Well said, Pericles.

It appears the OLOers are increasingly grouping into two camps, or species.

One group only wants to see/talk doom and gloom. They eagerly swallow the worst case scenarios about climate change, nuclear power, GM crops. In another age they might have found actualization in an end of times revivalist movement. But in today’s secular age they (and/or like minded kin)have to make do with destroying crop experiments, disrupting powerstations or going onto social media sites to whine about the evils of the system. Some future researcher will view then in much the same way as we might the luddites’

The other group acknowledges problems but works towards overcoming them. It is heartening to see Julian, in his second post, profess faith in human creativity and foresight.

The benefits that accrue from technology far out weigh the costs.While there are still major problems/issues re pollution and waste much good work has been done. Only a one-eyed ideologue, or someone trying to be tongue-in-cheek would not acknowledge the progress.

However, if the measure is going to be, doing things “all together”, we will always to be found wanting. Short of worldwide regime change, humanity is not going to do things “all together”, there are just too many opportunities to free ride.

Pericles,
I did think after posting that "pull the ladder up" was inappropriate, not incapsulating what I said or your position. I've also been guilty myself of ridiculing the opposition, so ditto on apologies.

Thoughtful objectors to unimpeded capitalism (more its consequences) are not against nuclear power or coal-seam gas per se, but against the unquestioning illogic that more energy must be found, whatever the collateral cost; that the growth engine must be fed, and so human expansion must continue. Never any talk of cutting consumption or lowering Western lifestyles; and not because a bit of austerity wouldn't be beneficial (Western prosperity once thrived on the Protestant ethic), but because the economy "must" grow ad infinitum. In order to maintain our lifestyles we must live beyond our means--for the moment. It's disingenuous to offer an ethical defence of our prolific means of production based on its obverse, that the alternative, third-world starvation, is inhumane. A specious rationale for maintaining an addiction that does nobody any good. The world's affluence and poverty are of a piece, effects of the same cause. The free market doesn't lift millions out of poverty, it raises millions out of the dust to starve. Capitalism is no more a cornucopia than a grain silo for a mouse plague.
Actually, I'm not that different from you and Yabby and others, the difference being that while my despair is futile, I refuse to condone such a system. Whereas your side (some of you) are "conscious" (that is conscious that it can't be maintained) apologists for a system you "know" must collapse. You "forsee difficulty and danger" (Cribb), but refuse to "act collectively to avoid it". Or you refuse to acknowledge it, professing false optimism instead and calling the whole mad career "progress", while in the same breath condemning conservationists as naive and hypocritical! As opposed to what? Machiavellian cynicism? As if humanity couldn't "progress" (could we have a qualitative definition of this term?) without excess, wrecking the future, and driving untold other species to extinction.
All because we serve a system, rather than it serving humanity, and posterity.

There are indeed two opposing camps; this is generally called a 'discussion', or an 'argument'.
Only ultra conservatives and communists find one sided discussions fascinating.
In this discussion, one camp could be described as thinking 'swinging through trees' might not be the best mode of locomotion. That maybe there could be a better way. That before changes can be made, one must first acknowledge the need for change. That maybe, just maybe, we aren't perfect, and maybe we might even be part of the problem.
The other side thinks that swinging through the trees must be the best way to travel, because that's the way we travel, so it has to be right.
The differences between these two camps was starkly obvious on the long country road I lived on for twenty years. One camp when hitting a roo, or even just seeing a dead roo in the middle of the road, would naturally stop and pull it off the road. The other camp would steer around it and complain that 'someone should do something' -as long as it didn't involve any extra cost.
Norman Borlaug was a great scientist and a great man. He was absolutely correct when he pointed out that no matter how much farmers conserved their manure and practised sustainable farming techniques, losses were inevitable and periodic inputs from outside would be necessary. This was starkly brought home with the building of the Aswan dam; stopping the perennial flooding of the Nile also stopped thousands of years of sustainable farming.
Enormous inputs of fossil fuels in the fifties and sixties was a perfectly acceptable alternative to floods. But what happens if -for decades- the whole world burns the very resource which is so vital to the creation of food? To the very point where we can see that that resource is going to run out, even as the need for it is still growing?
Intelligent?

The smart farmer, like the smart business man, knows that 'a penny saved is a penny made'. It is just as important to the bottom line to limit inputs, as it is to maximise outputs. Decades ago when I was a kid at school, we talked about the 'circle of life'; yet our food production and usage in western countries is strictly linear. Large artificial inputs are pumped into the production end, then more inputs used to transport food to cities, then sewerage systems pump virtually the same amount of nutrients straight out to sea.
Intelligent?
Smart farmers have known for centuries that rotating crops, and using farm animals in rotations and allowing paddocks to lie fallow can improve or at least sustain fertility. Unfortunately market pressures have made these practices almost impossible to follow. Farmers not only need every acre to be productive, they need every crop to be commercially viable. (I used to make a good part of my living buying heifers from dairy farmers, raising them for 2 years, and selling them back to the same farmers.)
Currently, using artificial inputs is simply more cost effective than using traditional practices -combined with using fewer artificial inputs. This isn't about philosophy or morality; this is simply about money.
As fossil fuels become more scarce, they will inevitably become more expensive. Food production systems and energy usage systems will need to change, or (more) people will die.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html

There seems to be an "all-or-nothing" assumption built into your assessment, Squeers.

>>Thoughtful objectors to unimpeded capitalism (more its consequences) are not against nuclear power or coal-seam gas per se...<<

The assumption here appears to be that by pointing out that self-flagellation and guilt-trips are both ineffectual and unhelpful, I must perforce be a supporter of "unimpeded capitalism". This is not the case.

I do however believe that capitalism still has a great deal to offer in reaching a solution for the ills that we face. And that government actions designed by slogan-driven policy committees will solve nothing.

>>Never any talk of cutting consumption or lowering Western lifestyles; and not because a bit of austerity wouldn't be beneficial...<<

I don't know where you live, but around here we talk of little else. It's the "GFC effect". Suddenly we have become aware that living on credit has some real limitations, and that putting our personal financial house in order would be quite a good thing.

That's capitalism for you.

And this, I totally fail to understand:

>>The world's affluence and poverty are of a piece, effects of the same cause. The free market doesn't lift millions out of poverty, it raises millions out of the dust to starve.<<

Check out the stats on poverty in China. Then tell me again that the free market has been a bad thing for them.

And you are reading far too much into my position.

>>Whereas your side (some of you) are "conscious" (that is conscious that it can't be maintained) apologists for a system you "know" must collapse.<<

Why must it collapse? We all know that continuous growth is unsustainable. But we also know that the system has proved over the centuries that it is highly adaptable, and responds to the pressures that threaten its survival. Which once again is what the GFC is all about.

A necessary process of adjustment. As with the world's population, which will stabilize, on current estimates, within the next fifty years or so.

In this scenario, blind self sacrifice is not noble; it's pointless.

Here's a recent article. The stockpiling of grain in India has often been controversial. While its prudent to stockpile food, much of it over the years has been left to rot because of a lack of storage capacity - seems that not much has changed.

The irony here is that even with the great success in producing so much grain while simultaneously doing so much environmental damage, people still die from hunger or are stunted in India. Stockpiling keeps grain prices artificially elevated and consequently too high for some...it rots under tarpaulins in the open.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/indias-grain-stockpile-may-rot-as-state-warehouses-overflow/story-e6frg90o-1226084798839