As with morals, when the ideas became more important than the substance which spurned their creation, money was detached from real world substance and value. This gave birth to fiat currencies money which controls no form of scarcity but merely the minds/emotions/values/morals of the people who use it. Fiat currency is analogous to stating that value is anything we can describe. Value is no longer being derived from anything real and useful to humans. Since values are the basis of morals our morals are being invented by controlling our resources and not under our individual control or for our individual benefit. Legislation and regulation are all that are needed to change the morals of the majority of the human population as it stands today. These laws predominately favor those contributing to the legislature.
This problem is further compounded by fractional reserve banking, which causes an increase in money supply without any increase in tangible substance. This is now the driving force behind capitalism. Capitalism in combination with fiat currency encourages cyclical consumption of resources to expand the economy. A fiat currency economy that only exists to proliferate itself mathematically to an asymptotic conclusion. Without respect to the environment through commodities, it is cancerous to the planet. Each unit of fiat currency represents a debt that cannot be paid due to loss of value caused by inflation.
The problem inherent with this is that the amount of substance is no longer controlling the economy. However, tangible substances are being consumed without respect to their scarcity. This is primarily the force that will destroy humanity and numerous other species if we continue to rely upon it........horrible right?........ well no. It's only what any organism would do if it were capable; use all available resources to preserve their own survival interests. The problem is that no other organism has been this capable of consuming at this rate.
We are now at a point where scarcity is not the primary danger to our survival as a species but its the ideas that overcame it that pose the danger. We can't throw money at environmental causes and expect them to change we have to have economies that are reflective of planetary needs and scarcity not just human needs. Human minds and ideas betray themselves. Although humanity comes from varying backgrounds our needs for survival vary only marginally. To hold ideas built upon scarcity in an environment where it can readily be overcome is detrimental to our survival. In the future human beings will have to form communal and organizational needs around the idea of being resilient to environmental change and scarcity instead of obsolete abstractions.