State of the Nation

                                                                                               written 6 July, 2025

                                                                                         published 13 July, 2025

 

            On this 4th of July weekend, celebrating the 249th anniversary of the founding of our nation, our country seems to be in trouble.  The Republican Senate and House narrowly passed the "Big Beautiful Bill", reducing taxes for the wealthiest, while impoverishing the poorest, throwing millions off health care.  The national debt will grow by more than 10 percent, causing the US credit rating to be downgraded, keeping interest rates high.

            The Republican Supreme Court declared the president above the law, who needn't follow judicial orders, allowing him to disregard the Constitution which he swore to uphold when taking office.   

            The administration is populated by presidential loyalists, without regard for knowledge of, or competence in, the job they hold.  Revenge against anyone who thwarts presidential whim, including whistle blowers and journalists, is now policy.  Attacks on undocumented immigrants have militarized the justice system and disrupted core parts of the economy that depend on cheap labor, including food production, construction, and care workers.  Combining with TACO tariff uncertainty, the economy has already begun to slow.

            The president openly favors foreign dictators, disparages and bullies traditional allies, and is blatant about turning the executive office into a cash machine for his personal and family businesses.  In addition, his deteriorating mental condition is becoming more obvious every week, which even Fox News has begun to acknowledge.

            However, none of this is unique.  America has had corrupt, incompetent, even demented, leaders in the past.  The American ideal of equal justice under the law is a noble goal, but in practice, women and people of color were originally left out, and had to fight for inclusion.  The Senate is designed to be unrepresentative.  California, with 2 Senators, has as many citizens as the 20 least populated states, with 40 Senators.  

            My primary grief is the climate crisis, officially denied and declared a hoax.  Climate mention is being removed from Federal documents and websites.  Research is being defunded.  Programs to deal with the problem are now canceled.  Other countries are pressured to repeal their efforts.  Funding for weather reporting is being cut, leaving everyone blind to what is coming.  Disaster relief funds have been shifted to deporting undocumented aliens, throwing States on their own financially.  Instead, the push is on for consumption of expensive, finite fossil fuels, further destabilizing the climate, and guaranteeing higher energy prices.    

            But reality doesn't care about denial.  An intense night time downpour in central Texas, recently caused a river to rise 26' feet in one hour.  Inadequate weather reporting, resulting from budget cuts, increased the death toll.  106 large fires are currently burning in Alaska, with another 84 in the lower 48.  This will get worse.

            All of the above results from the same long standing cultural error: the belief in separation in a unity reality.  The greed and corruption of exclusive economic gain, wide spread misogyny and racism, and the complete disregard for the value of the environment and long-term sustainability of life, follow from this error.

            The collapse of the political/economic model that has overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, powered by the rapid consumption of unique, irreplaceable stores of fossil energy, looks like a disaster.  But from another perspective, it may be a cathartic healing of thousands of years of human misperception.

            Which suggests an effective response.  As a product of this culture, to the extent that I begin to heal myself, opening to being part of a conscious unity, to that extent my small portion of reality changes.  This has been known for generations, and a path forward is easy to find once you start looking.  

            One tool, common to many spiritual traditions, recognizes that all experience of reality happens only in the moment: the eternal Now.  All action takes place only in the now.  However, my thinking is often rooted in the past or the future, which are concepts, not experiences.  The apparent tsunami of dire events tends to pull us into longing for the remembered past, or worrying about the possible future.  The more often I can pull my attention into this moment, the more I am able to experience what is actually happening, and am more able to respond appropriately.  Most times, when I succeed in focusing on this moment, I find I am fine, and relatively at peace with life.  

            The world is rapidly unfolding.  The challenge is to keep our balance as best we can.

 

 

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Countries

                                                                                            written 29 June, 2025

                                                                                           published 6 July, 2025

            The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2024 was the warmest year since record keeping began in 1880.  The rate of warming has increased nine-fold to 0.27°C per decade today.  This drives an increase in extreme weather events, such as torrential downpours, stronger wind and fire storms, and deadly heatwaves.  The ocean is warming and acidifying, disrupting sea life, and sea level is rising.  

            Globally, the economic costs are already apparent and more than 80 percent of the world’s people want their governments to do more about climate change.  Combined, the US and China produce almost half of the global GDP, but their responses to the climate crisis are very different, especially under our present administration.  

