A massive gasoline tax will bring our economy to a standstill. Lidorf is right when he says, "We need a revolution in the way we human beings live and the way we treat each other." It requires Socialism. This is an emergency situaltion far beyond anything we have experienced and social control of resources, pubic transportation, shipping and the building of a sustainable system are really our only hope. How we do that is up to us.

I'm 67, recently retired, having a wonderful time finally doing the things I love. The only fly in the ointment is the increasing awareness that in another twenty short years, regardless of anything I might do with my time, I will be gone from the bio-political sphere, i.e. dead. If Mssrs. Gore and Lindorff are correct, as they likely are, the human race has also reached a kind of old age. Worse than discovering that we have a terminal illness, we have discovered that we are ourselves a planetary disease.

I am no more optimistic about the human prognosis than I am of my own natural immortality. There are millions of us, severely habituated to our collective routines and our bad habits, and we ain't gonna change. What the human race needs to do is what intelligent elderly people do. Listen to more music. Read some philosophy. Pet the cat. Enjoy a glass of good wine. Come to some kind of peace with the idea that the goal is not length of years but height of awareness, depth of insight, profundity of love, best use of our aesthetic and intellectual faculties while the sun yet shines.

We need to face the reality that we have made irrevokable bad choices, like a 30 year smoker. No sense blaming it on the tobacco company at this late stage. Life is still a great miracle and the human race remains a noble experiment. It isn't our fault if, like feral chickens, we just weren't quite smart enough to survive.

The problem with this dismal view is that we have kids, and grandchildren, and we cannot simply dismiss their futures the way we might shrug off our own self-induced lung cancer. We need to act with dispatch and with a willingness to make the big, disruptive changes that need to be made, so that they don't die off too because of our mistakes.

I completely agree that the current flow of human activity is unsustainable in many different ways, however it seems unlikely that the US will be part of the solution.

The US, with its values, institutions, and mainstream culture, has an incredible amount of inertia as it moves in the direction of consuming as many resources as possible as quickly as possible. This ocean liner will not easily change course. However, Captain Bush has steered the ship into the iceberg of Iraq, while taking on massive doses of debt, and the US may sink within a decade or two.

And hopefully the demise of the US will be of some value in serving as an example to all others, making it easier to avoid the allure of exciting, and temporarily comfortable, corporate capitalism and to choose a more healthy and sustainable course.

I'd already nominated Francis Fukuyama's "the end of history" as the biggest joke of the early 21st century.

Unfortunately an end of human history may actually be about to overtake us.

Agreed. Steps must be taken, but politics as usual won't solve anything. I can just imagine a California politician campaigning on a "stop building and fixing roads" platform.
These steps will be taken in the future but only after the wreckage of the current system is cleared away.

Mr. Lindorff, you've framed the situation well, the cause, the effect, the cure. I'm highly supportive of the view, and proposals. I think we could benefit from more detail of various potential catastrophes. I think we could use a whole lot more media attention on the work that's actually being done toward building an alternate future. When awareness is raised, people start watching the thing grow, they get involved, they participate. It's a great opportunity for each individual. We can actually build this world we only dreamed about before. People are eager to apply their creativity in the new pursuit. We just need to establish the new boundaries.

6.5 billion people is unsustainable. Period.

The earth may have reached its capacity to sustain the current population, especially when the Western consumer model cannibalizes the very resources required for long-term sustainability. Just as the tsunami took 250,000 in the blink of an eye, another weather event took Katrina, the belief in "End Times" may be happening in a slow stream of events that is clearing the planet, place by place. Pockets of light and life will likely remain, and in those zones, the natural spirit of innovation, intelligence and hopefully communalism will begin anew. This will not be mankind's first time at this. Whether we understand the Bible story of a great flood to speak of earlier civilizations, or similar accounts of Atlantis. Human nature has become so thoroughly hypnotized and programmed by commercial culture (particularly in the Western world) that unless catastrophe/collapse knock right at people's doors, change will be unlikely to happen. IF Al Gore succeeded in galvanizing leaders of government and industry to set better markers, some progress might be made to hold off the degree to which massive cleansing otherwise has become inevitable. Someone wrote about a "selfish gene," a concept I don't think has anything to do with genes; but it does mark this latter portion of the 20th century, and the way media put forth the purveyors of conspicuous consumption to normalize insane shopping choices like giant SUVS and huge homes and as the recent study revealed, a burgeoning population of the morbidly obese. Yep. Morbid, indeed.

