As the world slowly awakens to the concept that all wealth perhaps can't be measured by digits in the bank, the global economic and political elite have been meeting to potentially form a "new Bretton Woods," kick started by global guarantees of banking deposits, direct government investment in banks, and global rate cuts. Though the markets have so far reacted with glee (or short covering), pumping fiat money into the system with no biophysical linkage to the real economy has (at least) two major problems. First, it accelerates the growing gap between financial capital and real capital, and second, it tacitly acknowledges our current "ends" as acceptable, and that all forms of capital can and should continue to be directed towards the positional consumption of "stuff" that our culture currently advocates (perhaps via momentum alone). In crisis times such as these, our leaders would do well to recognize that the human economy is a subset of a larger, finite system, and is subject to the natural laws forthwith. Furthermore, a plethora of new economic, psycholgic, and neuroscience research also suggests that "more" does not equate with "better".

Below the fold is a guest commentary explaining these themes written by my thesis co-advisor, Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.