ABSTRACT
Humanity is passing through tumultuous times particularly as it relates to our relationship with the entity we hold so dear-Mother Earth. Earth is unable to provide resources at the rate we are consuming them. Indeed, what we are doing now cannot go on. We live today by borrowing from the future. The living planet report makes clear that more than 30 years ago, the world moved beyond the point it could support its population sustainably. Since then, the population has continued to grow at an explosive rate (Figure 13.1), and each person consumes more. Textile consumption is about 10 kg ber per year per person (Ashby 2012). Global resource depletion scales with the population and with per capita consumption. So today, humanity burns through the resources of 1.5 Earths in a year; thus, it takes the planet a year and a half to regenerate what we use annually.
