The SNJ columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

THE national curriculum is starved for scope.

Both local and global economies, employment levels, austerity (I’m not sure what that word means; there are numerous versions in my thesaurus), growth policies, engineering design and technology, the future of the NHS, affordable homes... the list is bulky. These things are being discussed on TV, at local hustings, and probably locations all around Great Britain.

But with rarely an exception, I have yet to hear anything going beyond these issues in terms of linking them to the wider scenario they’re part of in one way or another.

There seems to be no concern about paving over vast swathes of landscape in order to accommodate yet more development and housing estates, no reference to the effects of endless varieties of business on the natural world, and certainly no mention of where all the multiple resources that industry relies on to manufacture its goods and products originate and whether or not they’re becoming scarce or endangered to the point of no return.

What about the countless planes and ships criss-crossing the globe to transport merchandise to feed voracious global consumerism? What about the multiple future effects on natural surroundings and native species as the expansion, growth and over-paving continue, managed fields eliminate nature’s vegetation, new supermarkets spring up, woodland diminishes? The goodies we ask for and acquire to suit our human needs and wishes all have to come from somewhere – but at what cost to the wider scenario?

There’s seldom any mention of how practical it would be to grow and produce as much local food as possible instead of taking for granted the availability of much of what we consume coming from far away – at what true cost? Not just financially, but to the global ecosystem? Yes, promotion of local jobs is urged, but not a word about what they would be based on, no general plan to facilitate goods and services that are needed and would support long-term requirements of any sensible community.

Perhaps the most worrying omission is the failure to utter a single word about population growth – as though the huge bulk of our species already overrunning the planet is inconsequential when it comes to making decisions about financial and industrial concerns; as though it’s not important to assess the carrying capacity of the global ecosystem in terms of what enables it to sustain itself, and what would happen if various parts stopped functioning and shut due to abuse, over-use or neglect. Every town, village and city needs to become fully away of what their resource base consists of and whether it’s being monitored, protected and not overdrawn.

Basically, I note an absence of scrutiny as to where it all comes from, what it’s all for, and whether governments are doing enough to ensure that the boundaries of our interaction with the natural world are being assessed at every turn. None of these matters have been linked to the rather inward-looking framework we maintain to suit our self-referencing requirements. Wake up politicians! There’s more to life than money!