Why is it difficult to shrug off? Malthus was wrong when he made the same predictions. More contemporarily so was Paul Ehrlich.

Add in the fact that "it's raining soup", and there's no reason for us to leave the earth. We have all we need right here.

I may be reading your post wrong (and if I am, forgive me, sometimes sarcasm or irony is hard to pick up in text), but it comes across as exceedingly arrogant.

Sure, we have all we need for now, but will we continue to do so? Perhaps similar predictions are wrong in their timelines but the results of our consumption of resources are hard to ignore. There is not an infinite supply of stuff on this planet, yet we keep making more people and more chia pets and more big screen tvs and more thigh masters and more cars and more big macs and more and more, then throw the broken ones away when we've used them up. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is pretty destructive behavior. So maybe it'll take a hundred years longer than someone predicted-- or two hundred, or n-hundred. It doesn't matter, because the end result will be the same if we don't alter our behavior and attitudes about consumerism. And by "leave", I don't think Shelly was necessarily referring to the idea that we all just take off in a big space ship and fly off to greener pastures in another solar system. I think it was more like all going extinct, which is definitely a viable reason for us to leave the earth, if we continue to pollute, consume resources, overpopulate, and add to landfills.

I'll second what Al says. I was in high school when the Club of Rome issued its report, The Limits to Growth, by that report I think we're all supposed to be dead now. Of course, I was a big believer in the Club of Rome report, I had a copy and pointed out all the charts and graphs from the computer simulations to all my friends. I read The Population Bomb in the seventh or eighth grade. I was a member of Zero Population Growth. Anybody remember them? Are they still around?

I think what we're witnessing is competitions by various groups, I call them social organisms, to mobilize the actions of large numbers of people through the manipulation of their belief systems.

There is a scare of some kind on nearly every page of the newspaper. Keeping people "frightened" keeps them from focusing on anything that may actually change the status quo.

Got an e-mail that from Scientific American, "Asteroid Near-Miss" or something like that. Obesity and diabetes rates sky high. Why? Well, I guess because we were all frightened into believing we were going to die of heart disease from our high-fat diets. That is, if you weren't too scared to eat the meat because of the way their fed and processed. And vegans these days are frightened of GM foods in the food web, and so we all wring our hands about that.

Of course we all know we're all going to die of cancer, that is if the terrorists don't irradiate us with a dirty bomb. Well, maybe that's where the cancer is going to come from, because we've all been scared off of smoking. Unless the AIDS gets your first, because it's becoming resistant to the drugs used to curb it, I read today.

And of course the climate is changing and those who aren't totally in denial about it like to argue whose fault it is, I guess because that means some groups values and belief systems are superior to some other groups.

If you look for things to be frightened of, you will find them. I don't look for angry people, but I'm sensitized to it now, so I notice it more than I'd care to.

But for the most part, I figure: Enough!

I have what time I have here to do what I can do, little though that may be. I try not to contribute to the hysteria by trying to "know myself," act where I can and where it may do some good, and let go of expectations that the world will comform to my standards.

It wasn't you all driving me crazy here the other day, it was my foolish attachment to an expectation that I could change your minds. I can't change anyone's mind but my own. I forget that from time to time.

There's a good quote from MathTrek in this week's issue of Science news, it's almost Zen-like, which I know offends some people.

Question: How can you tell whether a problem is hopelessly difficult?
Answer: Judgment.
Question: How do you develop good judgment?
Answer: Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.

I've got lots of experience.

Andrea, I was being sarcastic with the 'dead world when was is waging a war'.

Context: I'm a member of Green Peace. Probably sets the tone.

My only contrary thought on this is in the final sentance. There's no reason to link battling pollution and killing the ecology with the 'War against Terror'. No logical reason at all.

The enemy of 'Gaia' is business as usual. Or rather, big business as usual. The source of their power is money and profits. Capitalism showing it's worst face.

But such things have existed for well over a century. In fact, compared to the slave and child labor, the long hours for very little pay and the belching pollution that it spewed in the late 1800s and early 1900s things have actually improved! LOL...

Okay, but on a more serious note: it really is money that greases the wheels of power. And that money is and has been spread throughout the system. Bush and his party don't own all of it. Just as many ecology-busting acts were passed under past administrations too. While I know you can't let a chance to dig at the 'War against Terror' pass by, it doesn't add anything exept melodrama to this excellent post.

