Dear Sir/Madam,

 

In his article in today's Telegraph ("What planet are the eco-cultists on?"), Mark Steyn hits the nail of his flawed world view squarely on the head when he writes, ". . . the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy".

 

Please convey my thanks to him for at least giving such clear, unequivocal expression to it, since in one form or another it is the view that underlies and dominates all mainstream economic thinking and behaviour.

 

The flaw is a simple, but profoundly important, case of mistaken priorities: the economy (the household of man) over ecology (the household of our planet).

 

Once recognised, it is obvious - even to a child - that long-term human survival (let alone, prosperity) depends on these priorities being the other way around, because the household of man can only possibly function within the limits of the planet's household.

 

Why haven't we (or the army of professionals whose job it is) long recognised something so obvious and of such vital importance?

 

The simple answer to this question is that we are blind and stupid (Homo sapiens, indeed!).

 

The next question is, what makes us so blind?

 

The answer: our familiarity with and dependency upon the existing socio-economic order, and the massive vested interests that we all have in it (especially those in power and authority). And also, of course, our reluctance to admit, even to ourselves, to such blindness and stupidity.

A more scientific, anthropological, answer is that mankind's behavioural programming, which evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and their family groups in the natural environment, and has had little or no time to adapt, has shifted its focus almost completely to our artificial socio-economic environment, where modern Capitalism developed specifically to exploit it.

I've just watched that BBC 1 documentary on the Boxing Day tsunami. The terrible thing is that it was entirely predictable. A warning system, which would have saved thousands of lives, should have been in place. But those in power and authority had other priorities.

 

300,000 deaths, however, in nothing compared to the numbers who will die if we fail to get our priorities right in respect to economy and ecology.