Amen!

This prognosis is unnecessarily pessimistic. I agree that human beings need to make adjustments and use resources more efficiently, but I don't see the end of the carbon age equalling the end of civilization. I can forsee a future, for example, where deserts are seeded with a kind of "silicon tree" that requires no water and positions its photovoltaic "leaves" to maximally harvest solar energy. Part of the harvested energy is used to grow new "trees" and service the existing ones, while the remainder is available for human consumption. And there's a whopping amount of desert on four continents.

Capitalism has its ills, but regulated capitalism can work as well as any other system. I do not want to live in a world that is extreme in either the capitalistic or the socialistic direction. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. For me, the question is not one or the other, but which aspects of community life are best served by which approach, and how can the systems be regulated, administered, and meshed efficiently.

Sadly, I do agree that some serious dislocation will be necessary before we are willing to make adjustments. There are those for whom the present system works very well, and those people have both the vested interest and the financial clout to see to it that this system is perpetuated as long as possible. We will probably be well beyond some sort of precipice by the time people at large recognize that there are some serious problems here and those problems have been allowed to fester because someone stood to profit thereby. This transitional period could well be a hard age to live in.

Alternatively, someone of great vision and political skill may yet step forward and lead us into a new age. I think it is very sad that, on one hand, thinking people know what must be done, while on the other hand knowing why it will not be done until our backs are against the wall. Nevertheless, this is the price of a free society. We want to be able to live where we want to live, work where we want to work, and eat what we want to eat, and entrepreneurs want to provide us with what wee need to do that. A government must tread somewhat carefully in these areas. But it is always possible that someone of great skill can inspire most of us to make the needed adjustments, while thwarting those who through prejudice, greed, or honest disagreement are reluctant to adjust.

The twin pillars of a liveable future are population control and clean energy. Get those two right, and all other problems are manageable. Get them wrong, and all other problems are irrelevant.

All we really need is a visit from the Cosmos by an alien space ship, right in the middle of DC, for all television cameras to get a look at, after which Religion can die quickly and peacefully!

Dave: AS much as I too would like to believe that "big disruptive change" brought on by a world citizenry suddenly enlightened enough to understand that only radical immediate change will PERHAPS limit climate change enough to save parts of the world that are merely an abstraction to most people, I have to agree with voxclamantis.
I will continue to fight the good fight and will try not to miss opportunities to act to stop global warming (write to my corporately-bought and paid for congressman and senators, be vegan, ride a bicycle, try to buy locally produced food, buy only used stuff, etc), I don't see the kind of sea change in consciousness that you write about as possible. As vox points, out, too many bad choices for too long.
I see a bleak future ahead, and I mourn for the animals and plants and the earth nore than I do for a species that is simply a cancer on the planet. Perhaps after a great die-off, another species will arise who does a better job at understanding that we are all a part of planet earth, not apart from it.

Not to rub salt in the wound but feral chickens are smarter than humans. There is no other species that could be as self-destructively stupid as humans have been. Human arrogance and excessive brain activity led to this situation. Its ironic but its the case. Humans think they are outside Nature--that they are better than the world they were created in(that's why they either think they will ascend through spirit to another realm, or through science--i.e. rocketships. Whether its Secular Evolution or the Theistic Great Chain of Being, too many humans think the same way).

"Beware the beast-man for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he would murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers. For he will make a desert of his home, and yours."

The Lawgiver in Planet of the Apes.