Now, in an attempt to be constructive... if we wish to work effectively against these ecology-busters and the real root of their power is corporate profits and special interests, what can one do? Is even the campaign spending reforms being discussed enough?

First, sorry Andrea - realized after the fact that you were responding to the first comment, not the post.

But Dave - this post wasn't about you, per se. It was about being aware that we in the US use more natural resources than any other country (and individually, we can work on this problem), that our politicians aren't taking the environment seriously enough (and we can at least let our leaders know that this is important), and that Bush in particular doesn't feel he has to work on these issues - people are only concerned with voting on economics and terrorism.

This really goes beyond corporate profits and special interests and campaign reform, don't you think?

No, I don't think so. Bush - like Clinton before him etc. - is in business so to speak to hold onto power. Both will not necessarily listen to the loudest voice, but rather to the one that will allow that power to continue. And in the federal goverment setting where no 3rd party seems to be able to get any sustained results and where 98% of congress gets re-elected, that power is money. Money to make your name known. Money to get the sound bytes. Money to get elected.

Who holds that money? The SAME forces that want to keep using gas-guzzling autos. Or cigarettes. Or whatever.

"Bush in particular doesn't feel like he has to work on these issues..."

Well, he doesn't. Individual voices like yours.... yelling at the top of your lungs through your weblog.... are really doing nothing but (1) preaching to the converted and (2) spitting into the wind. (No offense at all meant. I agree with you on this! I'm merely pointing out realities.)

Why has the percentage of SUVs grown over the last 15 years? Not because Bush or his father feel or think anything.... rather, because the American public meekly accepts having sexy and glossy ads thrown at them.

My peer at work here drives a Dodge Ram - and this month he's buying a Chevy truck of some kind. He lives exactly 4 minutes from work. He has no worldly needs to tow anything or load anything. But he can afford to buy it and can afford the gasoline it guzzles.

Is that Bush's fault? Or is that (1) corporate America's fault for wanting to increase profits of which gas-guzzling trucks are higher, (2) Congress's fault for never passing any meaningful auto pollution reforms, or - my biggest finger pointing now - (3) Congress's fault for not increasing gasoline taxes by $1.00 a gallon and then using that money to clean up our pollution messes like toxic dumps?

In an ideal world our politicians are responsive to the people. Any one person can shout and be heard. Of course, in an ideal world I wouldn't be going bald, my marriage would have worked out and I could work from home!

In a real world Bush isn't about to care about pollution unless he could lose his power because of it. Then again, neither would Clinton have cared. Or Gore, or Kennedy, Nixon or FDR. Accepting this is the first step to truely changing it. But it's that next step.... what is it?

The true culprit here is possibly, oddly enough, the FCC. Now that Time/Warner/AOL or Disney/ABC/ESPN or GE/NBC/MSNBC/CNBC control virtually all mass media outlets, how does one really break into the national conscious?

The most interesting comment I've read in awhile - even more interesting than the anger and 'learned helplessness' issues (and I really like that term BTW - cames from either Dave Winer or a CNBC talking head. I unfortunately can't recall which. It basically asked this:

Considering how each week we hear through the media of another accounting scandal being uncovered, how do you think the media will cover the inevitable one that involves IT?

Of course it's possible that you Americans use more resources per head than any of the rest of us because you can think of more new things to do with those resources [such as creating the Internet], no? And if we're running out so urgently, why have commodity prices been falling in real terms since the 1970s?

Of course waste is bad, pollution is bad, restraint is good. But perhaps we can talk about these issues co-operatively, open-mindedly? There'll be sharp divisions of opinion, but try not to create new ones or widen those we have already?

Sorry, Bb, I said "post" but meant "comment". Was responding more to the Alwin commenter rather than directly to your post. Duh, me.

One more chime in: Mark, I admire your idealism, but honestly, from an American point of view (and speaking of a country I love dearly, too), 95% of the resources we consume on new things to do with those resources are for new things that are totally lame. The internet is a beautiful and wonderful exception. Late night infomercials on US channels are full of entirely useless stuff. Mailboxes are full of junk mail with coupons for totally useless stuff. Items that are in perfectly good condition or recyclable get thrown away and sit in the ground to decompose for the next 8000 years. I'm not against innovation, but do we Americans have to waste so much material to acheive it? Neither am I against open, non-divisive discussion of this issue, but I think if we as a nation are to be honest, we have *some* reparations to make to the rest of the world.

