Population and Consumption are essentially complimentary issues. Both have to be attended to in order to have a sensible policy for the earth. Different environmentalist groups ignore one issue in favor of the other at their peril.

The problem IMHO, is that 'intellectuals' and activists alike are describing the "bottleneck" of the future that is coming. There are two problems with this: first, it isn't nearly as beautiful and sculpted as a bottle; it's more of a solid rock wall with a very small tunnel through it. The second point is that WE ARE INSIDE THE BOTTLE NOW!!
On the other side of that wall is the African subSaharan savannah. Those people who are capable of surviving on the savannah without the rest of the world's support will still be there after all is said and done. I am so tired of the dispassionate talkers who think that by speaking of the future in compromising terms('the population will reach 9 billion by the end of the century) in academic terms and spewing statistics (groupthink which can't envision a future that is different from past experience requires historical data and ignores individual thought projections), that they will somehow be taken seriously by all the serious people who 'matter'.
NOBODY matters any more than the individual who sees the problem and gets off their computer-fattened backside and starts planting the trees or solar panels or whatever they think might make it through the Hole into their Savannah Future. Everyone has a different version of this (the Petri dish, Dieoff, Peak Oil cliff, etc.), but the end result is the same: those that know and prepare will have a chance to carry thier knowledge and skills into a future human condition. Those that have become attached to comfort and machinery and usury will not.
Global warming is just making the Hole tighter and tighter.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. We need economy, not The Economy.

Awaken,

Yeah, wake up and smell the garbage, breathe the smog, drink the tainted water and eat the chemically preserved and genetically modified foods so our growing population and expanding corporations can keep on devouring the Earth for the greater wealth and power of that glorious World Economy! Then line up for dialysis, insulin and chemo-therapy.

Humanity must make a decision? What does that mean? I must make a decision? No. It's too conceptual-intellectual Just live a non-greedy life and relax. Don't keep grasping for more. Know (and you all do know) when enough is enough. It will all sort itself out unless we keep complicating it with endless solutions. Wake up first.

I think we should focus on getting the anti-environmentalists out of power and Kucinich or Gore into power. If we can do that then we'll be well on our way.

www.ImpeachBush.org
www.ImpeachBush.org
www.ImpeachBush.org

A smaller population that recycles 100% of its industrial and human waste might survive, if it isn't already too late, but I see no sign that any such thing is even contemplated by hardly anyone. The vast majority refuse even to talk about family planning clinics or recycling the megatons of garbage. Instead, millions of illegal aliens flood across borders while mountains of trash are built outside the cities that produce it and tons of sludge are dumped off shore. Amid all the phony-baloney rhetoric it's business as usual.

Global Warming is the religion du jour for urban secularists. Since you refuse to believe in God, you worship some mythical mother Earth. You are every bit as intolerant as the religious fundamentalists, witness the death threats the bloggers who put Algore's electricity bill on the net got. You have a great need to proseltyze. You have a St. Francis de Assisi like urge to give up material things, (although unlike St Francis, you seem more interested in keeping YOUR things, and forcing others to make the sacrafice. Witness Prince Charles flying around in first class telling us we should not fly.) You have a Pope (Algore), and lesser prophets, like Pr Chuck and a lot of the entertainment community. Finally, what you do is not based on the scientific method, as you claims cannot be proven or disproven. Rather, just like religion, they must be taken of faith. You even have religious revivals, witness the Live Earth concerts...

Com_n_sense: Are you spitting good booze on SUVs? Dammit man, save the booze, use a hammer.

If we rounded up a bunch of 80-year-olds, how would we convince them that it was vitally important that they all lived to be 90? I sometimes wonder if that's what we're doing. Kayaker is correct: The human organism (as a population) will have its youth, mid-life, old age, and death ... this is certain, no matter how many of us want to deny it. Where we are on the trajectory is anyone's guess - though the present E.O. Wilson essay and others would support the idea that we could be in the "old age" phase.

Contrarily, we don't lack the resources or technology to extend/improve humanity's situation, merely the will. How many of us pro-environment responders (the "good guys"), in this very blog, drive cars, eat beef, smoke cigarettes or are overweight ... if we can't or won't make changes to extend our own lives, why would we ask humanity as a whole to change its ways?

Your comments are to logical and meaningful for many to comprehend or acknowledged. This is evidenced by the ruthless war on science and disinformation waged by the Bush Administration and their supporters (sadly with success). Until Americans lose their complacency and become better informed nothing will happen.

Quoting the late Molly Ivins---
" Sit up, join up. stir it up, get on line, get in touch, find out who's raising hell and join them. No use waiting on a bunch of wussy politicians".

We may not have enough money to save the planet...
Most people don't really care anyway.....
Al Gore will never become president.........
Politicians are not going to solve these issues....
Besides the economy works great we just need another planet....

Mr E:
You said,
"We may not have enough money to save the planet…
Most people don't really care anyway….."

