Anyone who praises economic recessions is guilty of capitalist heresy. The reason is obvious. Global free-market trading and the autonomy of unrestrained systems of supply-and-demand fuel the engine of production and consumption that we believe is the source of our comfort, wealth, contentment and happiness. Undermining this system is an attack on our belief that the endless ascent of materialism is sacrosanct. Welcoming its distress is tantamount to inviting chaos.

But we forget that all this economic activity takes place within a planetary ecosystem that must somehow absorb the environmental injury caused by all the mining, burning, farming, travelling, transporting, consuming, discarding, displacing and disrupting that comes with continual economic growth. "Our economy," as an environmentalist once said, "is a wholly owned subsidiary of nature."

Clearly, nature is being stressed by the burden of a global economy stuck in the illusion that perpetual expansion is possible. And our belief in such a system seems to prevent us from defining and then enforcing limits. This is why author and columnist George Monbiot is guilty of heresy when he writes a provocative opinion piece titled, "We Should Welcome a Recession Now" (Guardian Weekly, Oct. 12-18/07). If we can't constrain ever-expanding economic growth, he argues, then we should willingly accept the circumstances that force restraint upon it.

Quite unintentionally, we may have created the circumstances that will precipitate a global recession. Although painful for us, several factors may be converging to offer some relief for a stressed environment.

The cost of oil is the first of these factors. Its abrupt rise is increasing the cost of doing business around the world. For example, the price of freighting goods by ship across oceans has risen 72% in one year. The airline industry is shuddering under the weight of expensive fuel. The high cost of oil is forcing up the price of everything from plastics to fertilizers. All these price increases are recessionary influences.

The second factor is the rising price of other raw resources, particularly metals. In the five years from 2002 to 2007 — excluding the dramatic rises so far in 2008 — the price of aluminum has increased 95%, copper 360%, steel 117%, zinc 314% and nickel 452% (Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, July 14/08). Gold is now hovering at about 300% above its 2002 value of $310 per ounce. Most economic commentators agree that this price surge is raising cost of goods and constraining purchases.

The third factor is the shortage of free capital to finance economic growth. The sub-prime fiasco in the United States has cost banks around the world many billions of dollars in loses. Americans alone lost $1 trillion just in real estate value. Sobered home owners are gloomy. Repossessed houses flood the market so the entire housing industry is stalled, from construction to furnishing. The auto and financial sectors are suffering. Money is scarce and banks are wary so loan requests are carefully scrutinized. As Thomas Homer-Dixon writes in the Globe & Mail (Mar. 19/08), "To ensure that [the rising flood of goods and services] are bought and that factories and businesses keep humming, the global economy needs a constant infusion of liquidity provided by cheap debt." This money is now harder to find.

A fourth factor, as Homer-Dixon points out, is the economic neo-conservatism that has imparted a sense of infallibility to markets and thereby let them move with little or no government supervision or direction (Ibid.). The sub-prime fiasco, in which bad loans were packaged as respectable investments, escalated into an international monetary contagion. Were it not for the strong economic activity in China, India, Russia and Brazil, the world would probably be in a full-blown recession.

A fifth factor, again according to Homer-Dixon, is the "enormously powerful computers and software, along with fibre-optic communication, [that] have allowed financial wizards to conduct business transactions in the blink of an eye around the world.... For all intents and purposes, [this has] blurred the boundaries of what we call money" (Ibid.). Because the movement of money has become so difficult to regulate, governments lose control of their fiscal policies and, therefore, their ability to regulate their economies. In Homer-Dixon's words, "Our global financial system has become so complex and opaque that we've moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty" (Ibid.). The loss of control, coupled with a rising uncertainty, could easily create the conditions that precipitate an unstoppable recession.

No one wants to stumble into the uncontrollable consequences of an unstoppable recession. But such an economic downturn would take some pressure off oil and mineral consumption, reduce the hectic cycle of production and consumption, and slow the steroidal speed of global industrial activity. Greenhouse gas emissions would fall and, with less money to invest, we might even give nature a reprieve from the onslaught of exploitation it is trying to endure. And, finally, to consider the bright side of a dark situation, we might even find a fulfilling alternative to the frenetic pace of modern materialism.