As the saying goes:" If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution."

We need words to help us understand the problem. The better the words we use the better the perspective we get on where to look for possible solutions.

I'll give an example, The Ellen Macarthur Foundation is a corporation-backed lobby group pushing the idea of a circular (industrial) economy. At first, this sounds wonderful. But if you understand what is happening you'll understand that it is misleading, in fact harmful because it's obscuring the solutions.

Michael Braungart's book The Upcycle: Beyond sustainability-designing for Abundance helped me understand the logic. There is no such thing as "circular".

For one, there are always losses. If a company claims they "recycle" 90% of all the used metal soda cans, that means in 8 years (at 3 "cycles" per year) they will have lost 90% of all the metal they use. Or reframed, only have 10% of the original cans left. So not so great after all. So, truly understanding this would mean that switching to calebasses or coconut shells instead of metal would be a whole lot smarter. That is why being very very precise matters a great deal. It forces you to rethink properly.

Second, getting anything back into the production process takes massive amounts of energy. So in fact it's a spiral, not a "circle". If energy goes in then the spiral goes up, if none goes in, nothing happens or the sprial goes down (energy is extracted). That's why wood at the bottom of the ocean (no sunlight) and low on oxygen doesn't decay. It simply doesn't release its minerals.

So all regenerative processes are fueled by energy. Massive amounts of it, be it solar or chemical. There is no free lunch. The bigger this "circular" economy is (more people x more stuff) the more energy it will need.

Our current system is extremely wasteful in how we use energy. Very few people realise what a lower-energy society living on the carrying capacity of its land really means. It would mean a massive transition for Western societies in population numbers, in spatial organisation and in consumption patterns. Back to 1870...the Amish are close..

We humans are programmed loss-avers so we will resist these changes with all we've got. I'm expecting a lot of tribalism, wars and far and far worse. The real issue is our psychology. It's why I sponsor https://www.ecogood.org/what-is-ecg/ and believe that Systemic Consenus* should replace divisive democracy ASAP if we want to have any chance at avoiding massive bloodshed.

So also "regenerative" is no magic wand. We must truly face what is coming for us in all honesty.

*https://sk-prinzip.eu/ (in German)

*https://www.plays-in-business.com/systemic-consensing-what-the-hell-is-this/