I excel at morbid!

The US seems to be resolutely marching in the wrong direction.

The average size of US cars and trucks have become are noticably bigger over the past few months of stable fuel prices.

If an American visits the carbon-footprint calculator on the British site: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/ ,they find it is not usable, because it doesn't even list sort of cars Americans drive. A "family car" there is only 1.8 liter, the largest engine one can select is only 3.0L.

I recently found that refrigerators with an "energy star" rating have become hard to find.

My city is facing massive cuts in public transit service -at the hands of state legislators who would like to abolish it altogether because it is "socialist".

Meanwhile the city is pursuing a second "rennaissance" based on parking garage construction - but they will have a couple bike racks and will have energy efficient lighting.

Downtown redevelopers threatened to back out of their projects unless the transit authority removed all bus service from the streets near their projects. Fortunately, they seem to have backed off for now; it was explained that 50-60% of downtown workers - even many well-paid ones the developers were trying to attract, use the bus every day to get to work.

A major employer has desided to move to a far-out exurb, because they need space for more parking for their anticipated hiring expansion.

Probably 50% of my co-workers commute at least 50 miles, each way, in large pickups or SUV's - but lay all the blame for hemmoraging household budgets on gasoline being too expensive.

It goes on and on...

Humans will only make it if they are more emotionally connected to the human race than to their own small groups (e.g. Bush and Cheney to their fellow wealthy elites) or to the planet, which is a big rock 8,000 miles in diameter with a very superficial covering of life, or to other animal species or other forms of life.

Humans survived this long by evolving into creatures that had great potential to become connected to their own small human groups. But then with civilization, humans banded together into gigantic groups, where it became impossible to be emotionally connected to each member in the group. However, humans coped by forming an abstraction of a tribe and then a nation that they felt emotionally connnected to. And then, as humans interacted across the globe, some humans began abstracting to a connection with their whole species, the human race, as they recognized that humans were all closely related and had a great deal in common.

But against this emotional connection is all the pain and disappointment from interactions with others acting insensitively, with greed and ruthlessness. And there is a battle, within each of us, to maintain this connection and to foster it in others, for it becomes more clear every year that our children's welfare is inextricably tied to the welfare of the entire human race and it is unlikely the future of the human race will ever become secure unless a great many people become committed to securing it.

For Dave Lindorf and all others looking for an interesting take on the crisis described see the website:

http://www.kunstler.com/

James Howard Kunstler is a writer of prototypical obnoxious New Yorker demeanor-- think Senator Up-Chuck(ie) Schummer in full blaze--but (like Schummer)once you get beyond his natural obnoxiousness and actually listen to what he is saying for its content it has a lot of value.

Good stuff. I've been seeing this coming since I moved to the LA Basin in 1965. I had never lived in such a city before, and was horrified at the congestion and god-awful air quality. I escaped after college, but was "scarred" for life. For one thing, I decided to remain childless -- a decision that I don't regret. I'm a mechanical engineer, and see no practical way for technology to keep us in this neverland state. India & China are not the most populous countries on Earth -- the U.S. is! That is, in the only metric that makes sense -- resource use per capita. We are only too willing to be conditioned to keep on being pigs. Population reduction is the only answer. We MUST stop having babies! To satisfy our parental urge, consider adopting the almost unlimited numbers of unloved children in the world. Of course, even this approach is wrong in that the adopted child is converted from a low-consuming 3rd world being into into a high-consuming U.S. citizen. The point is, each of us has to take personal responsibilty for our footprint on the Earth. We must stop waiting for a Leader to tell us what to do. Educate ourselves and act in a sane manner. Of course, I doubt that enough of us will do any of this. There's too much societal, economic, and emotional pressure to keep growing the population.

kivals has got the crux of the problem. The duality of self and other is not a recent or even a human development. Among the first skills evolved by one celled organisms is to recognize "alien" particles and to repel or oust them from the boundaries of the self. This is also a picture of animal aggression and tribal society, a fairly intractable source of alienation and belligerence.

