EPA as model
From:	e.
To:	Trevoroche
Date:	Sun, Jun 2, 2019 9:59 am

Trevor Burrowes We're looking at an economic system that is contracting. A capitalist global economy is based on growth. (If it doesn't grow it collapses.) It should be clear to anyone who's looking that growth can't go on infinitely on a finite planet. Climate change is all over the news, as one manifestation of limits. Much less touted is resource depletion--topsoil, forests, fisheries, minerals... Even less considered is the contraction of the energy industry--oil, gas, coal primarily--due to the easy pickings having been exhausted and the harder-to-find new sources costing too much to produce for people to afford, pointing to the eventual collapse of the main energy sources. The development industry wants you to believe that we live in normal times when you couldn't imagine the end of growth. They are pushing the meme of the yeast in a sugar lined petri dish, where the yeast keep expanding till the sugar is gone and they die. Since EPA is vulnerable at a much earlier point than the surrounding "mainstream" communities to this kind of growth, it can't afford development as usual. It has to be unusually thoughtful and conservative in how it develops. How things are done in other places isn't necessarily the model for EPA. Since EPA is so vulnerable, it is indeed the canary in the coal mine that alerts others to the vulnerabilities of the broader global system. And if it can figure out how to hang on despite the coarse and inconsiderate development breathing down its back, it could help a range of other places that, sooner or later, face similar threats.

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