The Story of Cap and Trade

GM Rice

Denial

The best-adjusted person in our society is the person who is not dead and not alive, just numb, a zombie. When you are dead you’re not able to do the work of society. When you are fully alive you are constantly saying "No" to many of the processes of society, the racism, the sexism, the polluted environment, the nuclear threat, the arms race, drinking unsafe water and eating carcinogenic foods. Thus it is in the interests of our society to promote those things that take the edge off, keep us busy with our fixes, and keep us slightly number out and zombie-like. In this way our modern consumer society itself functions as an addict.

-A.W. Schaef - When Society Becomes an Addict

Short & Educational - The Problems with Consumerism in a Nutshell

Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate - Victor Lebow (1955)