John Dennis Liu is a researcher and cinematographer that founded and directed the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) since its creation in 1997. He has documented large land restoration projects like the one in the Loess Plateau in China and in this video he shares his profound and revolutionary yet simple insight about Nature and the Global Economy.
It seems to me that things will get worse before they get better and we certainly are experiencing this in Greece as we speak. But, apart from bracing ourselves for what is to come, we need to continue our work to create and implement a new paradigm unabated.
John D. Liu is doing just that: “From the study of natural ecosystems comes an economic answer that goes to the fundamental question of ‘what is wealth?’. Although everything that is produced and consumed comes from the bounty of the Earth, according to current economic thinking, the value of ecological function is zero. We now calculate the economy and money as the sum total of production and consumption of goods and services. By valuing products and services without recognising the ecological function from which they are derived, we have created a perverse incentive to degrade the Earth’s ecosystems […] Functional ecosystems can be shown to be more valuable than production and consumption. A pathway to sustainability appears if, instead of the economy being based on production and consumption of goods and services, it were based on ecosystem function. This would mean a fundamental transformation of human society.”
Enjoy the video!