I was thinking: "We may not have enough planet to save the planet",
then I read what you said, "The economy works great, we just need another planet"

Great minds die alike, I guess.
You're right; we need another planet,...and another....and another....
Until we learn how to be Creators instead of Consumers, that is. Too bad this one is already gone in the grand scheme of things. I'm just trying to get my children through The Hole (It's not a bottleneck if you're inside the bottle: it's just The Hole).
As for Most People, I think more of them care than the media will let on. Everyone I talk to cares about it, and I talk to everyone I meet about Blind Faith (in Systems, Religion, Government, etc.) and Consumption.
We are buying Pet Food ingredients from China; a country that has traditionally been starving to death. It is one thing to buy 'rice protein' from Louisiana corporate farms driving combines and tractors, but I can't fathom the chain of responsibility that says it is ok for some Chinese peasant to be transplanting rice 16 hours a day in mud up to their knees and elbows just so Fifi can be sold for profit at some vanity puppy mill.
The human that plants the rice isn't wrong. The human that cares for their animal isn't wrong. The System of Blind Faith in Profit, Providence and Invisible Hands is so bad it doesn't reach the level of Wrong.
Most of the people I meet would be willing to change, but they have been taught to seek comfort, rather than seeking what is right. They have been told that Comfort is more important because the people who seek the most Comfort always end up on top of the pile of dead bodies after the money is distributed.
We need to seek the Visible Hands; the ones that actually do the work. The kind of work that doesn't require Invisibility. That means farming, mining, educating without Systems of systems. We don't need Globalization: we need a globe with individuals who cooperate, rather than sheep who compete.

I'd take the job of monitoring 25 "hot spots" bio-sustainable than bomb Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran. Hmm...snorkling over a coral reef or spreading activated depleted uranium in Tehran?

But I wouldn't down play a seed program. Vandana Shiva talks about seed banks in her Earth Democracy address(alternativeRadio). Nature is pretty resiliant. Once the current carbon system is brought to exhaustion tremendous transformations will transpire in three to 7 years. Surviving a time frame like that might become an important factor. Seeds could come in handy at some point.

To be "feminized" has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with empathy and compassion both of
which are sorely missing from our so called "high culture" which is but a culture of death and denial.
Our total society and others who have been subtlely forced or accepted our so called " way of life" are deluded
and have lost this connecting link to humanity with the whole of the universe because of narccissim,
self indulgent, selfish behaviors which are the basis of dysfunction, greed, and the over abundance
of symbolically mediated consumption which will supposingly create " happiness". EO Wilson, Fr. Thomas Berry
and many others who "preach"? or educate about our global conditions are not part of some religious, secular cult
replacement for the spiritually impaired. Rather they are prophets whose words and knowledge shake the limbs
of our collective tree of life and beg us to become empathetic to our own bodies and the body of the earth itself.
Our western culture is far too anthropormorphizied - we think that being a rational animal we are somehow
disconnected from the rest of life and that we hold no allegiance or responsibility for the entire earth and cosmos.
We must begin to understand and to accept that we have fouled our own nests and that global reality is a reality
which can only be addressed by a change of mind, heart, soul, and direction of humanity itself.

Yes, life will go on... differently. That's always been the core problem of the environmental movement. It is easy to convince people that we shouldn't do something because that something will eventually kill our children. It's much harder to make them care about the permanent loss of wild places and minor species of flora and fauna.

I have this debate going on inside of me and it (of course)has to do with the article that has generated so many responses.
On the one hand, I think to myself that the world has been through tough times before and the Earth will made sure balance is restored. So I don't worry all that much. I am concerned about climate change and pollution and animals, but I know it isn't the end of the world.
One thing that bothers me is that although it might not be the end of the world, it could certainly be the end of humankind - which could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. What REALLY bothers me is all the innocent species WE are destroying. If it weren't for us, the world would continue to go on about its slow ways of doing things. If it weren't for the way we have taken everything for granted and treated this world like one huge garbage can, then so many animals that shouldn't be dying wouldn't be dying.
The other thing that troubles me is: what kind of a world are we handing over to the next generations, who had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this? I'll be dead long before life probably becomes a living hell for the vast majority of people on the planet.
It is past time for drastic change now. And it must begin at the individual level and continue on up to massive displays of resentment toward any and all who would have us believe that there's nothing really serious going on. I do my part each day. I don't use gasoline, I don't use heated water, I recycle everything possible - I do my best in my small world. I hope more and more begin to make changes in how they live. It's not too easy at first, but after a while in becomes quite easy and it makes you fell good. "Think globally - act locally."

