There is real progress, but it also matters what we measure. A good example[1] is India building hydroelectric dams, which often submerge fragile ecosystems and

There is real progress, but it also matters what we measure. A good example[1] is India building hydroelectric dams, which often submerge fragile ecosystems and displace their agrarian societies of sometimes hundreds of thousands. The villagers go from earning "nothing" to earning $1/day according to our money system. They have been "lifted out of poverty," despite now living in disgusting slums in a city as foreign to them as it would be to us. Their culture (and perhaps knowledge of regenerative agriculture) are lost forever. We don't measure the carbon sequestration capacity lost by the now-inundated land, or the huge amounts of methane that the swamped vegetation releases. We just know we created "green energy." The villagers' risk of dying in those slums from many awful diseases has thankfully plummeted, but their profound communal loss will likely manifest in the form of depression or anxiety -- which are on the rise globally. Could that rise be a symptom of our realizing that while the "numbers" get better and better, it's occurring at the cost of obliterating the planet in possibly irreparable ways? Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good, too. But there's a lot that gets missed in choosing what and how we measure. [1] This example is lifted largely from a favorite author, Charles Eisenstein, from his new book "Climate: A New Story." You can read up on the Tehri dam. If it breaks (and some seismologists think it's a real possibility), it will cause untold more devastation.