Our collective survival has depended on our counterintuitive ability to respect the widest possible boundaries - the community of America, the community of nations, the community of nature - and to come to a Kantian recognition that our own welfare is contingent on the welfare of the whole. We have had some success historically at this, but as the current state of affairs reveals, not nearly enough.

I live in a place where people shoot coyotes and fear Mexicans, and though I would welcome it I don't notice a sea change in human consciousness. 95 percent of us still take the kneejerk response of blaming some "other" for our woes. I hope you are right, Mr. Lindorff, that the reality of climate degradation will shock the great, torpid central mass of humankind into corrective activity. Maybe it is just cynicism from 6.5 years living in Bushville and reading Robert Fisk, but given the extreme denial of which we are capable I would not expect any saving intelligence to emerge until water no longer flows from our taps and our hair has begun to catch fire.

So, bottom line... we're all doomed.

Folks, there ain't no way to fix it now. Malthus was right, but he didn't consider (or even know about) petroleum or natural gas. WE are made of fossil fuels. Yes we are! Think of all that fertilizer made from natural gas. There is nothing we can do to mop it all up and put it back where it came from, not even if "we" could plant rainforests from here to kingdom come. Let's find some ways to make what lies before us meaningful, cuz that's all we've got!!

The way we carry on with our society will eventually change. What remains to be seen is whether we change voluntarily and have a say in the outcome or whether we encounter the change against our will and get what we deserve in the end.

Look...your congress is owned by the mega billionaires and the corporations....neither ipso facto have a conscience larger than a pea....you are talking about INFORMING the public about the destructiveness of the consumer society....how do you do that if your media and pols are BOUGHT???

Everything Lindorff says makes perfectly good sense, and so, of course, is not remotely likely to happen.

"Let's discourage consumption, reduce production, and allow people to enjoy the fruits of their labor. "

Where will these people labor when production is reduced, and how will they enjoy the fruits of their labor when their opportunities for labor are downgraded to living like peasants?

Dear frank1569

Basically, yes.

It has been thus for years. Thirty seven years ago I was expecting civilization to crash in an ecological crisis -- many of us so-called "hippies" believed that. We wanted to create a new culture and transform society (the plan was to create new culture and seduce the baby boomers (then acutal babies)out from under what we then called "the establishment" -- good plan; didn't work, obviously), but only the dreamiest flower children among us believed we had a real big chance of succeeding. We had to give it a try because it was the only thing we could think of to do. In those days, when I was young, I expected the big crash to happen any second -- that was the source of my hippiethink: "the future is just a fantasy trip in your head, man; now is the only reality." Well, the big crash went on for decades without ever happening and I began to suspect I had been wrong. Maybe I should have planned for the future like all those believer-consumers who believed there was going to be one. Now I'm about to turn 62 and am a few years away from retiring with a pension that may or may not be there (see the many articles on Common Dreams about oncoming financial catatrophe), into a world where everyone who is surviving will be so busy scrambling to hang on with no time or place for compassion for "the elderly" -- i.e., me and my wife.

Kurt Vonnegut, many years ago, said "Things are going to get worse and never get better again" and that's obviously what's happening. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to do what they can to reverse the situation. To give up and say, "Screw it; we're doomed" ensures that the day can't be saved. My tagline as Paranoid Pessimist is "I hope I'm wrong, but ... " And I do. I take no joy in what's happening (some who think along my lines seem to, seem to have a "serves humanity right" attitude). I hope that everyone gets their act together, starts working for the common human good, uses the entirety of human imagination and innovative abilities to devise exciting solutions to all these problems, that a wave of compassion for the less fortunate (an essential component of "saving the day") sweeps through humanity leading to a golden age. I'll do what little I can to guide things in that direction, though no one ever listens to me (I'm a voice laughing in the wilderness).