I think the radio host, Betsy Rosenberg, is doing exactly the sort of work that needs to be done to inform us of the on-going ecocide, and to raise awareness of what can be done about it.
http://www.ecotalk.net

Here's how it is, the way I see it, is that we are one with the Earth, we are part of her, and she is calling out to us to stop our stupidity before it really it too late. Some of us have already woken up to this fact, we are being called by her to change our ways before it is too late, she will help us mend her, but we have to do this quick, we have to look at everything which is negative to our being and everything, including our beautiful worlds being, things I see, and there could be more, it is foolish that we are putting value on anything but life, we have to remove value of all things, the only value is life itself, everything which is harmful to the environment must be stopped in a limited time, no more nuclear power, there are many ways to produce more than enough power for all our needs, all wars must cease, a radical rethink of the farming and agriculture methods has to thought of and implemented by next harvest, no more patents, no more of the genetically modified plants or animals which are an abomination of all things natural, naturally blended plants and cross breeding of species is fine we can look at that as evolution, all weapons must be destroyed, no more research in any form of warfare or anything which can harm us or the world in any way, look into research to aid with making our life and our world better for the good of all of us in ways which least damage our beautiful world, healthcare should be universal with real research done on the flora and fauna for proper medicines which stop disease not lead to addiction, an end to famine, we have enough resources to not just give people temporary care but to actually give them the means to provide everything they need to live well. Our minds have no limit we have got this far with the technology allowed to us and not kept to be put to purposes of war and the detriment of our lives and our world so imagine how we can use it for good and how we can restore the world to her the beauty she should be.

Look around you, we aren't different at all, yeah some us may have different colour skin, so fucking what, some of us may do things others may not approve of, ask only one question: are they doing anyone any harm? if the answer is no, again so fucking what walk away get back into your moment, if the answer is yes, do something about it, take responsibility of your own life, look at where the idea of police has got us, we rely on a force which is supposed to protect us who never show up when a crime is talking place, instead some of them abuse their authority, they are used against us at valid peaceful protests and some of them treat us like shit even though our causes are just and sound, they protect the ones which do the most damage and some beat us or shoot us if we raise our voices in complaint at the injustice which is going on in the world, ask yourselves, do we really need policing if the only value is life itself, and further to this, with no value on anything, everything being equal there would be no need for any to go wanted, ever, our Earth provides ample food for everything which co-exists with her, the same is true of water, though we have allowed her water to become polluted and we have to undo the damage done, we have to be as one and each do our own little bit to aid our Earth to help clean the planet, form ourselves into communities and help each other out and help other communities out when they need help, but each play a role in the harmony of our worlds biosystem to ensure hers and our survival.

Embrace all cultures, they are each special in their own way, there are no right ways to do things, there are no wrong things with the exception of doing harm on another, do things as we want to enjoy them not because we are co-erced, in any form, it is wrong, I know because it hurt me inside very bad but I have worked through this and by realising that love is the only way and have found forgiveness and become inspired to follow my dreams of writing poetry and painting. Life is about being, experiencing life and sometimes making mistakes or doing foolish things, it's how you move on from that moment is what counts, we make our own world of beauty around us and aspiring at doing our best that we can be and doing the things we love. I ask you, would this mean the end of society or would it be the dawn of a new one? Throughout my life I have met with people who would do their jobs for free as they do it for the love of their work, they grew up harbouring their dreams and followed them becoming the person working in their chosen profession, this includes fishermen, farmers, butchers, chefs, people who work in waste management because they want to help keep our Earth clean and attempt to make her even cleaner, people who choose science, people who choose technology, people who choose building, people who love to work in bars, people who choose the arts, music, paint and writing these are our highest forms of expression and allow growth amongst us all as individuals by the musings of the soul, people who like to entertain as we all need some outside entertainment from time to time, people who get a kick out of having sex for the enjoyment of others as long as it is not forced upon the person, we all have sexual urges and mastarbation is pleasureable though nowhere nearly near sex, and i'm sure i've missed a lot of things which people have grown up with a love to do and would do it for free if everything was equally shared and all the items needed to allow that person to live life to the best is available to them freely, i know we'd all do our most to do everything we can to achieve this.

Getting out of our minds is fine too on whatever we choose, as long as we can behave ourselves in the presence of others and have a good time on our substance of choice what harm is it to anyone else? it's only when we can not control ourselves on a substance that we become a problem, if we can't control ourselves on a substance we really should refrain from it as it is affecting not just you but everyone around you in a harmful manner.

Think of our time on Earth as a one of wonder, and then think that we are part of a living being and our being is as part of the living being and if we fail to be harmonious amongst ourselves we start destroying the living being, and as we are part of the living being, we destroy ourselves, and if we destroy ourselves we will end up destroy the living being in which we live, we may just wipe ourself out of existence, and do we really want that?

This is why love is the only way, as we are the Earth and we have to love ourselves and each other and everything that co-exists with us on this beautiful planet which aswell as we are part of she is also our home and to do anything but love to ourselves, each other and everything else which co-exists on this beautiful planet.

