The underlying cause of the Sustainability Problem is not economic growth so much as what is driving it

LINK to Guardian article, "This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity", by George Monbiot from the Copenhagen Climate Conference. 

Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, [economic] growth means that it's only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet.

What George Monbiot says about economic growth is quite true, but he overlooks what is driving it. Yet, until we recognise and develop an understanding of this, we are powerless to do anything about it.

What's driving economic growth is man's Darwinian nature, which the existing socioeconomic order developed over centuries to simultaneously serve and exploit in a misplaced and perverted continuation of his primordial struggle for survival, advantage and "success" (largely reduced to the individual pursuit and exercise of POWER, i.e. money, social and professional status, the moral high ground, etc.) in the artificial environment of human civilisation itself.

My response to email from David Cameron, informing me how he will combat climate change

I received an email from the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, the other day (available on his so-called Blueblog), informing me how, as Prime Minister, he will deal with the threat of global climate change.

I sent my response as a comment to his blog, but it didn't get past the moderation. So here it is, on my own "unmoderated" blog, for all to read:

Dear Mr Cameron, I don’t question your sincerity in wanting to tackle climate change, or on any of the other issues you will have to deal with, should you become prime minister, but like most people, you fail to recognise the ROOT CAUSE of our problems, which lie in our own Darwinian nature and the social, political and economic power structures it has given rise to over the centuries.

Until the political and social sciences are placed on a firm, Darwinian, foundation (and it’s about UNDERSTANDING ourselves and our situation, not justifying it, as Social Darwinists were often guilty of doing), we are going nowhere, except to our doom.

For all sorts of reasons there are massive taboos against us taking a Darwinian view of ourselves and our civilization, but if we are to understand them and have any chance of correcting their ills, which are terminal, THIS is what we must do.

I can hardly expect you to publically embrace my suggestion, which would be political suicide (like a medieval politician questioning the divine right of kings or the truth of the Christian gospels), but you could help remove the taboos by encouraging academic engagement in the development of a human-evolutionary understanding of our civilization and its situation.