What I can do is try to face the future with as cheerful an attitude as I can manage and try to be a pessimistic positivist, face reality without being done in by it, have hope for the future despite all the evidence that there isn't going to be one. A challenge, but, hey, that's what they say being human is all about. So I restart up my blog

http://www.paranoidpessimist.blogspot.com/

even though, when it was active, no one ever sent me a comment.

So I shall issue a challenge to humanity (like it needs one from me, or cares: Prove me wrong! Turn things around! Find solutions!

If all you folks who literally think these are the solutions and claim there is a majority supporting them actually chose to live them, you'd change the entire system from the inside out simply by living what you claim to value.

Such is the plight of the wayward leftist. So convinced they are of their vast unerring intellect that boring, mundane things like facts and history are trivial to them. You read the above posts like 2,000 years of human progress means nothing, that life expectancies doubling in the last 100 years is blase, and that we have nothing what-so-ever to look forward to. Myself, I have a more positive and forward-thinking approach to life. It's as good as we make it, and we should start with our own economic self-sufficiency and clean up our own lives, before we start making demands and dictates to the rest of the community.

Lindorff does not appear to be supporting any ideology, he is just stating we need to drop the subsidies for those endeavors that are destroying the earth and impoverishing humanity.

Most people work like slaves in a capitalistic frenzy to produce unneeded products, with the fruits of their labor being taken by the ruling class. Let's discourage consumption, reduce production, and allow people to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

To accomplish this we first must get a free press, change our system to a democracy, and make tax laws fair. The change will then come naturally and the transition will be painless and liberating.

all the handwringing cracks me up. every single person here could stop driving their car, today. stop buying wasteful products today. strive to move closer to work, today. stop eating lettuce from CA and strawberries from mexico, today. refuse to ever climb aboard another jet, today.

and of course all these things will have consequences...which will be consequences just the same later. it will cost more to move where everyone wants to live..no matter what. you will have to get used to a much more locally limited diet...no matter what. you will need to adjust to your horizons being those of peasants who do not waste energy traveling hundreds or thousands of miles for the selfish pursuit of personal pleasure...no matter what. you will have to give up the low cost of imports...no matter what.

Face it today, and do it today, and stop complaining about waiting to find someone who will make you and everyone else do what you claim to already want.........but most refuse to act on radically and decisively in your own life. 50% of the population never buying fuel again after today would decimate big oil profits. 50% of people never ever setting foot on an airliner or eating another mexican strawberry would slash these industries to the bone..and create new ones.

quit bleating about why no one will make you do these things and prove you are not a sheep but a factor...take action now and be a factor, not a whiner

I have read and appreciated all of the truly eloquent comments above. Out of everything, however, this was the most marvelous understatement:

"This transitional period could well be a hard age to live in."

I think I'll frame that and hang it on the wall above my computer.

Thanks

Boy, I wish the Progressive camp would get that nauseating poetry-of-our-demise out of our systems.

Yes, most humans are perambulating wood. We all get that by now. The question is whether or not any of us can make that terrifying trek from blithe ignorance, through terror, to decisive action.

People who wring their hands are no good to have around during an emergency. The situation is dire, and it demands people that can zero in on the problem, and actually do something about it.

If poxClematis wants to cash in his chips and sip wine, OK, he's another incarnation of the couch potato we've all come to love so much.

But I want to live. I want to learn, and adapt, and survive.

Don't you?

Mtn Goat ~ I applaud your attempts to hold back this stampede of ignorance and doom, but I think you're being a bit too logical for their tastes. Just offer them an alternative; perhaps by giving all THEIR assets to the poor and signing over THEIR pink slips for the SUV to the local food bank they will feel better about themselves. All these opponents of capitalism need to look at their own lives before they start directing the lives of others. I'm glad these fringe-thinking lunatics aren't lucid enough to actually promote these ideas, as somebody might actually think they're serious!

if you expect a specific outcome from 'education' or 'informing' people on matters of subjective desire...what you are asking for is not education or information..it is indoctrination.

perhaps it should occur people are already bombarded with your ideas..and they simply do not agree because you refuse to accept your ideals are not objective..they are akin to religious values others will not share simply because you 'educate' them.