This life is great, sometimes things aren't as great but we pick ourselves up off the floor and continue and life is great again, we just have to put some effort into changing who we have turned into and become what we should be protectors of the Earth, none of us individually can protect the Earth, nor can any nation, and by protect I mean look after and care for, we have to look after our own individual space we inhabit at any given point in the now, in our own space it is up to us, however outside our own personal space then we should be conscious at all points that we are should be caring and not harming anyone or anything around us.

Let's follow our dreams, do the things which inspire us to be all that we can be and radiate our love across the world, bringing freedom from those who conspire to control us and bringing peace to our world for once and for all, we have the power inside us all if we want to live life we desire and not under the control of an elite few who will end up killing us all, themselves included if we don't unite as one and stop this madness which is leading us on a downward spiral towards our own destruction, and that of everything else, including our beautiful world.

We have a choice to make, all of us, let us use our minds wisely and be all that we can be, be it pursuing either light or dark ways, the only choice open to us is love for without it we will all die, and the only thing my ego asks of me is don't let me die, look inside your soul and it will say the same thing, we can not afford to allow ourselves be killed by a small number of fanatical lunatics whose only desire is greed; life is way too important to be thrown away stupidily but this is what we are doing by allowing those who try to control us govern us , the same people who now still want to do even greater damage to our world, ie ourselves, this has to stop we have to be in control of our lives in order to restore the planet to her former beauty and rid the concept of value to everything except life itself, protect life not destroy it, and the only way to do this is with love.

I have spent time observing with my own eyes, my own mind, and until recently did not believe in anything much, but I know one thing and that is I know that love is the strongest force there is in this universe because it is what keeps us connected together as one and we can achieve much more being connected by love than we can be being divided by hate. I also feel that our mother Earth is crying out to us to help her recover, we can keep going as it is now and let the global elite fatally wound us all or hope that things will change through these same people who try to control us which will never happen, or we can take responsibility for ourselves and we can come together as one with love flowing between us all and work together to save our beautiful home, Earth, I know which one I choose, I want to do my own small part in helping restore our planets health and help her achieve a new beauty for us all and everything else to live and co-exist on

I don't have all the answers to the solutions, I don't claim too, we all have minds and we can all help by using our own unique talents as individuals to our best abilities we can put those talents to help find solutions to change our current false society based on greed, hate and division compounded by lies, into a society based on love, peace, equality and co-operation as well as the truth never being hidden from us again. Let's all come together as one and make this our reality.

Love is the only way for this to happen and I choose love, life, peace, equality, harmony and to have fun pursuing my own interests as well as doing my own little bit to contribute to the greater good of caring for our beloved planet, the Earth.

Let's do our own part, we are of the Earth, we are all connected, we are all one :)

one of many concerned people who co-exist with everything else with the Earth who wants to do their bit for bringing peace to our world and ensuring our Earth shines with new beauty

The idea that humanity has only two choices available creates an atmosphere of doom. C'mon E.O. Wilson you have a responsiblity. You are granted the privilege of having your blogs posted on this very progressive website. Your responsibility is to empower us the readers. Make us happy to be human, make us willing and able to protect the flora, fauna and the little squiggly creatures. Don't be so 'Al Gore'.
There is a way to weasel out of the choices you present. The idea is to embolden humanity to evolve, to shift, to accept the responsibility that we humans have special abilities. It is time to use them. It is time for each of us to come to terms with our relationship with the earth, with ourselves, with our love.
adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca

$30 Billion? Is that all? Bill Gates could take care of the problem single handedly!

Unfortunately, the problem seems like another which will not be solved by philanthropy, but by the disempowerment, the dethroning of corporations. As long as corporations rule us, all life is at risk.

This is a social problem and individuals can opt out of driving, consuming, and breeding to a degree based on their understanding and seriousness about the tragedy unfolding. To solve a social problem, however, individuals making self-sacrificing decisions to lessen their footprint on the planet doesn't begin to address the major points in Wilson's article (which is not a blog); to solve social problems we must act together poltically, decisively in a manner that creates the conditions that can truly end the tyranny of corporate rule and foster a new era of democracy. Can it be done by voting when the political process is corrupt? Apparently not. We can't even end the war in Iraq, a no brainer. What will it take? As I've suggested in the past, it may take something like a general strike to end corruption and end corporate rule, to put a stop to corporations being involved in the electoral and political processes which govern us, to end corporate control over the media 'airwaves' which, supposedly, are owned by the public.

"The Birth of Our Power" by Victor Serge is a good book to prepare for such a possibility.

A bacterial colony growing on a petri dish eventually peaks in population when it uses up the available resources. Then the population collapses. The historical growth curve of human population is virtually the same as that of bacterial growth on a petri dish. We are still in the exponential growth stage but will inevitably reach the plateau and then the precipitous crash. Unfortunately for the rest of the species on earth we are going to take many of them or perhaps most of them with us. But cockroaches will remain...

