Despite new environmental regulations, the increasing availability of ecofriendly products and many other encouraging developments championed by the environmental movement, the massive loss of forests and the greatest extinction of species in millions of years has not been reversed. By depleting our natural resources and reducing the planet’s biodiversity we damage the very fabric of life on which our well-being depends, including the priceless ‘ecosystem services’ that nature provides for free – processing waste, regulating the climate, regenerating the atmosphere and so on. These vital processes are emergent properties of nonlinear living systems that we are only beginning to understand, and they are now seriously endangered by our linear pursuit of economic growth and material consumption.

out of ‘Hidden Connections, a Science for Sustainable Living’ by Fritjof Capra, Harper Collins Publishers 2002

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