I reckon this guy is a genius.

Go Lakers.

Eric, I almost slashed my wrists after reading your first article. Thank goodness for this much more optimistic follow-up!

I actually think that we can win the battle to divert Australian society and other societies around the world off of the continuous growth path and onto the sustainability track before we have a huge crash event. It is not likely mind you, but it is possible.

If only Obama would embrace it fully. And if Bill Gates could just see that sustainability needs to come first, and start spending his money promoting it.

And if former New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, who strongly expressed concerns about continuous population growth in Sydney, could just expand his concerns to national population stabilisation and sustainability and become active in getting the message out there, and if Tim Flannery would find the voice that he used to have, and so on, then we could do it!

One of the main things that needs to happen is for the sustainability message to get out there to the general community, with great emphasis and frequency. I mean, how on earth can we expect the public to embrace the issue and to show it in the polls and at election time if they just aren’t getting the message in the first place…. or getting it to anywhere near the same extent as the continuous-growth-is-good message?

I don't know the answer Ludwig and one of my motivations for writing these articles is to see if there might be some answers out there in the comments.

I do believe, though, that the advantage of the consumer culture is that we pay very close attention to prices. If prices are going up, then everything isn't getting better every year. If everything isn't getting better every year, then maybe this growth, growth, growth idea isn't all its cracked up to be.

I also believe that our new improvements in communications are important. When they talk about the economic miracle in China they also talk about devestating pollution. We can feel poverty now. When I was a kid you never say anything on TV about this kind of poverty and it was worse then.

I like Obama, Gates, Carr and Flannery and Ian Lowe, Mikail Gorbachev, Jared Diamond, Mark O'Connor, Bono, Jeffery Sachs and many more but I don't want to put the entire burden of getting us sustainable, on them. I'm happy and grateful for the things they have done already. I think we all have to do whatever we can in our own way. I sense things are getting slightly better. I might be wrong and the slightly might be too slight to get us there before there is violence, but I sense something.

Maybe I am too optimistic. I can't be as pessimistic as RawMustard in the first article comments.

I don't actually think things have been getting better by any stretch of the imagination but most people have not been paying attention to the fairly rapidly deteriorating lifestyles they are facing.

Some off the cuff examples:-

Growing kids could be given the freedom to go camping or adventuring from an early age without the fear of them being harmed by either man or machine (the car).

Housing was imminently affordable even to my parents who were able to own one not too long after the end of WWII in which my father had to waste 4 years of his life.

Education was cheap and accessible to all and we got a free half pint of milk to go along with it.

The bush and a great variety of life within it was always near at hand even in big cities.

Families did not require two working parents to keep their heads above water.

No need when I was growing up for 20% of my fathers time during the week to be taken up by commuting to and from work.

We knew our neighbours and spent time with them.

Kulu -

I didn't mean that life was getting better. In many ways, as you mention, life is getting tougher despite the improvements in technology. Your off the cuff examples, are examples of us not appreciating the things that are free. Nobody pays for a walk in the bush, so it must not have any value. Video games cost money, so they have more value than a bush walk. When it comes time to protect the bush, nobody is interested because nobody is making a profit out of it.

I meant that there is more understanding of sustainability and the idea that the earth is finite and we can't just keep taking as much from it as we want forever. A lot more people are saying that than 10 years ago. The vehemence of the comments on the Malcolm King anti-population article is a good example but there are a lot more. Peak Oil and other comments about the long term future of ecosystems, groundwater and the atmosphere are all sending the message that we need to be careful.

As I said though it might be too-little, too-late but I think there is some movement.

Ericc,

You are absolutely right in saying that more and more people are becoming aware of the limits to our resources etc. Also more and more eminent and well respected scientists, authors, academics and others are becoming more strident in their calls for change in our values and the way we do things. I am too but I'm not eminent.

I am increasingly now of the belief that in spite of all the awareness and dedication of many to bringing about the changes we as a civilization need to stave of a collapse (in one form or the other) unless and until a great many of us are prepared to take real and personal risks to achieve this end it will all be in vain.

I wonder how long it took the Easter Islander to face up to their predicament.