming. He is alarmed and saying so. Today he makes the second leap: it’s not just too much CO2. It’s too much of everything, and everything is not forever. He will be heard by many who think we’re just hitting a speed bump, not the beginning of a wall. Recommend him to others.

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese …

We can’t do this anymore.

Freidman refers to Paul Gilding, and Australian climate activist. Check him out here.

The UN-appointed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment recently conducted a comprehensive global analysis of peer reviewed ecosystem science, looking at the earth system as a whole. This was a review of ecosystem
services – those parts of the ecosystem that directly support our society and economy. Their conclusions were chilling: “At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning. Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted”.

And a recent article here.