Maybe we need to step back and consider what drives us and our relationship to our environment, rather than patching the problems directly.
For one thing, as mobile, essentially predatory organisms, we are linear and goal oriented, while the environment is cyclical, reciprocal and feedback driven. It's like we haven't quite internalized the fact the earth is round, not flat. What goes round, comes round.
Consider the most infuential concept in the history of humanity is monotheism, yet a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The fact we are aware, than the details of which we are aware.
While the anthropologial aspects have faded, the long shadow of assuming ideals as elemental pervades many of the ideologies and movements that have come along in its wake. Even materialism and bottom line capitalism treat the accumulation of wealth as the objective defining and directing society, even as it destroys the social and environmental foundations.
The reality of money is that it is a social contract between the individual and the community, not a commodity to mine from society.
Our religion of money requres an economy of exponential debt to back it.
For example, the capital markets couldn't function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
There simply isn't the investment potential to save the amounts we feel necessary, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so the concept of the commons, as a store of wealth and not just resources to be mined, will have to be resurrected.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, yet a medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store. The average five year old understands the difference and hopfully, one day, the economists will as well.
The functionality of money is its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It's a public utility and needs to be treated as such.
I could rant on as the many and myriad cobwebs in the cultural attic, but hopefully this gives some ideas as to how we need to proceed.