            Since 2020, the U.S. has added 84,200 megawatts (MW) of solar and 7,000 MW of wind (about 30 percent of the global total) and a 15-fold increase of utility battery capacity to 30,000 megawatt hours (MWh).  Battery chemistries are now more varied, and costs are dropping as the scale of manufacturing increases.  Consequently, new renewable energy power plants, with storage, are the most economically competitive form of power generation.  Solar arrays with batteries are the quickest to deploy, with shorter deployment times than constructing new natural gas power plants.

            But the current administration is determined to destroy the whole renewable industry, proclaiming the entire climate crisis a "hoax".  Federal subsidies have been repealed and new taxes are being proposed to stall further renewable development.  EV charging systems are being dismantled, and US governmental assets are being forced to sell EV investments.  The domestic financial industry is being told to defund further renewable projects, and pressure is being applied to force other countries to follow suit.  

            Oil, natural gas, and nuclear are the preferred Republican energy sources, although those are all expensive, and consume diminishing finite resources, mostly imported from other countries.  The recent attacks in the middle east are about access to nuclear power and have threatened economic disruption of shipping of gas and oil.  This show of power requires a huge Pentagon budget, further adding to energy costs.  Republican policy ensures continued profits for the billionaire status quo, but impoverishes the general public.  Even if massive increases in these energy sources could happen in time, or be affordable, they ignore the growing climate crisis.  That is what passes for wisdom in the US today.

            In contrast, China, with few domestic oil and gas resources, embraced renewable power as a national economic policy, and now leads the world in electrification of their economy, 30 percent compared to 22 percent in the US and the EU.  China, now the primary manufacturer of affordable alternative energy hardware, with over half of the world's solar installations, increasing 50 percent faster than the global average, is positioned to be an economic superpower in clean energy technologies going forward.  

            China produces electric vehicles of all kinds.  In 2024, EV's were almost half of all passenger cars sold in China, up from just 6 percent in 2020.  BYD, China's primary auto company, sells more EV's annually than Tesla, and markets some EV's in the EU for less than $8,000.  Yadea, another Chinese company, sells electric scooters for $700 with 150 mile range. 

            China is leading in new battery designs, including very fast charging, and complete battery swaps in just a few minutes, and is already manufacturing new chemistries, like sodium ion batteries which are cheaper and safer.

            Globally, EVs sales are increasing, while combustion vehicle sales continue to fall, reducing oil demand.  The reality of this "peak demand" for oil has kept wholesale oil prices low, despite the recent conflict in Iran.  While that might seem good for consumers, the price is too low for most oil companies to make a profit, so further exploration efforts have diminished.

            The two largest economies on the planet have staked out divergent paths.  China is investing in a sustainable energy future and the US is doubling down on an expensive, obsolete energy past.  It is still unclear if there really is a sustainable solution to the climate crisis, because environmental events are unfolding more rapidly each year, and we have squandered decades in denial.  But it is very clear that the past is no longer here.  However, politicians and the very wealthy seem to be quite divorced for reality, and the rest of us are along for the ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Power Play

                                                                                            written 22 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 29 June, 2025

 

            There has been a sharp increase in electrical power demand, driven by data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency.  The current US administration, and the billionaires it represents, are pushing to expand power produced from nuclear and natural gas, being more profitable and centralized.  But at what cost?

            Nuclear power is already some of the most expensive electricity on the grid.  In the US, 18 percent of our electricity comes from 92 nuclear reactors, averaging 1,000MW capacity each.  America was the first nation to develop commercial nuclear power, so our reactors average 42 years old, but the design life of these plants is 40 years.  Aging reactors are more prone to failure.  

            The president plans to increase nuclear power by a factor of 4 by 2050, which requires constructing a new large reactor every few weeks.  Current costs are about $7.5B each.  Historically, reactors have taken 5-10 years for construction, and often run over time and over budget before completion.

            Uranium is a finite fuel.  Russia supplies over 90 percent of the uranium used in the US, a questionable source for essential power.  In addition, the most productive, affordable, global uranium reserves have already been depleted, guaranteeing future price increases.  

