Well said!
The enemy of resilience is one-eyed "productivity" and total optimisation/utilisation of systems and resources.
GDP is a valueless measure: Should the $ spent on disaster recovery *really* count as a positive?
Whilst one person's "cost" is another's "income" we need to develop a language of economics that distinguishes waste from inclusion, which is another way of allocating value to raw $ amounts.
A big problem is modern "accounting" is all about hiding, confusing, and generally making things as *un*accountable as possible. More wealth is now made by playing with money then actually building things...and in many companies the number of managers is now more than workers.
It should be noted that the extremely wealthy are much more numerous, and much more damaging now then at any time in history. Folks with the power of smallish nations but with no ethical reins are *not* a good idea, especially since they play their power games in secret and are generally protected by the media.
Unless disaster strikes we are heading toward an android economy, where machines create most (>98%) of the wealth. (we are over half way already) Before we get there we'd better get over the Oligarch vs Worker social model!

i have read yiour article twice
and am no more wise on what your cure is

i get that resiliance means stop over consuming
for sure this consumer driven thing has its fast approaching limit

and growth by bringing in more people
just means more people to consume and subsume

lets quote
""Maximizing productivity
means selecting the most productive varieties,""
not gmo
thats a scam
a very dangerouse scam by monsanto to own food production
then drug production..then fuel oil replacement production

so the use of varieties puts my hackle up

more productive,.."machines or systems""
somehow that sems more abnti rsiliant
not making do

""and applying them universally.""
that sounds like exporting our jobs
se why its so hard for me to get at the core
of what your trying to say?

""It..[product-ivity]..means finding ways
to recruit all feasible resources..to the production
of these elite idiotypes.""

via consumerism?
consuming ever more..[variaties/systems/machines?]

''Resilience,depends on variety and redundancy.""

sounds much like consumerisms

""These are precisely the qualities
that productivity seeks to eliminate.""

as many say to me
whats you saying
in 350 words?

do we stop emigration?

make stuff that we can fix..so people got work
[but not needing expensive specialists?]...

get rid of the throwawy society?

dont stretch the rubbers?

ps im not waring on resiliance
i stopped bying most things..and reduced my consumption

but then again ..blogging has become my life
and what sort of life is this?

as i type
the song is playing

change the world..[if i could]

how do you see we can change
this society trying to put all our resorces into landfill?

in 350 words or less?

Good article.
Why should human society push the boundaries to the limit, continuously, for no good purpose - especially when many of those boundaries are not well-defined.
We do know that boundaries have been passed for many millions of people in more-deprived societies; and that it is impossible, anywhere, to maintain pressure without eventual collapse. Yet there is still great lack of will in many quarters to foster minimization of the greatest pressure of all: increasing human numbers (1.6% Australia, 1.2%World); and lack of assistance to those areas in most need to address it (eg. Ethiopia, with population pressure increasing at 2.7% ).

Well done Jane.

The changes you are hoping for are gigantic and probably unlikely to happen very quickly. One thing that might happen is a transition from total GDP to GDP per capita. When Kevin Rudd was relentlessly increasing immigration just after he was elected in 2007,he bragged that while the GDP of the rest of the world had dropped Australia's had increased keeping us out of recession. He got his ears clipped when pundits and average citizens started saying total GDP went up but only because of increased population. The GDP per capita went down so the average person was worse off.

GDP/capita might then transition to median income because in the last 18 years GDP/capita has increased but the median income has stayed relatively flat. That means that the rich are getting richer and the middle class is treading water. That is what every economic study of high immigration has predicted including Peter Costello's Productivity commission study in 2004, but the people who control the media don't like that message so it doesn't get heard.

Well done and good luck.

Yes, well done Jane. I particularly liked the rubber band metaphor.

I share ericc's views on focussing on GDP per capita rather than total GDP though in the end, as Jane implies, it's really the whole economic model that needs turning on its head. And until we see the economy as a subset of the environment we won't get very far. Right now, the world is in overshoot. We're using around 150% of the world's resources and absorptive capacity - we have to get back under 100% if there is to be any resilience at all. Yes, we have to stabilise population as soon as possible but we in the developed world also need to reduce consumption markedly while allowing the poorest more resources to meet basic needs. (It's called contraction and convergence - generally applied to emissions but can be applied more generally.) It means shifting to a low-carbon economy as soon as possible to stabilise the atmosphere. And we have to do all this quickly. We haven't a lot of time before the rubber band snaps.

"really the whole economic model that needs turning on its head."

You can do that by stopping using fossil fuels, and stopping living a western lifestyle.

"And we have to do all this quickly. We haven't a lot of time before the rubber band snaps."

Uh-huh? And so what are you doing still tapping away on your computer? I hope you aren't using any electricity or anything produced with, or containing carbon are you? Don't you know WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!?

Honestly, this is just modern religious giberrish; it's just a re-run of the whole "life is sinful; the end is nigh; by abnegating our desires we can reach Paradise (sustainability) in which all economic problems are permanently solved; don't question the authority of the high priests" hypocritical religious drivel all over again. Wake up and smell the roses.