Losing Paradise While Financial Markets Climb

    While this planet becomes increasingly impoverished and degraded, the illusion persists that human wealth is increasing. Stock markets, real estate and everything man made are fleeting at best. The real riches of this planet, the things that should be enduring and protected, are rapidly being lost.       Recently, a place was revisited that some thirty years ago was a vibrant coastal coral reef teeming with marine life. Now it is but a shadow of its former self. A young person seeing this coral reef might think the shadow is a sight to behold, never having known anything else.
       Few coastal coral reefs are left that are healthy and intact. This is only the tip of the iceberg. While real wealth disappears, people vainly follow the illusionary wealth of financial markets and their own accounts.