PFDee, the promotion IS their problem..instead of *acting* today to demonstrate their intense commitment and acceptance of the consequences which would result in massive and immediate change they say they want...

they promote these ideas, complain they are not listened to, and wait for someone to lead them...in spite of the fact they claim to already be convinced of these horrors, certain that these acts are destroying the earth, and refuse to act immediately in service of these commonly held ideas they don't need leaders for in the first place. the promotion instead of action eats up all their energy

A new way to live and a new way to treat one another...

http://www.gpln.com
http://www.gpln.com/onwork.htm

MtnGoat, your rhetoric is lovely, but some of us don't realistically have the ability to do all those things you suggest. I would LOVE not to have the commute that I do, 66 miles each way. But my alternatives are to either quit my job (there are no jobs in my field that are physically closer) or to not live with my husband (who is in a similar situation with regard to his job). Neither is very acceptable. The best I have managed is to have a car which gets at least 30 mpg, and to carpool.

Hey Paranoid Pessimist:

Don't worry about it. Nobody likes doomsayers. But you are a kindred soul. The progressive in you hopes Dave Lindorff becomes President. The honest guy in you says it looks like we're screwed. It's the times we live in. Hang in there, pal. They need us.

Here are a couple of hopeful crumbs. Back when we were fish, according to the evolutionists, we didn't grow lungs until the puddles starting drying up. So it isn't beyond the pale of science that eleventh hour remedies are built into the stuff of nature. We might get one. Or failing that, it looks like the immediate future will contain either mankind's breakthrough into a wonderful new level of awareness or our apocalyptic demise, and either way we are privileged to witness the event.

Outerbeltway:

When I look at the scattering of creative, intelligent, positive responses to my whining defeatism (including yours), I don't feel too bad about tossing out my thoughts. I registered 30 democrats before the 2003 elections. I do what I do, but I think what I think.

Pax, Vox

Cel, the problem is that people will support forcing you to make these changes wether you choose them or not. This the point.

The consequences of requiring people to live where others want them will create these problems. Look at what you are saying...that in your judgement, there are no other acceptable alternatives. People here are pushing for actions that will not allow you to make these judgements except at extreme cost..which will require an even better job just to stay even.

my arguments as presented are not arguments I believe should be imposed. they are the distillation of all the complaints here and calls for action in restrictions and restructurings. though they are extreme and carry huge consequences doesn't matter, because it is what is being pushed for.

read all the literatue and arguments here. restricted travel and forced mass transit use by restricting housing locations, or by making you pay every penny for roads. making flight incredibly expensive. trade barriers to non local foods and products and high taxes on all imports. ending of 'overproduction' as seen by pseudoreligious ascetics. reorganization of society to support these things. it doesn't matter these consequences will limit your choices...that is the INTENT. To end the ability to choose what they do not like, or raise the cost so high they can prevent these choices because the average person can no longer afford them.

If you have a gripe with these ideas, it's not a gripe with me...it's with those who push them but will not live them on their own.

Look at the arguments...the value decisions you are making are part of what is killing the planet, and you make them for what *you* want...to live with your husband or where you can afford too. it is your commute, it is your lifestyle because the only thing which will work is incredibly radical action to impose vast restrictions or high costs in the hopes of achieving vast changes. these are argued for in many posts here. achievement of what these people want will eliminate the ability for you to choose the compromise you have chosen for you.

We needn't necessarily rush to socialism as we discard capitalism. My own readings (about 20 year's worth, a degree in anthropology & history and some life's experiences) on the matter suggest to me that the crux of the problem is not -ism, -ology, etc. but rather the concentration and centralization of power coupled with basic human dynamics. The more carnivorous (perhaps pathologically so) members of our species gravitate to the top of these power structures and it may not, in the end, matter what sort of system you have.

