I'd say thermodynamics and entropy describe the woes of our time quite well: Ecologically, we've seen that releasing sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in o

I'd say thermodynamics and entropy describe the woes of our time quite well: Ecologically, we've seen that releasing sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in order to extract its stored energy is a form of entropy that leads to a low energy state which it takes a lot of energy to undo. It's like we've rolled a rock down from the top of a mountain, only to realize how difficult it is to get it back up, how long it had taken for nature to build up all that potential energy over aeons. And economically, we're seeing that capitalism itself seems to be a process of entropy, moving us toward low-energy states with wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, much like stars forming from cosmic dust creating gravity wells into which other material becomes more and more likely to fall. Not to mention between tax havens and transfer pricing, we seem to be waking to the fact that our economic system is not a closed system, but is slowly getting the fuel siphoned out of it.