Earth

Whichever way you look at it, all of our wealth comes from the Earth i. First and foremost, of course, is what we eat. But our whole economy is based on what the Earth i can provide. Think of cotton, wood, rubber and everything else that comes from the fields and forests. There is an element like silicon, which is very useful. There is iron ore, copper, tin, aluminium and a host of other so-called minerals. Above all, we must not forget that for far too long in the 20th and 21st century our economy has been largely based on the use of fossil fuels. And we know the big downside of that, global warming.
Very slowly, we are beginning to recognise an inconvenient but increasingly important truth. We cannot allow the many economic activities in which we  all engage to exceed the carrying capacity of our planet, be it deforestation, overfishing,  oil extraction, global warming or pollution of any kind. It is all too stupid because we will be less prosperous in the near future.
Only in the second half of the 20th century did people realise that the planet they live on is like a fragile spaceship. We need to keep it in good shape because we cannot live without it. Fortunately, on our planet we can also harvest energy from the sun, the wind and the ever-flowing hydropower. And if we use our brains, we can produce the same wealth using far fewer materials. Even better, we can reuse those materials over and over again.

See also planetary boundaries

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