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There’s that old parable of the businessman who comes across a guy fishing on a beautiful beach and asks him what he’s doing. The guy fishing (let’s call him Al) says to the businessman (let’s call him Hank) that he spends all his days just like this, sitting on the beach and fishing. Hank says, but you should get a job so you can buy big nets and pay people to fish for you. And Al asks why he would do that. And Hank says because then you’d have more leisure time for yourself. And Al says, to do what…?

It's akin of course to my favourite story of all time, The Lorax, where the Onceler family’s thneed factory goes on biggering and biggering and biggering until the Truffula trees are all gone and the air’s polluted and the stream’s toxic and all the native animals have starved or had to leave. And all they’re left with is a wasteland, derelict factories, and hope that the last remaining Truffula seed will save them and reinstate their sense of faith and optimism.

Except one is left wondering where the extended Onceler family went to next? Whose habitat did they move on to, to the point of irreversible exploitation? Not every heart-warming optimistic ending covers off that we have very deliberately created a world in which the Oncelers always win.?Because money’s the thing that everyone needs. I really do wonder, when that became so inarguable? (Said in absolute?acknowledgement of the profound place of privilege that statement comes from).

When my daughter was 4, she asked me what jobs were for. There’s nothing like having to explain to a totally innocent and unaffected young mind why it is that Mummy and Daddy (and all the Mummies and Daddies) leave their kids all day, to really focus the mind on what it is we’re doing here: and how we are in fact making her life better at all in the pursuit of it. I heard a great quote the other day about the one thing that all successful people have in common: it is simply that they know what they want. Which I related to as they knew they specifically wanted to be a squillionairre / an astronaut / a concert pianist / a brain surgeon. But what if what you want is to sit on a beach and cast a line in? Is putting the brakes on this out-of-control juggernaut of entirely conscious planetary destruction based on unremitting avaricious consumerism really as simple as that? Living a life not so focused on biggering?

Every single one of the most naturally gorgeous and bucket-filling places I have been lucky enough to visit in the world are also the poorest. And there is always a subsequent conversation about us respectively wanting what the other has: us, their time and climate and carefree attitude and beautiful surrounds; and them, our freedom of movement and money. All we want is white-sandy beaches and time. All they want is cellphones and WiFi and Nikes and Lakers shirts. Ah, the irony, we sigh. And around and around it goes.

There must have been some point – presumably somewhere between the decline of Feudalism and the rise of capitalism - when the world switched from being a place where rampant, self-serving, unadulterated growth was neither an option nor an aspiration, to – quite dizzyingly quickly – a place where every day we add 227,000 more people to the planet and we can’t suck enough irreplaceable goodness out of this place we live on fast enough to sustain us all.

It always gets me, that statistic that the world’s richest 1% have twice as much as the other 99%. It’s one of those that I just cannot wrap my head around. And how few people we’re actually talking about here, who are causing the rampant over-consumption. Those 99% of us who are working for the top 1% are affected by the same wanton and deliberate self-serving destruction as they who cause it most are. Especially those guys like Al who are sitting on beaches in beautiful places, fishing to feed their families, or living near those toxic rivers polluted by the Onceler’s factories.

Where do you even start unravelling an unsustainable consumerist / capitalist mindset that started when there were less than a billion people on the whole planet when we’ve now bred and brought up several generations in a world of coming-up 8bn and counting (quickly) humans who all think biggering is best. Who not only admire but obsess over vacuous, vain narcissism? Where being a milkman is no longer a job option but being an “influencer” is. (And an influencer of what? Susceptible tender young self-doubting minds?! How is that a thing?!) I remember reading a great quote (feel free to remind me who it’s from for I cannot, some actor I think) when Trump got elected, saying it’s high time we stopped teaching our kids they can be anything they want to be, and instead start teaching them to be good people. Sure, let those that have, have. Whatever. Good on them. But we don’t need to worship them. We don’t need to give them unbridled license to destruct our home. And we definitely don’t need to applaud them while they do it.

We just watched a really great animated film last night called ‘Home’. It’s a funny and heart-warming tale of a cute little misfit alien who ultimately saves the planet because (spoiler alert!) he figures out that the big angry scary dark force who’s trying to take over the world is actually just a(nother, cute) alien trying to protect his species’ next generation from annihilation. The protagonist sees that actually we’re the ones at fault, for taking his supposed nemesis’s future generations’ chance away. He sees that the bad force isn’t “mad”, but actually “sad-mad”. That’s what I’m feeling now, seeing climate change and natural habitat destruction happening now, and feeling powerless to stop it: sad-mad. I am over cajoling and explaining and pepping and measuring and managing and rationalising. We are taking too much from the earth and time is running out. What we are doing is not working and we need to change. Now. Not after a few hundred more extreme weather events that wipe out lives and livelihoods. Not after a few more generations where the ‘haves’ have just obscenely too much and where 25,000 people (including 10,000 children) die of starvation every day. Not after we’ve brought up another few generations to look to these idiotic egomaniacs as heroes, and to worship at the altar of profligacy at any cost.

There was some deeply profound research published recently from an Australian palliative care nurse who reported on the top regrets of the dying. From her 12 years of research, the number one regret that people on their death-bed had in common was this: “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself,?not the life others expected of me.” Probably predictably, when people realise they have no time left, they are not thinking about real estate or hedge funds or cars or boats or stuff: they’re thinking “I wish I’d lived the life I wanted to live”. Not the life we think we want – where we’re told we need to work hard, buy bigger nets, and pay a guy to fish for us. Not sit on a white-sand beach and be in beauty, doing what we want to do.

Let’s start by calling bullshit on the biggering. Bullshit on rapacious capitalism. Let’s make villains – rather than idols - out of the insidious influencers, trying to get our kids (and us!) to buy more stuff, bringing them up to idolise the Oncelers. Let’s make the guy fishing on the beach the hero; not the generic businessman. Let’s stop taking more than we need and give the Truffula trees a chance to grow back. Let’s live a life true to ourselves, not in service of what we’re told we want. And let’s start looking after this beautiful blue planet before there’s not enough for everyone. Our home.?