Last night Larry and I watched the documentary, In Debt We Trust, which was released in 2006. It's probably been in my Netflix cue since its release date, but I'm a little behind. Anyway, the flick is now a bit dated.

Watching it, I was struck by the accuracy of the predictions it made about the (then) looming burst of the real estate bubble and the rash of foreclosures to follow. People knew (at least some people knew and they were shouting it from the rooftops) that the trends in finance so widespread at the time could only lead to disaster. They were unsustainable.

Their voices called for a return to sanity. They verbalized such radical ideas as living within your means (to consumers) and loaning money only to people who could reasonably be expected to pay it back (to banks and mortgage companies). Smart banks and smart consumers heeded such prophecies and they're still solvent as a result. A lot of others ignored the warnings and wound up losing their big new shiny houses on the auction block.

We're in the same spot with the environment today. We've got a bubble of garbage primarily composed of plastic and  twice the size of Texas swirling around in the Pacific. Smart people are shouting the warning from the rooftops. They're telling us that the way we're trashing our planet and squandering our resources has got to stop. 

It's just not sustainable.