There is nothing natural about it

The floods. 

The fires.

We have called them natural disasters. But perhaps it is time to reframe our language.

More and more, what we call disasters are the political outcomes produced by a system designed to extract to extinction, exploit till broken, and colonise till hollowed out. Profits hold supremacy over the health, livelihood and well-being of billions of humans. Debased and discounted as worth less than the profits.

Our natural world has become violent for humans, in response. Breathing air unbreathable, an act of violence.

Living by the ocean or river, an act of violence.

I was asked yesterday about this. The Western hegemonic mindset, that dominating, Yang-based, Molochian machine mindset, accumulates obscene wealth; the price is paid by those with the least means, the exploited and extracted.

Great wealth is off the backs of humans, animals and our precious Earth. 

It is past time we adjusted our accounting methods to carry the cost in our accounting of the contributions of Earth, our creatures and the workers of the world. 

Not a single measure of wealth can exclude the almost slave like, or indeed the slavery of the foundations of wealth. The savage exploitation of animals. The rendering of our Earth, rivers, and forests into woodchips and trash. 

AI – the new god – impossible to build without the exploitation of the millions of people doing the data training. Humans. Humans do this. Some spend hours upon hours matching items, labelling, training the machine, a mindless repetition, paid barely, or less than, a living wage. Others sit with the horror we are spared – the child abuse, the violence, the cruelty – clearing it from view so the rest of us never have to.

Yet we do not account for these people as we worship at the altar of AI.

Place the all-in-cost, the all-in-contribution front and centre. Only then, only then, can we say – this enterprise has contributed in a way that supports the increased well-being of all of life. 

Syntropic World has built a tool that does exactly this. Synergistic Accounting carries what conventional accounting leaves off the page – the contribution of Earth, of the creatures, of every hand in the chain, counted as value given rather than cost avoided. When the books are honest, so is the wealth.

Published September 18th 2026. Photo taken September 18th 2022