One-Love, thanks for sharing your optimism and vision, the world you wish to see is one where the twin strands of DNA, symbolically yin and yang, dance in harmony together. To the degree religions, and then nation states have wedded themselves to a MARS view of the world--me first, competition, aggression, power-based hierarchy, male rights (until recently), creates a VENUS deficit. Venus according to myth, is Mars' lover and counterpart; but in our world MARS attacks VENUS. Love, particularly its sensual component has been called a sin, and rendered a taboo. I think the early church came up with this schtick to control people, as sex is a VERY powerful force. The very concept of demonizing sex, calling it a sin has distanced people from nature and true aspects of their own natures. Wilhelm Reich, who wrote a book so radical he was given a lobotomy in the US--The Function of Orgasm--wrote his treatise in his effort to understand what went wrong with the German psyche. Why did a civilized, educated people fall into a kind of hypnotic worship of the fuhrer, this MARS god. And make no mistake, Hitler was both born under the Mars-ruled sign of Aries (as was Saddam), and wanted to create an ARYAN race. In the scholarly book, The Spear of Destiny, author Nigel Ravencroft speaks at length of the nazi party and how it went into serious occult ritual and courted the dark side, that which divides the great holism, the HOLY communion that indeed forms the cohesion that holds our world and its many interrelated ecosystems together. Until the worship of what Nietschze termed "the oily muscle," still glorified in wrestling, football, militarism and general macho is revered in balance with VENUS gifts--like art, peace, culture, diplomacy, sharing, unity... our natures remain distorted. We veer as individuals towards ego, the lowest expressions of behavior, and build societies based on fear, lack and military means to ownership. MAN must learn to LOVE woman and see HER as his DIVINE partner and equal... since religion built the patriarchal ideologies that placed a chasm between the genders, from that WOUND all other ism divisions and hierarchies arise. Societies that are dominated by outside aggressors tend to treat their women the most shabbily as men feel their "manhood" has been taken, and want to feel bigger, better, stronger and mightier than women. GOD made 2 genders, and we have 2 brain hemispheres, and no boat can travel upstream when only ONE oar is being utilized. For centuries women, along with the DIVINE feminine has been shunned, denigrated, demonized, enslaved, etc... we can only heal when we get the balance back. I watch people throw garbage onto pristine Florida roads along nature's most sacred preserves. Why? They see the land as God-forsaken, as dirty, as "no man's" land, etc. The land is VENUS, a symbol of the fecund MOTHER earth... and how SHE is treated, symbolizes how MEN (or male power figures, certainly) view and value the necessary FEMININE partner to this equation called life that we all share. This is not about feminism, it's about HONORING all... both genders, every race, every religion, every nation and its cultural ways. OURS is not a GOD of uniformity! Just look at the PLANNED diversity... the ones in charge kill everything and plant one kind of tree, or send all the children with unique minds into the unapologetic factory that education has become, so their minds all come out uniform (i.e. standardized tested). IT is overtime for a new model, a new paradigm, as the World Social Forum exclaims... another world is possible, and it begins with the CENTER holding.

Kayaker-
Unlike a petri dish with its fixed energy supply, the earth has a constant energy input- the sun. What we need is a way to capture more of this energy directly, rather than relying on the currently convenient source of fossil fuels. There is certainly no shortage of sunlight. If this happens, there is no reason that the human population cannot stay in the plateau region, like any other successful animal population.

I am currently busy composing comments which will be longer and more far-reaching in their import than the article posted.

When you destroy an ecosystem, you don;t wind up with no ecosystem. You just wind up with one different to the system you had before. Yes, there will be no more tigers or polarbears. But there will be new bacteria. Just wait till some microorganism or other learns how to eat plastic.

Oh, and that feminist diatribe is a crock of. The destruction that humanity wreaks is driven by the feminine demmand for a comfy nest, the feminine urge to pop out little demi-cones. For most women, having a baby is the single greatest acheivment of their lives, often the only one.

Without the feminine, men would live in harmony with nature like bears in the forest.

I think E.O. is, out of expediency, ignoring the whole global warming phenomenon. If we lived in a perfectly resilient world maybe $30B would make a dent, but if the entire climate reconfigures, crashing the whole system, that's going to be chump change. Our problem is that a scant 1 century has passed since the upscale of the industrial revolution. The Earth ecosystem deals in tens of millenia and epochs; it hasn't had a chance to adapt, compensate for this obnoxious newcomer. Humans require a "time-out" to give our mother a chance to regroup. How to do that, how to do that?

Paul M- I have to agree that feminism is proving to be bankrupt in the face of Global Warming and ecosystem destruction.

If the feminists wanted Global Warming to stop all they would have to do is make sure that any guy with a small solar bungalow, an electric-assisted bicycle and a vegetable garden was wallowing in sex with lingerie models.

Currently the path to sex for men is the ability to finance larger vehicles and bigger houses crammed with useless crap from CostCo. Hence the result.

Ask your peers ladies; Jay Leno with his car collection and GHG emissions of a small city or Mr. eco-concious who bikes everywhere and lives in a 2 bedroom unit and grows great tomatoes. Last I checked mr. eco lives alone.

