ABSTRACT

Two different global systems coexist with difficulty on this planet. One is the global ecological system, which includes processes such as the carbon cycle. Human beings have added a second system, the global economic system. As with ecology, there is continuous interaction between the different parts of the system, in this case involving the buying and selling of commodities, shares, currencies, goods and services, around the world. Like the ecological system, this system also has its stresses and strains, but because it is a system set up and run by human beings (with the help of human-created technologies), these stresses and strains are generally far more familiar to us than the stresses and strains of the global ecological system. The carbon crisis is one part of a general problem about the relationship between these two global systems.