Financial Crisis Can Lead To Modest Lifestyles

The financial crisis is a timely warning of much greater risks the planet faces from excessive focus on profit and growth, veteran British environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt said on Saturday.

Environmentalists have linked the present recession with wider threats such as climate change, blaming credit-fueled economic growth for the reckless consumption of natural resources including fossil fuels.
Governments, companies and regulators must reduce the rewards for growth and profits to avoid a far worse crisis and the collapse of the life support systems such as fisheries, soil and rain on which the world depends, Porritt told Reuters.

“It was a harsh and unsustainable form of capitalism for the last 25 years,” said the chairman of the independent British government watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission.

“It’s appropriate people are talking about more modest lifestyles.”

Planet Ark