If humanity had a brain – if we had a truly global society rather than a world of suspicious and antagonistic tribal nations – it would be obvious what we must do. We would collaborate on a massive overhaul of our buildings, transportation systems and economic infrastructure to improve energy efficiency and to shift away from burning fossil fuels. But we cannot wait for a slow process of consensus. Let us not whine about whether we will be somewhat disadvantaged by moving first in a direction which all must move eventually. It is better to take a small disadvantage ahead of the crowd, in order to gain the benefits of leadership.

GDP is killing us. What we call Gross Domestic Product is an attempt to sum all the value added, in every step of production, of every monetary good or service within our national economy. But GDP doesn’t measure the standard of living of anybody. And that’s where it fails us and leads us into ruin.

A slideshare presentation introducing Econosystemics as a discipline of study merging economics and ecology in pursuit of sustainability.

We are used to cheap oil and inefficient consumption, so we have trouble seeing a higher value in that gallon of gasoline.

A sustainable economy can include a human society that delivers more good to its members, even while enriching, rather than degrading, the ecosystem we live in.

It is time to put aside, explicitly and decisively, the objective of higher GDP. GDP measures quantity, not quality of production. GDP presumes that a growth in production is a growth in quality of life, when in fact we have reached a point that the opposite is true. Not even our current level of goods production can be sustained, much less continual increases.

Economics is perhaps most simply and comprehensively be defined as:  the study of the exchange of value among humans.
Why then introduce a new word, EconoSystemics?
First, because we can no longer distinguish the economy from the ecosystem.
The boundaries have disappeared.  There is little wild left.  Value is exchanged between the cow species and the human species, [...]

In classical economics, humans engage in value transactions with an eye towards their own advantage.  A plausible and useful hypothesis.  Somehow presupposed is a value calculation, even if often based on fuzzy logic.
Modern cognitive research has shown that our decisions often preceed our consciousness of making a decision.  Only after that do we throw linguistic [...]

We learn and invent signs and sounds to refer to patterns, and use them to facilitate and communicate thought and intention.

From 1700 to 2000 CE, a period of only 300 years, world population increased 10-fold to over 6,000 Million people – a compound annual growth rate of .75 %, ten times higher than in the previous era. More amazing, from 1900 to 2000, the growth rate was over 1.3 %, doubling twice in just 100 years. World population will have increased by almost as many people in the twelve years from 2000 to 2012 as it did in the 6000 years from the invention of the wheel to the invention of the steam engine!