Consumer culture

As the world approaches a population of 7 billion, and the conventional wisdom indicates farmers must ramp up their already environmentally destructive practices in order to feed the multitudes, a calm voice asks why we must destroy our planet in the name of life?  Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone and Americans spent billions of dollars in the hope of surprising, or gratifying others.  But at what cost.  In their memoir, "The Good Life", Helen and Scott Nearing detail how to live without the destructive baggage our society imposes on most of us.  They set out to do enough "bread labor" to provide for their food, clothing and shelter and figured that came to about 4 hours per day.  The rest of the time they spent studying, writing and doing what they cared about.  Of course they did this in the 1930s to the late 1980s, when their life was not much different than that of their more plugged in neighbors.  With the advent of the cyber society, I don't know if their estimates of what would be necessary to live with a connection to the greater society would still be relevant.  There are some modern day examples of "off the grid" living, but most require a huge initial investment in technology.  All this gets away from my beginning question of why we are on this path of destruction in the name of growth, both of population and production.  Why...