DAVID LOY

Professor David Loy of Xavier University, Cincinnati, was interviewed by Inquiring Mind for its 25th anniversary issue, Spring 2009. (Inquiring Mind is available, free, at the San Francisco Zen Center (Page & Laguna), among other places.) Here is Professor Loy’s opening statement:

“Is the current financial and economic crisis a good thing? I wouldn’t want to minimize the suffering it’s creating for many people, but the world economy is an unjust system, and absolutely unsustainable. If we don’t know how else to transform it, maybe it’s better that it collapse sooner rather than later so as to lessen the long-range impact both on people and on the biosphere. Our ecomomic system is devastating the Earth. The financial losses from this collapse may amount to several trillions of dollars, but who can compute the value of the rain forests we have been cutting down? What price do you put on species extinction or global warming?”