Na To Rourou, Na Taku Rourou

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Summary

The image of a civilization consuming without constraint, degrading, destroying and devouring without limit, exhausting every good thing it depended on is frightening, even haunting. Are we on course to share in a similar fate? Is the debt-fueled 'efficient growth' of our current deregulated economics edging our own communities closer and closer toward collapse? And what of our own environmental history? Excess has driven our descendants to destroy some '67 species, including one bat, at least 51 birds, three frogs, three lizards, one freshwater fish, four plant species, and a number of invertebrates', and with our current forest cover at only '28%, down from the 78% that covered the nation at the time of human settlement', it’s fairly clear that we’ve been living off a liturgy of destructive harm and extermination, something that has earned our country the infamous title of having the 'ninth highest percentage (34%) of threatened species on the planet'. Are we leaving future generations with a legacy of a diminished, strangled environment? Everyday, from the excesses of what we consume, we dump the equivalent of 1000 nine tonne buses of household garbage, a conservative figure that isn’t counting what our industries trash. Are the environmental impacts of our debt-fueled 'progress' leaving the next generation with something of a hijacked or tired future, what Jonathon Porritt claims is nothing more than 'intergenerational larceny on a staggering scale'?