I'm fairly convinced that the alternative is decentralization, a return to localized/self-determined power. Far, far smaller districts that any single politician can command -- perhaps no more than 1,000 people, and no geographical displacement of their office more than a 10 mile radius. We have at least two magnitudes larger of a population than in 1776, and yet 2 senators per state, and one president. The ratio of representative:citizen has shrunk immensely, become even abstract.

This is a call for a new political backdrop. The economic backdrop would be similar, imagine a return somewhat to local economies. How much consumption is involved before you even buy something? In other words, how in the heck can it be cheaper to get something made in Asia, shipped across the Pacific, loaded onto a train, and put into a Big Box? The handling, the fuel costs, etc. There's a supply-side consumption that needs to be addressed first.

You people all make me feel dumb. :) Really.

I am TRYING not to fall into some sort of end-of-the-world ennui, but it's hard. Too many people just don't get it, or they do and just don't care.

A lot of us have this dominion philosophy that says that the world is dying anyway, so we might as well live it up. We're acting like a terminally ill millionaire that doesn't want anyone getting her money when she dies. So she spends it.

"Here are a couple of hopeful crumbs. Back when we were fish, according to the evolutionists, we didn't grow lungs until the puddles starting drying up. So it isn't beyond the pale of science that eleventh hour remedies are built into the stuff of nature. We might get one. Or failing that, it looks like the immediate future will contain either mankind's breakthrough into a wonderful new level of awareness or our apocalyptic demise, and either way we are privileged to witness the event."

So maybe Mother Nature has some surprise in store for us? Maybe our skin will become resistant to ultraviolet rays? Perhaps we'll grow gills and fins? I hope so.

I do what I can. I don't drive. I live relatively close to work. I carpool and use public transportation. I hoof it. :)

The author's view on saving Mother Earth is one that isn't going to be popular. He's come up with the solution that no one wants to hear. People will have to stop driving or eating kiwis or hamburgers (cows produce a good bit of methane). It's going to be a real fight to save us from ourselves.

to cel, and mtngoat and all others too

lovely rhetoric is a necessary thing - i re-read malcolm x regularly - he reminds me what courage is - and courage is a necessary thing -

these things that a 'modern' life demands - gasoline, imported grain - etc etc etc - dinner hour on the 405 - i've met a lot of nice cars there - these are expensive right now - and most people in the world cannot afford them - and neither can we - we just have not been presented with the bill yet - raising the dollar amount is only the beginning - wait until los angeles is buying its water from canada - wait until san francisco needs 250 billion to protect its waterfront from rising seas - and not just san francisco but san diego, la, seattle vancouver qand every small coastal city and town between - just wait until someone in a last ditch try to own some foreign sand and its oil sets of a bomb that obliterates tehran - these are the kinds of consequences that will come - and with it a kind of suffering that we've not seen or felt - it is the sixth great extinction and we brought this on, not ourselves, but the whole of earthly wonder. drive 66 miles to work - or dont - quit your job and dont drive at all

humans dont have to live like this and we dont have to live like peasants, either unless by peasant you mean people of the area and yes - we must becomepeople of our area - just like we dont generally, throw beer cans on the kitchen floor , we need to regain citizenship in the actual world where what we do has actual consequences and what we say is actually heard and what we think is actually thought under the sky that covers us all - the world that will come at least will do this - it will clear the air of the foul stench oil and its money

Here's something I was just thinking of. I'm certainly no scientist, but is there some way to dissipate these methane gases? Is there some way to cool the Earth via artificial means? We've used science to manipulate nature for as long as recorded time. Just getting people to stop eating, driving, and buying may not be enough. It seems like we're just trying to do this through economic and political means.

We are all one with our beautiful planet, we are part of her just as we are one with the universe.