            Natural uranium is mostly composed of two isotopes, 99 percent U-238, which is fairly stable, and 0.7 percent U-235, which experiences radioactive decay.  Reactor fuel must be "enriched", increasing the percentage of U-235 to 3-5 percent, an expensive, energy intensive process done in only one domestic location.

            When uranium fissions, it produces heat and fission by-products.  When only 5 percent of the U-235 has been consumed, by-product contamination makes the fuel uneconomical to operate, and the reactor must be refueled.  This so called "spent fuel" is extremely radioactive, and so far, no domestic commercial disposal site has been established. 

            The current nuclear hope is based on Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which will be mass produced, and supposedly cheaper to build.  While many plans are in play, and billions have been committed, no commercial units are operating yet.  The designs use different cooling, and are promised to be safer.  However, the Fukushima reactors failed in a way that was promised could "never happen", shifting from a $40B asset to a $1T liability in days, and the cleanup is optimistically expected to take a century.  Despite any differences, SMR's will consume a finite fuel resource, and produce radioactive waste, both unaddressed issues.

            Combustion of natural gas generates 43 percent of US electricity, with the advantage of coming online quickly as "peaker plants", helping provide grid stability.  But these thermal systems require time to come from dead cold to operational temperatures, so must be kept hot, and staffed throughout the day, even if needed for only an hour.  A new combined cycle turbine, which uses steam most efficiently, is produced in only a few places, and the global supply chain is congested, due to increased demand and TACO tariff uncertainty, so prices are higher, and delivery takes more than three years.

            Operation requires combustion of natural gas, which has varied in price by a factor of three over the last few years, depending on global demand and instability.  Currently, 40 percent of US production of natural gas is from our Permian shale fields, which has reached peak production.  Natural gas will increasingly be imported.

            This can be by pipeline as a gas, or by ship when super cooled as liquified natural gas (LNG), which is twice as expensive.  Canada is our only source for importing through pipelines, but our president has driven a wedge between the US and our northern trading partner.  About 20 percent of the world's LNG is shipped from the middle east through the Hormuz Straits, a narrow choke point between Iran and Oman.  

            Electricity generated from natural gas requires expensive hardware, with highly variable fuel costs, totally outside domestic control, which will only increase over time.  As I write, the Israeli attack on Iran last week increased natural gas prices 14 percent, but shipping was still proceeding.  The president attacked today, and Iran has voted to blockade the Straits, which could double prices immediately.  Stay tuned!

            Solar arrays with storage are relatively cheap to install, and can be decentralized.  The power they collect is free, without producing socially destructive waste.  Because this threatens control by the power elite, electricity costs will increase as the US becomes increasingly irrelevant, in a world slowly moving toward sustainability.  

          

 

Local Power Projects

                                                                                            written 15 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 22 June, 2025

    

            A new grid scale solar array is being constructed near the north end of Redemeyer Road, east of Ukiah.  This 4 megawatt array is owned by Renewable Properties, which builds and operates solar systems in 14 states.  The Ukiah array has been in the planning and permitting stage for several years.  Construction is close to completion, with all the panels and their single axis tracking systems now installed.  Interconnection to the grid has yet to happen, but the power is already contracted to be sold to Sonoma Clean Power.

            Averaged over a full year, this facility will produce about 16 megawatt hours of power each day.  To put this into perspective, the output is about 5 percent of Ukiah's daily load, or 1 percent of Mendocino county's daily load.  This is the largest array in the area, but relatively small compared to arrays in the Central Valley, which are 25-100 times larger.

            The next largest array in the valley is at Mendocino Community College, which has had a 1 megawatt array in operation for over 15 years.  The daily solar power curve peaks mid-day, and is out of synch with the College power load, which extends long past sunset.  When operating, the array powers the load at the moment and any excess energy is sold back onto the grid.  This has supports about half of the College's daily power consumption, and evening power is purchased back from PG&E.  

            A month ago, the College added a 750 kilowatt hour battery to the system.  This allows some excess energy collected during the day to be stored for use in the evening.  It is expected this will now support about 70 percent of their load.  A recent energy audit at the College indicated equipment upgrades which would reduce their load by about 20 percent.  After the upgrade, their array and storage will be close to supporting their entire load.