Until we get that one fixed you can kiss bio-diversity goodbye. I hope everyone likes the taste of pigeon because seagull is just inedible.

Population control is the only answer and the great religions of the world forbid any kind of birth control. It is time to face it kids, we are all going to have to rely on our individual skills of adaptation because the 6.5 billion on the planet are going to grow to 9 billion in thirty years.

Riding bikes, giving to the Sierra Club, or any other such nonsense is going to have the same impact as spitting into the wind. Without popluation control you are simply fooling yourself that anything constructive can be done. Given the stance of the world's great monotheistic religions to population control you better quit hoping for a solution and concentrate on how to deal with the reality of ecosystem change on a critical scale.

Lysistrata is a great play, no doubt, and one of my favorites.
Yet it seems like a impressive feat of mental gymnastics to blame "the feminine" for this mess, considering how few women are in decision-making roles either on the environment or anything else.
No doubt, some of the women who HAVE risen to positions of power have proven just as despicable as their male colleagues. Still, it's a pretty small sampling, don't you think?
As a man, I'd be lost without the feminine, myself. And unless there's been a huge increase in test-tube babies I haven't heard about, without the feminine men would not be living happily in the woods; we'd not be living at all.
It's justy a silly stance to take, in my opinion, and distracts from the actual issue, and any real solution.
We're kind of all in this together.

SJ
www.spartacusjones.com

Great discussion here, and I want to briefly address some ideas raised. 'Kayaker' noted that our species is behaving like bacteria in a petri dish. I wrote the very line over 20 years in a pamphlet railing against the wasteful use of land and water to produce meat for human food rather than eating the grains directly. However, it is never too late to 'wake up' from our collective nightmare and I continue to find some consolation in chaos theory; in many natural circumstances, 'phase transitions' (and similar phenomenon) occur rapidly, not gradually. It is like lightning. Old religious traditions will be irrelevant in the face of starvation; breeding doesn't occur when there is no food, no petroleum to support that process.

Siouxrose, a rare woman to step up in this male dominated forum, deserves no disparagement. She makes a good point that I can agree with: the world social forum has pointed to another direction we can take, year after year. And yet it is ignored. Why? One word: corporations. Again, corporations have come to be the new kings that rule our world; they are less moral than kings, less human, and have put us all on the path of riding on a suicidal train hell-bent on the destruction of all mammalian life on this planet. They run our politicians, decide who is a 'viable' candidate. They run our media and tell us which stories are important. These processes must be put in the hands of the public, run democratically at the grassroots level. We will need to conduct a peaceful social revolution somehow to successfully make a transition away from corporate rule to a real democracy. Check out http://www.democracyunlimited.org/ for ideas on how this can be done through grassroots organizing. If not deliberately, then it will happen through a general strike like a bolt of lightning when the conditions become much worse.

How do we end corporate rule when they have corrupted our political processes? That is the question of the day, the question of our era, perhaps the last era of human civilization.

Siouxrose--

Isn't it just wonderful how your insights receive from critics like Paul M? Sounds like sychronicity to me. When you build it they will come! 8o))

Thank you Stiv for the affirmative words. I find that the metaphysical point of view is so lacking in just about every publication, that I have no choice but to bring that perspective to this forum. Commondreams is one of the most powerful websites I've ever come across. Even when I spent time in India and Nepal, I found myself looking for internet cafes to check 'the news.' Also, thank you to Spartacus. Many readers would be enlightened to understand the underlying thematic issue of Lysistrada. And to poor Paul M, you must be spending time all by your lonesome inventing ways to reproduce without the gentler sex, alas, back to mitosis, what a grand idea.

And thank you, chivalrous Poet for championing the lady's perspective! What Paul also couldn't quite GET is that as I said, respecting life as a dance between its intended complementary parts is hardly feminism... THAT is what PRO-life really means!

"This shift seems inevitable anyway because of a corporate-level Darwinism: Those corporations and nations committed to further improvement and application of the technology will be the economic leaders of the future."

Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me? And when does this Darwinian struggle take place? Soon I hope, because so far the fate of the electric car, the latest bogus hype about biofuels and nuke-yu-lar energy, and the continued decimation of rainforest, to name only a few examples, do not bode well for "corporate level Darwinism" and "economic leaders of the future."

E.O., Can you come up with some other vehicle beside the marketplace to ensure the survival of species who are truly the "weakest among us"?

Oh, and kids, I don't think the gender wars are helpful here. We are one species and it has taken the gleeful cooperation of both sexes to get us into this big mess.

Communitarian, it sounds like you think there are too many of us. So, exactly, WHO and HOW MANY do you propose to exterminate? Just wondered.

If, within the next decade or so, some clever capitalist manages to invent a method of capturing solar energy that is less expensive than fossil fuels, it will fundamentally change the issue. Any company that did this would certainly be the business leader of the century. It probably won't happen, but I'm not giving up hope yet.