The darkness has tricked us for too long with their lies but now we are beginning to know the truth about who we are and what we are the lies the darkness has forced onto us are being seen clearly everywhere we look, from the politicians to the corporate leaders and bankers, the monarchies, the religious leaders all are in league with the darkness who tell us lie after lie, shower us with fear after fear to control us and enslave us into the darkness too. The time of the global elite is almost over, they have no right to govern us or play their sick nefarious games with us, we are all one and we will through our own will heal our mother Earth and restore this world to the paradise it should be by living in peace, equality and harmony with everyone and everything on this planet, we are all one and it is love which connects us to everything.

peace and love

And just imagine what it will be like in 50 years when the worlds population will be 18 to 20 billion instead of the 6.5 billion we have now. Or how about at the turn of the next century when it will be approaching 6o billion. Population control has to be part of the approach, however that is eventually arrived at.

Everyone also talks about how everyone needs to move closer to work. Why? Instead of forcing mass population and economic dislocations wouldn't it be easier and better to move work closer to where people live. This is supposedly the information age. Why are people commuting to work when much of that work could be done at home by computer via the internet. Even small assembly work could be done at home and sent by truck or train to the main plant for major assembly. The government could easily encourage this through tax incentives/disincentives.

I've only mentioned a couple of items, there are many more. What we need is "out of the box thinking" to come up with creative solutions before we jump off the cliff into massive economic disruption and population dislocation.

Lobo Gris

Too bad we have the Bush admin when all of this is really starting to hit the fan. It's like you're late to get out of the house and discover a flat tire. Even with an executive that was alarmed we'd have to be pushing things, but with this chump in office...
I can commiserate with VoxClamantis, whose views are wholly consistent with his Wikipedia listing. I love your prose, but we don't all want to be peasants crying out. And I wager you don't either. (Psst, 67 ain't that old -- you could live to 120, that's 50 more years of struggle, big guy.)

Vox Clemantis-

If you're still on this thread - Pax. It's easy to tell you're a good one. I was after your goat, not you.

Best,

OB

For all the Amory Lovens types posting here, your're wrong. As some have correctly pointed out this planet simply can't continue to support 6.5 billion people. The modern industrial age is the result of abundant cheap fossil fuels. It can't be sustained and it won't. The Bush regime is just the opening act in a world struggle for vanishing resources. I suspect many who vent their spleen, desperation, pessimism, here have begun to do some of things that need to be done. I have, and I do, and though I'm not ready to slit my wrists I can't help but think that it's too little, too late.

It's difficult to disagree with most of what Mr. Lindorff suggests. I am wondering what will be done with all of those massive new tax revenues. If there is no revolution in our political system, do you think those who run our country (and, indeed, the world) will use that treasure for the benefit of the masses? Government imposition of new stringent rules and taxes will only serve to enrich the already rich and kill-off the poor and middle classes. I think this is the plan "they" - the elitists - have had all along.

Political realities aside, I'm sure the climatologists are on to something here and our oceans will rise and Earth will change in ways that may make it impossible for life as we know it to survive. This may happen in the next century or two. In the meantime, there's to be another ecological problem that can kill all of us in the next few years, whether we give up our suv's or not, and not related to
nu-cu-lar bombs. It seems the pollinating bee population is disappearing at an extremely rapid rate - up to 50% or more in the US and Europe -up to 80% in some localized areas. No one really knows if they died from some toxin introduced into the farming fields, or if they just sensed the rising oceans and moved on to another planet. Either way - if we don't fix that problem - and soon - we won't have to worry about staying home or swimming to higher ground. Without bees, the whole food chain will go bust in less than a decade or so. So, Mr. Lindorff, it does seem that people will have to starve.

I do not agree with some posters that Lindorff is wasting his time, merely whining to the whining choir. Human activity can be represented as a set of positive feedback loops, and Lindorff spreads the message that the positive feedback for behavior inconsistent with long-term human welfare must be disrupted while new positive feedback loops must be constructed. By doing so, he adds to the discussion that is essential to build the momentum necessary to engage in such disruption and construction.