            While the Redemeyer and College arrays are the largest in the Ukiah valley, three campuses of the Ukiah Unified School District have 250 kilowatt parking lot canopy arrays.  Several businesses have large rooftop solar, such as Factory Pipe, Raley's, Walmart, and Costco, to name a few.  About 160 homes and small businesses within Ukiah have rooftop solar.  While all this helps support our local power consumption, it is just a start, compared to what is needed.

            For example, Ukiah Electric could do what the College did, and install hardware to help support their own electrical load.  The City would require a much larger array, but any size array would help.  NCPA, the agency which contracts to provide the City with power, has already told the City to begin planning to produce at least 15 percent locally.  This would need more than 10 megawatts of array, using as much as 40 acres of land.  There are locations within the City limits, and the possible annexation would add more real estate opportunities, but the City is compact, and space is limited. 

            Another viable option is to begin adding more local storage into the City utility mix.  Even though Ukiah charges the same retail rate throughout the day, the wholesale power delivered in the evening is as much as 10 times more expensive than mid-day.  Since long lasting grid scale batteries have become commercially available, it is now cheaper to store mid-day solar power to use in the evening.  Furthermore, the solar production in Ukiah is unevenly distributed throughout the system, and some circuits get overloaded mid-day.   Strategically placed storage would eliminate that issue.

            It may seem foolish to suggest moving toward local power resilience, given the current political stance from the Federal government.  The party dogma is climate change is just a "Woke fad", and every effort to even monitor the situation, let alone begin to deal with it, is being shut down.  To my mind, this is an insane denial of reality, which guarantees suffering.

            The insurance crisis will get only worse as long as the underlying cause is ignored.  Disbanding the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't stop hurricanes, fires, and floods, but everyone impacted will be worse off without coordinated help.  Shutting down the weather service doesn't change what happens, but people are less prepared for what is coming.

            At some point, foolish denial is inevitably broken by reality.  The more we can do locally, despite the denial, the better off we will be in the long run.

Massively Connected

                                                                                              written 8 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 15 June, 2025

     

            In 1999, Thomas Friedman wrote "The Lexus And The Olive Tree", describing the fundamental global shifts after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991.  Decades of rigid geopolitical economic structures disappeared, and the new reality was dominated by the rise of computers, the Internet, and cell phones.  Where before, all transactions operated within the confines of "which side are you on?", now everyone was functionally connected to an unprecedented degree.  Since the book was written, this connectivity has accelerated with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2008 and now artificial intelligence (AI).

            With Internet access, information can be drawn from around the world and be communicated with almost anyone.  Business can be conducted from anywhere that has access to shipping, and financial transactions can take place anywhere.  This connectivity has given rise to web businesses that have driven long standing brick and mortar companies into bankruptcy, and allowed the migration of viable economies from urban densities to more rural communities, as long as web access is adequate.

            The economic advantages of being connected have spurred countries to open their economies to the world, bringing in foreign investment, which can increase the standard of living.  Countries that remain disconnected, supposedly protecting their local advantages, fall behind.  Disconnection comes from inadequate Internet bandwidth and availability, lack of accounting transparency, limited rule of law, and corrupt political systems.  Unfortunately, America is becoming more disconnected under our current administration.

            A measure of the rapid change is computer processing speeds.  Since the Berlin Wall fell, consumer computer processing speeds have increased by over 100 thousand times, and super computers are a million times faster than that. All transactions are happening much more rapidly.  In minutes, you can arrange a car loan through your phone, from anywhere.  Profits in the stock market can come by placing a server a few feet closer to the node, getting bids microseconds faster than the competition.  

            Friedman is a free market booster, so his book mostly describes the benefits from this new connected, free market, globalized world, but does identify some problems.  Monetary wealth is the only measure of prosperity that is valued.  Short term thinking dominates, destroying the natural world.  Extreme economic inequities are on the rise.

            Global finances are no longer managed and controlled by a small group.  People all over the world participate, forming what Friedman calls the "Electronic Herd", which swirls around the planet, chasing the maximum profit of the moment.  Being a herd of individuals, mob mentality prevails, dominated by incomplete information.  It can flood into countries, turbocharging the local economy, but can be spooked, and rush out in a flash, leaving economic wreckage behind.  

            In the connected economy, a crash in one corner of the planet can trigger global upheaval elsewhere.  The 1997 Southeast Asian crisis began in Thailand, affected other countries in the region, spread to Russia and its neighbors, and then to Latin America.  Chasing profits selling mortgage backed securities in the US, using increasingly risky loans, eventually caused the 2008 economic crisis, which shook the world.

