I'm no banker or economist, but what I see is simple: humankind has come to the end of its willy nilly exploitation of the natural environment, or at minimum––subconsciously––world societies have realized that it is so, even as our consumption patterns continue onward. What choice have we? This has been building ever since the Renaissance gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. We are shelter builders.
Agar agar is a nutrient gel biologists use to grow bacteria or molds or fungi in petri dishes. A drop of the organism in seeding numbers at the center of the gel is usually all that's required. Place it in a warm incubator and the molds or bacteria grow in patterns eerily reminiscent of human cities viewed from 50,000 feet. I'm not equating our species to molds, of course. But I am saying that earth is a nutrient medium. A closed petri dish. And that the immense stumble that is taking place economically across the globe may well signal a species-wide recognition––again, unconscious––that despite our success at manipulating dear old nature, it's not that nature is angry with us, really, it's simply that we are approaching the edges of our petri dish. And we know it.
