Sublime

Second, we need to shift from a focus on the flow of goods and services to monitoring changes in underlying stocks as well.

Forty per cent of global photosynthesis is now required to support human civilization.

Because consumerism is a strong driver of resource use, policies are needed to steer consumption in resource-light directions.

Environmentalism, first and foremost, continues to be a game of defense—working to reduce overall carbon emissions, chemical releases, forest loss—rather than a battle to transform the dominant growth-centric economic and cultural paradigm into an ecocentric one that respects planetary boundaries.

The earth cannot support five billion people (or twice that, by the next century) who are driving cars, eating meat, turning on the air conditioning when it gets hot, and throwing away a can every time they drink a soda. But what else have development and rising incomes meant but emulating the American way of life?

In a world where the accelerating exploitation of natural resources and the accumulation of paper wealth are major sources of problems, while the human labor at the core of the secondary economy is the most renewable resource we have, we arguably tax the wrong things.

2.8 gha per capita). That seems like an impossible challenge already—and yet it is still a full global hectare beyond the one-planet threshold.15