            This massive interconnection is real, an expression of the basic unity described in both spiritual metaphysics and quantum physics and cannot be avoided.  But our culture, historically based on the illusion of separation and exclusive gain, is under assault because actual connection has never before been such a dominant paradigm.  

            As a result, we are vulnerable to the limitations inherent in the human species.  Many people are responsible and ethical, while others are corrupt and traumatized, but all have access to the whole world.  Along with the benefits of connection, we also suffer from cybercrime, hacking, fraud, polarizing social media, and massive disinformation.  News sources used to be held to journalistic standards, but now anyone can be an influencer, and AI makes fraud easier.  Instead of a few channels of information, we have millions, and information overload is everywhere.

            Rather than accepting all our information from "outside", perhaps we can begin to cultivate information from "inside".  Inspiration is how our personality experiences the "aha" clarity coming from our internal connection with being alive.  Everyone already has that access to some extent, but intention can enhance our receptivity.  Balance may involve deliberately stepping away from outside information addiction, and instead cultivate practices of quiet, stilling the external noise, to hear the soft internal voice of wisdom, which is our birthright.

 

Compared To What?

                                                                                              written 1 June, 2025

                                                                                           published 8 June, 2025

 

            In any conversation about the climate crisis and solutions to deal with it, someone often complains "it costs too much".  But rarely does the discussion consider "compared to what?"

            To restate the basics, for several centuries our global energy system has been powered by combustion of fossil fuels, which has slowly changed the atmospheric chemistry, making it more opaque to infrared energy, trapping more heat.  As a result, Earth is becoming less habitable for humans, and economic stability is threatened.  The solution is twofold: complete economic decarbonization (stop adding to the problem), and carbon dioxide sequestration (returning to an atmosphere we know supports humanity).

            The first part requires a complete redesign of our global energy system, with cost estimates of about $60 trillion, which is indeed a lot of money.  But compared to what?  The global economy already spends $7 trillion on fossil fuels each and every year.  However, the cheapest reserves, those easiest to access, have already been burned up, so this annual cost will keep increasing, even if sufficient new reserves are developed.  

            In contrast, renewable energy is free, already being delivered to the planet, so the cost involves only the hardware to collect and store that free energy.  Decarbonizing with renewables would change from a constantly increasing energy bill to a fixed cost infrastructure.  Investing in renewables avoids inflation by prepaying decades of energy costs.

            Of course, the trillions involved in the fossil fuel industry create massive economic inertia to keep things as they are, since the current economic winners will probably not be the renewable energy winners.  But the economics are pushing toward change.

            While fossil fuel development will only get more expensive, further exhausting finite resources each year, solar systems are getting cheaper, because improved manufacturing continues to drop the per unit price.  In the last fifty years, solar panel prices dropped from $100/watt to $0.50/watt, while gasoline prices increased from $0.20/gal to $5.00/gal.

            Ukiah School district installed canopy solar arrays in three location in PG&E territory, at a cost of $3.00/watt.  Over the 25 year life of the system, that will produce electricity costing $0.10/KWhr, one quarter the current cost of the cheapest PG&E power.

            The large upfront cost is a problem.  However, this is just a financial distribution issue.  The explosive shift from horses to automobiles in the early 1900's was the result of bankers extending auto loans to more people.  As more global monied interests see the profit in renewables, the shift will accelerate.

            However, if you still think it is too expensive to make the renewable shift even to save money, then consider the cost of doing nothing.  More extreme climate is already here, and getting worse.  When a community is destroyed, like Paradise, CA, the Big Bend area of Florida, or the storm flooded areas in the east, it can take more than a decade to get back to where they were before the disaster.  US economic losses from extreme climate (drought, floods, heat, cold, fires, and storms) are already approaching Pentagon funding levels, with unaccounted increases in health and grocery costs.  

            Extreme wildfires and damaging storms have made affordable insurance problematic in California and Florida.  Consider what will happen to real estate, banking, and local governmental property tax based funding, when large areas become "uninsurable", which is projected to happen within a decade or so.  

             These economic hits are the result of just the gradual heating from the changing climate.  Abrupt, nonlinear changes have also been identified, which would break our economy and our entire food production system.

