Bob Herbert, without mentioning the word sustainability, has a great year-end message. What he proposes is a step in that direction.
> I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.
> The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential. Americans must resolve to be smarter going forward than we have been for the past several years.
> Look around you. We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn. We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming years. It’s time to stop the self-destruction.
> The slogan? “Invest in the U.S.” By that I mean we should stop squandering the nation’s wealth on unnecessary warfare overseas and mindless consumption here at home and start making sensible investments in the well-being of the American people and the long-term health of the economy. . .
> . . . And, finally, we need to start living within our means and get past the nauseating idea that the essence of our culture and the be-all and end-all of the American economy is the limitless consumption of trashy consumer goods.
> It’s time to stop being stupid.
It’s not just stupidity. It is a deep-seated cultural blindness and denial.