"Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to
institutions and an economy that relentlessly asks, What more can we take from
the Earth? This worldview of unbridled exploitation is to my mind the greatest
threat to the life that surrounds us. Even our definitions of sustainability
revolve around trying to find the formula to ensure that we can keep on taking,
far into the future. Isn't the question we need, "What does the Earth ask of
us?" The premise of Earth asking something of me makes my heart swell. I
celebrate the implicit recognition of the animacy of the Earth: that the living
planet has the capacity to ask something of us, and that we have the capacity to
respond."
More in this essay from Robin Wall Kimmerer.