            The global GDP is over $110 trillion, and the economy is brittle, vulnerable to disruption from unexpected disturbances.  What is it worth to avoid having the economy collapse?  By spending extra money now, we can avoid, or at least mitigate, the consequences of apparently low probability events.  This is the reason for property insurance.  This is the reason for upgraded seismic engineering in earthquake country.  

            There is no solution without dealing with the underlying cause.  There is no possibility of avoiding events when you refuse to even acknowledge they exist, which is the current insane policy of the Federal government.  What is the wisdom of ignoring reality?

            So, when you hear someone complain that it is too expensive to address the climate crisis, ask them if they like paying high energy prices.  Ask them want kind of planet they want for their grandchildren.

Some Things To Think About

                                                                                            written 25 May, 2025

                                                                                          published 1 June, 2025

   

            Capitalism lowers costs to provide more affordable products.  Labor has long been viewed as a cost to be reduced.  Using machines, and now robots, which are fixed cost hardware, productivity increases, making human workers redundant.  Some large factories have more robots than humans, and the ideal is no human workers at all.  But we live in a consumer economy, which grows by encouraging people to buy ever more goods and services each year.  With fiscal concerns demanding a lowest cost economy, and fewer people are employed to make what is consumed, can the economy support any customers?

            Can a multi billionaire be expected to know anything about our life?  Does our standard of living depend on others being impoverished?

            A robust economy needs long term investments in infrastructure and manufacturing.  For example, the housing market is based on the 30-year mortgage, often at a fixed interest rate.  The US economy has been relatively stable for decades, so the US dollar has been a global standard where people around the world can invest reliably.  The chaotic turmoil of extreme tariffs, changing weekly with the whims of our leader, brings that economic stability into question.  Do we benefit if the macho economic bullying of the rest of the planet sinks the US dollar?

            Should a political office be for sale to the highest bidder?   Is public corruption OK if it is blatant?  

            Most people of color have directly experienced racist discrimination, or know others who have.  Most women have experienced misogynistic sexism, or know others who have.  Most white men are ignorant of this experience.  Does that ignorance explain their arrogance?

            Is money constitutionally protected speech?  Are corporations really people, with rights over actual humans?

            Ideal capitalism assumes all the costs in producing a product or service are reflected in the price.  But economic reality includes "externalized costs", which are not factored into the sale price, and wind up being paid by other people, who may not be included in the transaction, and may not know the costs for decades.  This may be intentional fraud, or the result of ignorance, but the costs get paid eventually, which distorts the entire society.  How can we know if the best deal is really the cheapest price in the moment?

            Is it OK to make money selling a product that poisons people?  Is it better if the people being poisoned don't know about it at the time?  Is it more acceptable if taxes are paid?

            We have seen explosive changes with the rise of computers, the Internet, and smart phones.  How we communicate and do business has radically changed, driving some businesses to extinction, speeding the pace of all transactions.  People now have unprecedented power in their pocket, with access to the information from around the world, and the ability to communicate with anyone almost anywhere.  The underlying unity of the world is manifested materially.  But that connection has also spawned global scams and frauds, massive disinformation campaigns, and the rise of cyber terrorism by criminals and hostile nation states.  Can we be connected without being ripped off?

            Which is more important, competition or cooperation?  Which is more important, breathing in or breathing out?

            Our existing global economy is only possible with relatively cheap energy to power production and transportation.  But we have already consumed the most affordable fossil fuels, and are moving too slowly to renewable sources and living on our global energy income.  As more people consume more material while living on a finite planet, how does it end?  Are humans no smarter than beer yeast, explosively populating, eventually dying in their own waste? Will extraterrestrials show up, bottle our atmosphere, and sell it for a good time somewhere else? 

            The rest of the world is going green.  Why should they listen to the ignorant scold in the White House?  What happens when America is left behind?

            Boosters claim the free market is best for the economy.  But short term gains are more valued than long term gains.  The first hostile takeover was a relatively sustainable lumber company.  Then harvest rates were tripled, completely clear cut in a few years, workers were laid off, and the company was then sold off in pieces.  Such processes are now a global.  What happens when the entire planet has been clear cut, and shut down?  

             Money is a concept, but life is an experience.  Which is more valuable?