When you look at the climate problem and the difficulties we have dealing with it and you combine that with a consumer culture that doesn’t seem to be making people happy, you’d think we’d be able to find a solution. You’d think we’d be able to do better by ourselves.
But things are moving so slowly. What I want to know is why? What is the fundamental human flaw? What is the single underlying assumption about how we live or what we do that is causing us to damage ourselves and the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security?
On a subway train the other day, my friend Katherine told me that she thought that humans were congenitally dissatisfied. That human beings just couldn’t ever be satisfied and want more and more no matter what they already had. At a food and climate summit where I spoke this week, someone else said it was our short term view of things. That we put immediate gratification before long term benefit.
So my question to you is, what do you think? What is the underlying problem with everything? What is it about us that, if we could work on it, would solve our difficulties? In short, what is your unifying theory of all our problems?