Question for the global-warming hand-wringers in the audience: When was the last time our little planet has had a period of static temperature? Don't just knee-jerk this answer, look it up!

Answer: Never.

You're being willingly manipulated for purely political purposes. Yes, the temperature of our planet IS changing; as it always has, and always will. It will NEVER remain constant, no matter what we do, or don't do. It is up to us to EVOLVE and deal with what happens! If we don't, we die. Pretty dang simple, isn't it? Should we do whatever is reasonable to keep our enviroment clean? ABSOLUTELY! But we should NOT let outselves be blindly manipulated by those with economic and political agendas who are claiming to be environmental saviors! Don't buy into it!

What I note in the article is that the solutions to a scientiically created problem are always science. Scrape coca leaves and get a cocaine epidemic? Simple--just come up with a new drug to counter that.
As we can observe with secularists like Michael Crichton, it is possible to be a religious fanatic without believing in a deity. Instead of believing a God will bail humans out of trouble, they think scientific invention will.

The idea of self control--doesnt enter the mix--because humans collectively arent very good at managing themselves(and that is what gives the irony to the idea that humanity's role is as custodians of Nature--humans could have hardly done a worse job being custodians if they absolutely despised the planet-and there is a case to be made that contempt for earth accounts for some of the problems).

Its certainly possible that global warming will not play out as scientists are predicting-do they know everything?-but, moderation and restraint makes sense whether the science supports it or not.

Realists know this.

We are running out of natural resources at the same time we are suffering from population explosion and dramatic loss in habitation.

There were two ways to work with this inevitability.

1) The world in a spirit of sharing to avoid conflict would work out a plan to share diminished resources and at the same time find solutions to both controlling population and alternative sources of energy.

2) Or do what we've always done. Seek out what we needed and crush with the use of deceit and brutal force any and all that would get in our way not really caring that the consequences of our actions would seal the world to a horribly, miserable fate.

We picked #2 - again. We always pick #2. I've never been a big fan of mankind.

So, we've blown it. We crawled out of the cave and never let go of the club and we wound up beating ourselves to death with it.

It's why I drink and spit on SUV's.

One of the most under-reported stories is the disappearance of bees. The jury is still out on what's causing this extinction and the time to find out and do something about it is way too short.

Einstein said that if we should ever lose a major link in the ecological system as such mankind would last a mere 4 years. In the past 3 years 60 to 70% of bees have died. At that rate next year, unless we come up with a miracle solution, this link will be gone.

The Mayan calendar ends December 21, 2012. Maybe they were on to something.

It's good that the posts with the most comments are the ecological-global warming ones. If anyone bothers to read all the way down to this point, let me thank you for your concern about ideas and debate about this issue.

I just got back from a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway (US1) from San Francisco to Monterey to see the Aquarium. I used some carbon. I rented a car (and a motel room) to do so. I haven't owned a car since 1971 (except for a 2 year stretch during the mid 80s when I had an old Datsun truck) but I used to rent them for weekend getaways 2 or three times a year. The cost of gas, the increasing difficulty of finding a parking place in San Francisco, and a little bit of ecoconscience has reduced this to about once every other year.

I alway loved Highway 1 -- I've loved it since before I had a driver's license, and I wanted to do at least part of the drive one more time (in addition to wanting to see the Monterey Aquarium). It's sad to think that if the global warming worst case scenarious play out as predicted (and, being the Paranoid Pessimist I fully believe the worst will happen), all that will be underwater -- including the Monterey Aquarium -- before I reach four score and ten.

I sure do hope all the optimists who think that somehow or other humanity can stop it from happening are right. If not, a spectacularly beautiful roadway and a valuable scientific research and education center will be going glub, glub, glub under water. Sayonara.

I think I understand this. Those of us who have stuff, really big house, SUV, wide-screen TV and nice health insurance, are asking those without stuff to change THEIR habits and give up stuff in order to defray Global Warming.

Areas of overconsumption:

Transportation: The rich still get to fly everywhere. (eco-ego-toursim?) SUV's are ok as long as they are hybrids.(even if they don't get great mileage then either). Futile travel (cruises) and shipping (WalMart) will not be constrained. Trains are off the table unless already in service.

Food: Strawberries from Chile anyone? Food seems to do a lot of travel these days. Sorry vegans but wars have been fought over the right to eat meat, find another way to cut emissions.

Housing: Somebody explain why two adults with grown children NEED several 10,000 sq. ft houses. American houses are energy gobbling monsters when they don't have to be. That includes you Al Gore. A 900 sq ft solar powered house is adequate for 2-4 people.

Consumer goods: consumer goods are overconsumption. Arguing population restrictions for people who are malnourished and without adequate housing by computer is just arrogent.

In short we the wealthy give up nothing and accept no restrictions on our lifestyles while the poor die due to our waste stream. Nobody gives up nothing or accepts the responsibility to change first.

