'An intelligent species would use its fossil fuel reserves wisely to construct renewable energy or develop sustainable ways of using nuclear power. The Keynesia

'An intelligent species would use its fossil fuel reserves wisely to construct renewable energy or develop sustainable ways of using nuclear power. The Keynesian orgy of "growth" has biased us toward spending these reserves foolishly.' This is assuming a species is a single actor, and of course it is not. A species would, but an individual, a member of that species would not rationally make that choice. Why ? Very simple, Nash equilibrium. Suppose everyone was trusted to act in the common interest. One bad apple can spread and destroy the system. This is the system you're advocating (note that "one bad apple" can mean a lot of things, from a criminal, to other species). Given that we live on a planet and we're trying to spread our own life as far as it will possibly go, not as a species, but as individuals, and so we use up any available resource as fast as we possibly can, to maximize our own personal advantage relative to others, and just deal with the consequences later. Note that damaging others, from your own species, is as good (but harder) as increasing your own resources. Destroying 50% of the wealth of everybody else is as good as doubling what you own, but of course not really an option with 7 billion people on the planet. As my biology teacher once remarked : if you believe that evolution theory is the truth, the fact that this leads to busts cannot be anything but good, as it improves your genes, you yourself, and your children (assuming, of course, you are lucky enough to have children, because in a serious bust cycle that is quite rare indeed). For everyone else, the boom bust cycle is simply the truth. Really boom and bust cycles occur everywhere in nature. On such study we did was on local rabbit populations, and how they related to cat populations, and man, they boom, and man, they bust. There are regular busts in resources available to rabbits that are so severe that rabbits effectively go extinct in regions as large as 50 square kilometers, and this is not a strange or rare occurance (nor is it often the result of human interference, sometimes, sure, but 99.999%+ it is not). Certainly happens once per decade, often more. It could be that boom and bust cycles do not really have anything to do with the financial system. We all were born into a long boom cycle, and that's cool, but at some point it will end. By Nash equilibrium logic, attempting to save resources is merely stupid.