I would agree that Umair tends to exaggerate his insights, and his unrelenting gloom is likely to limit his appeal. As to my other point, I never meant to suggest that the West has any greater "right" to consumerism than the East! My point was simply that consumerism itself--the "more is better" mentality that inevitably arises from a zero-sum, money-based economy--is fundamentally incompatible with a finite, life-sustaining planet.

Our economy, based on money (that is, zero-sum arithmetic), can only thrive by infinite expansion of production and consumption of commodities. This means that nature has no value at all until it is transformed into commodities--and hence destroyed. Conversely, our biological support system, the living Earth, functions entirely on a logic of optimization, rather than maximization. In biological systems, too much or too little of any value is toxic. Hence our market economy and our planet are fundamentally incompatible. The only option is to relocalize aggressively: to grow gardens, grow community, and grow awareness. That is to shift from an economy and culture where "you are what you own" to one where "you are what you do."