An Irony

...But I don't know if you could call it a bitter irony: Just when lots of people are starting to at least give lip service to the idea that Humans need to reduce the rampageous overconsumption of resources - along comes a Imminent-Yet-Never-Will-It-Actually-Arrive Recession(OH! MY!), and LO!, people's consumptive habits begin to wane. Which (and here's the irony), causes the Economic Wizards (and maybe a few Econostrologists) to holler that "We have to get the American consumer spending again". Seems the only way to have a "healthy" economy is to have an unhealthy level of consumption. You know, Consumption is what they used to call Tuberculosis. That's because it consumed the body it occupied. Much like todays Gluttonous American Consumer is consuming Planet Earth. It's a deadly road. "Unsustainable", or so they say.
Given the economic/environmental deadly embrace; how can the Capitalist/Consumption society morph into a sustainable walk-lightly-on-the-land society? How can the residents of the society transform themselves into stewards of the land instead of predators of the land? I'm betting it can't be done without a lot of desperation-induced-lifestyle-change.

An aside: This week (well, this Lunar Month) the folk of the Land of Smiles hold a celebration called Loy Krathong. They (we) build little floats (Krathongs), and set them on the water.The rite is intended to apologize to the God of the River for the violence we committed against the river during the year. It's a beautiful ceremony. Sometimes, though, the Krathongs are obscured by all the plastic bags and oil slicks that befoul the rivers. It seems that it's Human Nature to drop whatever isn't useful in the nearest available spot - to get washed down to the river, the ocean, befouling everything. Just ask the volunteers of Operation Cleanup who annually haul megatonnes (well, kilotonnes) of trash off the beaches and the riverbanks of North America.
My claim: Better not to do the misdeed than to apologize for it afterward. And then to repeat the crime, time-without-end!