Business, development, progress, gross domestic product, and the market economy itself are all based on the principal of growth. This can be growth in profit, growth in widgets produced, growth in tracts of land developed, growth in materials consumed, growth in materials produced etc. This is necessary. This is beautiful. This is advancement. This is America’s genius, much of which is based on the country’s amazing ability to innovate.

But…

In a contained physical world with exploding population and finite resources, if everyone is consuming more, building more, developing more, where does that lead us? Is there a way to grow without all the negative side effects? How do we maintain the comfortable modern life to which we are accustomed? How do the emerging economies and the billions of people striving for a safe and comfortable modern lifestyle achieve it without replicating our mistakes? How does the developed world, and especially the U.S., consume more intelligently? All of these questions point to the importance of sustainability or “regenerative economics”.

Instead of pushing into the suburbs, how about refurbishing and revitalizing downtown areas? Instead of constructing a new building in a new location, how about replacing the old one? The main question becomes “Is it possible and desirable to re-create and re-build?’ Is it economical to do so? Can we change our understanding of growth to reflect the principle of regenerative growth? We’re fortunate, especially in America, to have enormous natural resources. But even our bounty is not limitless. Oil production is the clearest example, having declined domestically so the we now need to import two-thirds of our demand. There’s also plenty of land in the U.S. Flying over the middle of the country clearly shows that there is no chance running out of, say, places to put our trash. But the time, energy, and cost of getting it from the population centers to the middle of nowhere will increase.

This website is based upon the idea that the second green revolution cannot occur without the powerful forces of capitalism, including profit seeking, incentives, competition, and growth. But the same assumptions, ideas, and practices that we used in a segmented, non-fiber optically connected, 1 billion person world don’t hold up in today’s digital world of almost 7 billion people. We need sustainable and, ideally, regenerative growth. We need a change in mindset and in behavior. We need regenerative economies. We need our collective and globalized creativity, intelligence, hard work, and cooperation. We need nothing short of revolution.

- Justin Manger