Thanks Peter, and also Dagget about how we are using up precious resources with hardly one individual in power today in today's global nations having the guts and commonsense to admit that once we have used up the world's natural gifts for our future existence we are in loads of trouble.

It is so interesting and indeed so tragic, that those who have been giving the above warnings for years are still dismissed as fruitcakes or left-wing loonies.

Nevertheless, a study of world history does show that those who have brought in dramatic beneficial changes to both society and environment have mostly appeared not in line with normal opinion of the time.

Here we are talking about the Avant-Garde, so keep up the good work, mates, the future world desperately needs you.

Regards, BB, WA.

"although I dispute his conclusion that the best way to achieve this is to grow our population without limit."

Well Julian Simon was an economist, who understood nothing about
biology. He did some silly things like try and value biodiversity.
He forgot that without biodiversity, you won't have a humanity,
it will be down to ants and cockroaches spinning on planet earth.

I've learnt one thing, to not worry about the things I cannot
change. I believe that old mother nature will sort it all out in
the end, as us humans are smart enough to invent new things, too
stupid as a species, to use them wisely most of the time.

People accept as a given, that world population will rise to
10 billion. The religious lobby, mainly Catholics and fundies
are driving it. I can argue and reason with these people all day,
but of course if the whole thing collapses, for them thats
"judgement day".

So I'm not going to stress over every light bulb and every litre
of fuel that I use. If humanity is too stupid to see the big
picture, then so be it, let the whole thing crash. Meantime I have
full intention of enjoying the years, months, days, I've got left.
Heaven is here and now after all.

Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that ecosystem adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change.

If the rate should exceed 0.4 C/decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global average temperature today is increasing by 0.2 C/decade.

This incease is caused by greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere decades ago, due to the lag time between emission and temperature rise.

We have emitted nearly double the greenhouse gas since then, and are increasing our emissions at a rate of over 3% per year.

Therefore, in the next couple of decades we are facing the quick destruction of all the world's ecosystems, which will result in abrupt climate change (I suggest reading the Pentagon's alarming report on this subject).

Reference: Leemans og Eickhout, 2004, Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change, Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228.

"We now have evidence from the Earth's history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die." (The Revenge of Gaia)

The real book that speaks about the way out of global collapse is the Holy Bible. The answers on how to look after our world are in there. First we started off with a clean unpolluted world, even the bacteria are in perfect harmony with everything else. The first man and woman are there, quietly looking after the animals and birds and reptiles, and in fellowship with God. The water comes up out the the ground as mist and waters everything. There is no rain. The water bubble above the earth has not broken and will not break til the flood. The way back to that world is through submission to God once again, and this is done through prayer and by receiving His Sacrifice Jesus Christ, for the sin that brought the fall. Getting back into harmony with God is the only restoration. Greed and hate and doing our own thing stops the restoration. The Book of Revelation speaks about the end. It says we didnt make the restoration in the time allocated to the conflict on earth between God and satan. Some did a personal restoration via Jesus the Saviour and were wonderfully born again and saved and set free from the fear, but not enough went for the restoration to stop the Judgment. Its all so sad. Man, without God as Master, dont work too well. And that is the story of the planet.

Peter McMahon's closing analogy seems oddly malapropos.
The people of the FRG (West Germany) recovered from WWII and prospered by rapid industrialization (with enormous assistance from the USA).
The rest is the usual prate from a deluded utopian.

Great article.

It isn't the idea that human society is terminal that bothers me so much, it is watching the trashing of everything, the industrialisation of cruelty, the uglification and entropy and the silly cocks crowing on top of the pile of rubbish we are creating that makes my remaining time on earth - which could have been joyful - a continual struggle just to protect my immediate environment, just to try to keep a place for other creatures and some green for sore eyes.

The worst thing is that where in past societies, even if your own corner of the woods was being trashed, you knew that the impact of your own clan and even of your own species, was only like a small scar on the earth, now we are a systemic disease that has taken over the entire planet.

Nowhere to run to anymore. This is particularly the case in the English speaking world; not so bad in Continental Europe, for there the engineered population growth stopped with the first oil shock.

You are right about profit being the flaw in the system, since it isn't possible really to get profit out of nature; we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on.

The profit motive also favours and uses the status motivated people, who are the only ones content with consumerism, overwork and loss of control over their lives, because they think that they are getting ahead in some kind of competition, for which they will sacrifice anything. We are managed by work-ethic dominated bullies who are really no more enlightened than lab-rats running on a big wheel.

The sale of land is at the bottom of all the problems because it means that we have created a society with many dispossessed who are the fuel of the profit economy; they can be forced to work for others. Without that ready workforce, the profit-based system would be dead in the water.

I like Sharon Beder's articles on the Work Ethic and environmentalism at http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/home.html