Charles Hugh Smith – Correspondent Bart D. (Australia) captured the entire global economy in three words: The Landfill Economy. Stuff is manufactured, energy is consumed shipping it somewhere, consumers buy it and shortly thereafter it ends up as garbage in the landfill.
This is of course the definition of “economic growth”: waste, inefficiency, environmental destruction–none of these matter. Only two things matter: maximize “growth” by any means necessary, and maximize profits by any means necessary.
The Landfill Economy now encompasses the entire planet. The swirling gyre of plastic trash the size of Texas between Hawaii and California: it’s just one modest example of the planetary trash dump that “growth” and profit generate as byproducts/blowback.
The planet’s oceans are one giant trash dump. Everything from plastic water bottles to abandoned fishing nets to radiation to containers that fell off ships is floating around even the most distant corners of the seas. Seabirds nesting in remote islands die of starvation as their guts fill with plastic bits of “permanent growth.”
Globalization has turned the planet’s land masses and rivers into trash dumps.Want to make a quick profit along a tropical sea coast? Dig some big holes near the coast, dump in baby prawns, food and chemicals to suppress algae blooms and diseases and then harvest the prawns to ship to the insatiable markets of the developed world.