A Canadian anthropologist and author, Ronald Wright, clearly summarizes one of the root causes of our environmental dilemmas in his new book, What is America? A Short History of the New World Order. His question, by way of exploring an answer, is phrased eloquently and succinctly. "Did America," he asks, "throw off the divine right of kings only to enthrone, worldwide, a divine right of things?" (Globe & Mail, Aug. 16/08).

Wright's exploration of an answer is intended to help us define our civilization in the perspective of history so we can shift our subconscious behaviour to conscious awareness and thereby make the changes that will lead us to a more considered and sustainable relationship with the planet.

Wright's catchy phrase about "the divine right of kings" refers to the American Revolution of 1776 in which the then British colony rebelled against an aloof English monarch to earn its political independence and live its own ideals. The phrase about "the divine right of things" refers to the eventual export of the modern American dream to the world, a vision in which democratic freedom comes coupled with an economic system founded on consumerism and monetarism.

Consumerism we understand. As for monetarism, it is essentially the belief that the freedom to make and spend money will finally address all our human needs, and that the pubic good is ultimately served by subordinating our social concerns to the requirements of business. Articulated during the mid-20th century by the right-wing American economist, Milton Friedman, monetarism holds that the stock market should rule economies and that the free movement of capital will eventually produce enough money through the so-called "trickle down" effect to lift even the poor out of poverty. "The state," as Wright interprets Friedman, "should spend only on law enforcement and defence" – which probably explains why America expends more on defence than all other countries combined, and why one of every 130 of its citizens is incarcerated.

"Monetarism's great fallacy," Wright concludes, "is to assume that the world is infinite and growth can therefore be endless. It takes no account of human environmental costs or of long-term limits.

"Deregulation is just what it says it is: a free-for-all to grab the most in the shortest time. Globalization is a feeding frenzy. Its 'efficiency' is measured only in the short term and by criteria that ignore depletion, pollution, waste disposal, social harmony and public health.

"The supposed 'rights' of capital trump those of sovereignty, ecology, labour – and future generations. The economy has become a tyranny" (Ibid.).

Monetarism would be serious enough if it were just an American phenomenon. But America has exported it to the world. The "Big Lie of our times," concludes Wright, is "the faith of market fundamentalism", the belief that countries comprising more than 6.5 billion people – expected to rise to 9.5 billion – can reach democracy by being "consumers of goods".

Instead of monetarism being a formula for salvation, Wright describes it as a strategy for catastrophe. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The statistics are revealing. While the world now has about 1,000 billionaires, 1/3 of humanity lives in deepening poverty. The 1 to 39 ratio of salary difference between a US factory worker and a chief executive officer in 1970 is now more than 1 to 1,000 (Ibid.). All such economic disparities are a recipe for political tension.

Furthermore, as Wright points out by quoting the naturalist Tim Flannery, monetarism functions like a kind of "frontier experience" in which the objective is to "exploit as quickly as possible, then move on". As a result, the world becomes "less a home in which to live than a treasury to ransack, and the loot needn't be shared out fairly or even used wisely, because there will always be more somewhere else" (Ibid.).

Given such attitudes, the consequences are not surprising. In the frenetic process of consuming whatever is near and then looking for "somewhere else", monetarism is wrecking the planet's ecology and increasing world political tensions.

As Wright fairly points out, these developments are not entirely new. Today's effort to globalize free trade had its equivalent in the so-called World Market of the British Empire. But the difference of scale is enormous. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, the total "human load on natural systems" was only 1/50th of what it is today (Ibid.). Population and the economic system have combined to create a destructive mix that nature can no longer absorb.

Does it help for us to understand that this is happening? Yes. Giving the causes shape in our consciousness allows us to define the problem and then to remedy it by changing our individual and collective behaviour. And, particularly in democracies such as ours, what better time to consider solutions than during elections.