"Ever wondered what went through the minds of the Easter Islanders as the last tree was cut down?"

Well since the last tree was never cut down, since the claimed total deforestation of Rapa Nui is just another eco-myth, we'll never know what the islanders would have said if what didn't happen had happened.

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes

I apologise for being one of those contrarian denialists but the facts do matter to some of us. But I understand the warm inner glow some get by genuflecting at the twin gods of Gaia and sustainability.

We are constantly told that our resources are finite. But a resource only becomes a resource when we make it so. Oil was just a sticky gluck that oozed out of the ground until we made it a resource via our ingenuity. And our ingenuity is a truly unlimited resource.

Thought exercise - name three resources we've ever run out of.

You don't run out of resources, they just become less available and vastly more expensive. Who can afford to can survive okay, so long as the economy just not do a complete flip.

As for scaremongering and warm inner glows, we can only afford to hold elitist positions because we are not victims of climate change or oil depletion. Yet.

But please do ask the people of Tuvalu or New Orleans or drought affected Australian farmers, or managers of international insurance companies - or perhaps even the Burmese cyclone victims - about a warm inner glow.

For these people sustainability has become absolutely real.

I don’t want my great-great-grandchildren living as troglodytes!
I would much rather picture them living comfortably: with civilized amenities and assured continuance of them; In a world of rich diversity, with none of the present apartheid which develops according to the accident of where one is born. A world where both competition and co-operation are employed towards genuine progress.
I interpret John’s article as being from a similar standpoint. But I disagree with his “the planet can support all of us provided we recognize its limitations.” The current 6.7 billion can’t be supported at any reasonable lifestyle, other than temporarily. The projected 9 billion – if ever reached – will have even less than reasonable lifestyles, and emphatically be temporary.
“Our real challenge lies in developing a 21st century lifestyle--” John says. But, if we don’t want our progeny to be troglodytes, more – much more – is needed.
A necessary first step is to give women, whatever their social affiliations throughout the world, the right and the necessary education and empowerment to limit their own fertility. As was agreed to by world congress at Cairo in 1994. Unless the brakes are put on the population train, there will be one hell of a thump at the end of the line exiting from our present economic nirvana.
Reducing energy usage by 66 per cent over a five-year period sounds fine, and is probably necessary – energy use is a determinant of consumption of essential environmental resources, and of pollution. But, with population increase (in Australia) jumping from 1.3 per cent last year to now at about 1.9(?) that 66 per cent saving will be diminished to 50 per cent in five years time. In 27 years the population, at present rate of increase, will be 66 per cent larger.
The good work of frugality with energy use is necessary – but should it be directed at no more than enabling more sardines to be squashed into the tin? I want my offspring to have better prospects than sharing a joint in a cave.

mhaze -
Thanks for the Easter Island link. Interesting article. However it was still the people that brought the rats that did the deforestation in this version of the story.

I'll name two things we are running short of that technology has done nothing about.
1. Food. It all comes from other living things, and there is only so much available carbon, and biomass. We just keep diverting more of it to humans, not increasing it. Currently around half the total global photosynthetic product is diverted to humans, and the rest of creation is showing the stress.
2. Fresh, clean water. Cleaned for free by the biosphere, brought to us by a climate system we've adapted our brittle civilisation to.
You can dream about technological solutions to those shortages, but they're not much use to the vast majority of humanity. The survival imperative is to live within the means provided by the planet.

Geoff,

"I'll name two things we are running short of that technology has done nothing about.1. Food...2.water"

Well that just isn't true. The so-called Green Revolution used technology to massively increase food production on the same acreage. Over the coarse of the 20th century, despite the increase in human numbers by some 500% the amount of calories available per person increased by approx 100%. And this was done by technology. And in our time GM foods promise the same level of expansion without placing any further calls on the alleged finite resources of the planet - provided the fear-mongers allow it to.

As to water, well I'd like to see any data that we are running out of it. Of seen lots of predictions about what will happen in the future but Malthusian predictions are invariably astray. And in any case, if it were the case, the technology to resolve that issue is already with us what with desalination and recycling

Mhaze,

Jared Diamond has replied to the paper you cited in a paper published in the magazine Science:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5845/1692

"This hypothesis does not account for all those palm stumps cut off at the ground and burned, nor for the larger number of palm nuts burned rather than gnawed, nor for the disappearance of the long-lived palm trees themselves (with an estimated life span of up to 2000 years) (16). If rats were responsible, they were unusual ones, equipped with fire and hatchets. Thousands of other Pacific islands overrun by introduced rats were not deforested, and many other tree species that survived on other rat-infested islands disappeared on Easter (16)."

The rats undoubtedly did contribute to environmental damage, as they did on other islands, but people brought them.

It is true that the Green Revolution doubled or in some cases tripled the amount of grain that could be grown from a plot of land, but grain production per person peaked in 1984. It is not clear if the agricultural scientists can pull off a similar feat again, as there are physiological limits. Wheat and chickens are enormously more productive than in 1900, but race horses can't run much faster, and not for want of trying.

Where do you propose to get the energy to run the desalination plants and to pump the water to where it is needed?