I'm not coming from a doom and gloom apocalyptic perspective. I think the situation is hopeful, but I do think it requires serious attention, and I think that labeling concern for the earth as a "scare tactic" rings a little hollow.

Again, maybe the dates predicted for "the end of the earth" are hogwash, but the reality behind that-- that we only have a *finite* amount of resources, and therefore if we keep using up those resources in a wasteful way, they *will* be gone some day-- is valid. Our sensitivity and attention to these issues helps change these apocalyptic timelines (which are usually all qualified with: "If we keep going on in X manner").

I don't think the dates portrayed in the report are necessarily far off. I remember in a science class a long long long time ago, that we discussed the fact that we would be running out of petroleum by at least the year 2020, if not sooner. And petroleum is a key component of much of our chemistry, plastics, and medicine.

And the salmon fishermen in the Northwest literally are going without any season at all now because the salmon have been over-fished.

And one can go on and on.

We laughed at the concept of global warming long ago, but we see the impact now. And yet we still meander along, safe in our arrogance that science will "take care of the problem" before it impacts on us.

Even if we all change one habit in our lives, it's a start. One habit. Just one.

Andrea, I'm not arrogant. The fact that we have all the materials and energy we will ever need sitting at the top of our plants gravity well is something that seems to absent from most people's minds. When will we go get all that energy and raw material? When we need it, of course. Right now it's too easy to scrape all that stuff out of the earth. When that gets too hard, we'll go get it.

Arrogant? No. History student and observer of the human condition? Yes.

Quote George W Bush (to ringing applause), around June last year: "The American way of life is not negotiable!" Well, guess what...? - sometimes it's better to negotiate and have choices than to refuse to negotiate and suddenly find we've run out of choices...

Yes, 'big money' is a major contributor to this mess. Yet ultimately it's not the responsibility of "someone else somewhere out there" - it's _our_ responsibility, in everything we do, in every choice we make. Given the social pressures and 'big money's propaganda ("you's all gotta be good li'l consoomers now, y'hear?") it ain't easy to make responsible choices... but that's literally the only choice we have. Anger helps, sometimes, but only sometimes; for the rest it's just a quiet, careful consideration of every choice, and the consequences of every choice.

Alwin:

a) I didn't think you were arrogant, I simply commented that your statement came across as arrogant (e.g. what you were saying, not *you*)

b) Your second comment makes even less sense to me that the first. You make it seem as though it is simple and straightforward to build a rocketship and go up out of the earth's atmosphere to get everything that we need. Well, I'm certain for one thing that there's no breathable air or food up there. Maybe I'm just misreading you entirely, but you seem to be confusing natural resources with raw material like metal, which, yes, is fairly abundant in other places besides the earth's crust. My concept of natural resources extends to include everything we need to survive, as well as raw materials and energy used to manufacture products for our use. There's also the practical fact that we're still a pretty long way from mastering the technology to go collect anything substantial from outside the earth's atmosphere. Desperation may be a motivator for such technology, but if we let things get to the point where they're too bad, it might not do any good in the end. And finally, I have a hard time believing that's a justifiable attitude anyway. That's like teaching a kid it's OK to blow up all his toys with firecrackers because you can always go out and buy more toys. Well, maybe so, but why waste perfectly good toys when it's not necessary? I have an ethical/ moral issue with the concept of wasting. Perhaps you don't; fair enough to believe what you like, although I still have a hard time seeing that as a practical approach.

I agree with you that human beings are very adaptable creatures and history is full of stories of homo sapiens making do in amazing circumstances. However, I believe it will be fairly difficult to adapt if we cannot eat, drink, or breathe freely, and our current climate of consumerism, wastefulness, and "we can just go get more from somewhere else" will contribute to that circumstance.

Gosh, thanks Andrea, for calling me an idealist! I do have to admit that during a week I spent in New York, for a Brit I was a _bit_ disappointed by the quality of the TV ads and the stuff in between them, but hey, that's freedom....

As I babbled elsewhere yesterday, a Western revival of Stoicism could be in order. Right now, the green debate seems to be Utilitarians [you can't have too much of a good thing] versus Puritans [you can't have too little of a good thing]. Stoicism is a lot like Puritanism [the real force behind eco-awareness, I think] but has some advantages. Restraint for the sake of moderation rather than restraint for the sake of denial -- if that makes sense.