To Save Or Not to Save ...

It's an ongoing dilemma. I'm told i should save energy, stop wasting water, avoid buying useless stuff, use less fuel. I'm also told i must consume more to help the economy grow and create new jobs. If i lead a modest life i help the planet but i'm a bad guy economically. If i spend and waste i support the capitalistic machine but become an Earth-devouring monster with an oversized ecological footprint. What should i do? The answer seems to lie in WHAT i consume. Because waste in itself is not evil. Nature abounds with it. The Sun generates unimaginably vast quantities of energy, most of which is poured out into space and 'wasted'; each year trees grow myriads of fruits that are not eaten and rot, and in autumn shed billions of leaves to die on the forest floor; plants release millions of seeds that don't fall on fertile ground and are lost; frogs pound thousands of eggs of which the majority will never hatch; men produce huge quantities of sperm that don't reach their target; and so on. It's waste. But it keeps things running. Because it's one hundred percent reusable. Nothing is really 'thrown away' (a most stupid assumption ... where is 'away' anyway?), each particle of matter is taken up again by other users and built into something new. It's an exciting, beautifully interlocking perpetuum mobile. The same thing must be achieved in human society. For when i power my calculator, or fan, or tv, with solar energy, i can leave it on all the time, i can 'waste' it, since i know it flows endlessly (in human terms). When my disposable cups are made of organic material i can use as many as i want because i know they don't use up limited resources and won't generate a toxic 'aftermath'. - So we need more waste and not less; but the products must circle! As long as they don't, we are forced to save. And that's bad for the economy. (illustration: 'fridge' by Daroy Lin)