"Progress is paradoxical. The more gleaming towers, highways and gadgets we build, the more we seem to simultaneously deprive nature. It seems we have manufactured a linear production system that creates a zero sum game of progress; the only way we humans can win is if nature loses. Circular Economy thinking is hoping to change that by making sure that companies do not externalize their ecological impacts, but its current definition also comes with its own set of shortcomings (more on that in another article). A recent rash of reports and studies confirm this zero sum game approach to building human civilization, from warnings of impending insect apocalypse, extinction events, rapid natural ecosystem degradation, and global food system vulnerabilities. Of course many in the environmental movement have already known this trend from the early 60s when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring and Dennis Meadows and his team published Limits to Growth in the early 70s, but recent events seem to be reaching beyond the minority of environmentalists and into the general public."