For people, everything, and I do mean everything, ultimately depends on our sun and our planet. It’s pretty simple. If you take away or screw up either of them people cease to exist – period, end of debate.

Have you ever wondered why industry is so environmentally unaware with oftentimes huge collateral damage?

Our biological existence is derived from the plants that live in the soil of our planet and use the sun’s light and energy to build their bodies. People eat the plant bodies either directly, by munching on an apple for example or indirectly, by eating a steak from a cow that ate some grass. There is no alternative to that simple equation. People exist because the plants exist. Plants exist because the planet and the sun are present. The plants are the first level of transforming non-living things into living things that we can eat. This is called “primary production.” The choice of the word is a good one as well. If we think of the biological plant as a manufacturing plant, raw materials are gathered by leaves and roots first, then transformed by changing them into processed materials that can be transported around the plant to make the leaves, roots and stem in this case the body of the flower or grass or tree, etc. The end result is a plant that is alive, growing, and reproducing.

The manufacturing “plant” in human society is conceptually identical to the biological plant. The raw materials leading to a “product” are gathered by the equivalent of roots and leaves. These might be sent in from mines or oil wells (the raw materials from the earth), farms, forest industry, or fisheries (raw materials from the air and sun) and are transformed into materials that can be used to make finished products in the manufacturing plant. In an industrial or economic system, this is the “primary sector.”

The processed materials are distributed to the manufacturing plant which then transforms these processed raw materials into finished products. Instead of creating leaves, and roots, and stems, the finished products that result are cars, refrigerators, bricks, cereals, beer, the common products we see in retail stores. In an industrial economic system, this is called the “secondary sector.”

It is after this stage that the analogy breaks down rather badly.

In a biological system, plants die close to where they lived and their bodies are broken down by a biological disposal system using tiny organisms ranging from insects to bacteria to return the raw materials to the earth. The next generation of biological plants then uses the raw materials again and the cycle continues indefinitely until something changes or disturbs the supply and production system. A disturbance might wash away the soil or shade the plant. In response the plant will will extend their roots or expand their leaves in-so-far as they are able to reach out for new sources of raw materials. If the plant is not adapted to reach far enough, it dies. Plants like all living things have a drive to reproduce. Often the plant has seeds that are carried away from where the parent plant lives so that the genes have a better chance of finding a hospitable environment.

In an industrial system, if the plant dies, nothing much happens. The building and equipment may continue to be used, or be broken down and buried or scrapped, but precious little is re-used. Furthermore, there is no intentional “reproduction” in industrial manufacturing plants. So the system is “sterile.” Because there is no reproduction in manufacturing plants, there is no drive to ensure resources for offspring and future generations.

If you ever wondered why industry is so environmentally unaware with oftentimes huge collateral damage, that is why. There is no incentive to provide for offspring or future generations built into manufacturing plant processes. In fact, the major incentive is to use all the resources before any other plant can get at them.