Husbanding ...

... by which I mean prudent management: Attitude or Gratitude? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I am aware that our whole economic system depends to a large extent upon us consuming vastly beyond our needs, biologically considered, and that if we were all as parsimonious as possible and never threw anything away that was remotely usable or re-usable, the wheels of commerce would soon grind to a halt. I am aware that our prosperity and comfort depends upon those wheels continuing to turn, more or less ceaselessly, and without any higher purpose; but I have no vocation for discomfort or poverty, and suspect that concern for the environment, in so far as it really exists, would melt away faster than the glaciers or the polar ice cap at the first prolonged power cut. When one considers how much fuss people are now inclined to make when something in a hotel (for example) does not come up to the standards of comfort they have come to expect, I do not think a mass conversion to asceticism is on the cards.