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> a perfect motive

It comes across almost trite, but it's still perfectly relevant:

> Canada [and The West], the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

- Alanis Obomsawin

This isn't rare or hidden knowledge. Billions of people know this for a fact. Versions of this phrase go back well over a hundred years.

Yet the media and political classes do everything they can to diminish such "sentiment" as "naive" and "childish" "wishful thinking"; with or without the tacit understanding that this is what their owners demand.

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cafard 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Will the last tree be cut? New England has much more three cover than it has a couple hundred years ago.

	▲	mandmandam 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Will the last tree be cut? It's a metaphor (though in many parts of the world it's a simple fact); but yeah, it could be global some day. I wouldn't put it past us. We've lost countless species already. We've been abysmal to trees. If we were to keep losing forest at our current global rate we'd lose the last tree in 400-800 years (though tbf this is decelerating right now). New England has more tree cover than 200 years ago - great. Europe too. Is 200 years ago a good reference point though? Isn't that when we chopped like 80% of our forests down for industrialization? Anyway, so the centers of Empire are green(ish). How's the Amazon doing though? How's South-East Asia? Central Africa? And our new forests - are they old growth and diverse, or monoculture Sitka spruce? Organic, or doused with glyphosate? And then there's the climate, which we are fucking up faster than scientists predicted... Can trees adapt in time? ... Would trees survive nuclear holocaust? I'm not saying Bladerunner was a documentary. But we're on course for catastrophe, no doubt about it; and the relentless pursuit of ever more capital via externalized costs is why.