A number of other groups—for example, the Great Transition initiative and the Future We Want—have performed similar exercises.

The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) prepared by the United Nations sets out to do just that, assessing changes in countries’ manufactured, human, and natural capital stocks—with

The surplus, or net, energy—the energy liberated from mines or wells after an energy investment of a barrel of oil or a ton of coal—was the life force for the extraordinary economic, technological, social, and other advances of the last two centuries. Without exaggeration, that surplus energy is the foundation of our civilization. Now, as a growing

But when we account for the share of runoff that is too remote to get to (about 19 percent) or that runs off in floods (about 42 percent),

are questions as old as human beings. And while religions have offered one set of explanations, and science another, neither have proved up to the task of answering in a way that enables humanity to live within the bounds of Earth.

The third shift needed is from a focus on aggregates and averages to monitoring distribution

with a vested interest in maintaining consumerism or Earth’s ecosystems decline and bring down the consumer culture for the vast majority of humanity in a much crueler way.

They tend to become ineffective, sclerotic, and easily co-opted by the powerful and wealthy. They are vulnerable to militarization, as James Madison noted long ago.

risk of getting into zones of uncertainty and crossing thresholds that could lead to major changes in regional climates, alter climate-dynamics patterns such as the oceanic thermohaline circulation, or cause rapid sea level rise.