Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 12:34 PM 8/26/2007, you wrote:

> Increasingly, we have to recognize the economists dismissing what they
> call "externalities" as stark, staring *nuts*! "Externalities" are
> defined as such only because we can ignore them temporarily when
> generating this quarter's profits. But the truth is that it's in the
> "externalities" that we actually *live*. Undercut them with a reckless
> and irresponsible economic system and eventually we all go
> not-so-merrily down the tubes.

I've been lurking for a while, but wanted to add to this. I read some 
time back that humankind is the only species able to transport large 
amounts of energy from one place to another. Primitive humans 
couldn't make a huge impact on their environments because they had 
only the locally available energy to work with. As technology 
improved, the ability to extract energy from one place and use it in 
another place allowed people to use energy in places where it wasn't 
abundant, or to use it in much larger quantities than locally 
available, and thus to affect a local region in ways that had never 
been possible before.

The whole notion of an "externality" violates physical law. We don't 
live in an open system where new energy can be extracted ad infinitum 
and our garbage can be tossed down the nearest black hole.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com