Yeah, this is going to work. Maybe the deniers are choosing the sane path; just ignore it and maybe it will go away.

There is no such thing as "masculine" or "feminine" nor are these ignorant concepts linked in any factual way to what sexual organs people posses. There is no "gentle sex" there are only gentle individuals; and the world can do without the ugly, sexist, cruel, vapid, and homophobic women which it is populated by. There are not "two natural counterparts," there are billions of types, and they don't all have counterparts.

Awaken: Exactly. What does anyone mean by 'humanity' when they say "humanity must....". Access to cheap energy and resources mined with cheap oil has built the walls that separate us into our specialization corridors. As the corridors converge on The Hole, those walls will have to be knocked down by individuals who choose not to follow everyone else in their particular path. Regardless of the mumblings of the PTB, it is the responsibility of each person to find a frugal way to get to the future. We don't have to wait for scientists to tell us that the sun is getting hotter or the CO2 in the atmosphere is getting higher. Each of us knows how much energy we use, how much we purchase and discard, and that wasting something for the sake of wasting it is wrong. When we consider that it took billions of years for bacteria to remove enough carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to allow animal mobility, we cannot pretend that dumping that stored carbon back into the atmosphere within 100 years is going to be good for us, regardless of the temperature.

Bill Moyers and Megan Quinn '08

What is the Net Creativity of your community, your region, and your species? What are you giving back to Nature compared to what you consume?

If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. We need economy, not The Economy. A consumption tax is a lot less regressive than a dead planet. (http://www.fairtax.org) Too bad it's a Republican-sponsored bill, eh? If it isn't Liberal enough (HR25), then tell your Congress to raise the rate. Make everyone aware of what the overhead is on consuming.

Tijuanalibre,

None whatsoever, and you are very insulting to suggest any violent intentions on my part. Only peaceful persuasion can possibly gather support for a voluntary movemnet to reduce the human population. People hate to be told what to do by some "higher authority" especially when it traps them in lives of poverty with more children than they can support.
Thus, gentle lessons in school are what children need to give them the wisdom to behave appropriately throughout their lives. Medieval dogma does not help, but only casts fear, shame and confusion upon innocent children who need to fully understand their impulses and how to control them.
There are indeed way too many people on this planet, but there is a peaceful way to reduce our numbers - sex education in schools and family planning services in clinics. Then, as women exersize their right to decide if and when to birth how many or few children, our species will begin to live in peace and balance with the Earth.

Communitarian: I don't think Tijuanalibre meant to be insulting. Just practical from that standpoint that all 'humanitarians' develop this argument against population control. Someone inevitably asks "Who made you God?" or "Who do you wish to exterminate?" It's a bluster argument that doesn't mean anything. We have already been exterminating people through consumption of their resoruces for generations. The rich get richer and the poor die for it. Money represents someone's life cycle. How we use it determines how many, and who, we kill. As long as we let TPTB assign the value of human lives to money, then the redistribution of money will represent the redistribution of human lives. None of us is any more or less guilty in this. It just is the way of The Economy as God.
Nature has an economy that has been developed, also. It is called Net Creativity. If your species doesn't create some usefulness to the universe, then it goes extinct. The amount of usefulness has to exceed the amount of consumption. This is why Darwinism is so misunderstood. It isn't a competition, (dog eat dog), it is COOPERATION with everything else that determines the 'fit' of a species to its environment.
Your evaluation of how to properly control population through normal attrition and birth control is correct. I especially like how you describe what children need. I wish everyone talking about school shootings would read what you said. "Thus, gentle lessons in school are what children need to give them the wisdom to behave appropriately throughout their lives. Medieval dogma does not help, but only casts fear, shame and confusion upon innocent children who need to fully understand their impulses and how to control them."
I especially think anyone who has a particularly sensitive child should read it, and learn to listen, because the child they think is ignoring them, or stubborn is probably years ahead of where they think that child should be, and is trying to find some substantial example of leadership (parental or social) to take lessons from, and not finding it. Especially when they have to get through cliques and bullies to find it. There is too much crap and not enough care for people with weakened mental immune systems to fit. When we look around at the actual environment we have created for our children, we have to ask ourselves, "What type of personality actually fits that environment?" If you aren't outraged, you aren't watching enough TV.

"If, within the next decade or so, some clever capitalist manages to invent a method of capturing solar energy that is less expensive than fossil fuels, it will fundamentally change the issue."

Well, that's a given. In our lifetimes, fossil fuels will be too expensive for any but the most critical uses.

As for my comments re sexualtity:

The opposition party has the luxury of knowing that whatever they propose, they will not have to follow through or answer for it. Likewise, feminists can safely say what the world would be like if men did not run the world. There's no reason to belive they are right.

The world is not populated by immaterial spirits of any kind, "transcendental" or religious. If nature is to be saved from man, it will be by scientific knowledge and collective effort.

The future is in neural pathways....
The future is in our choices....its all we do
What kind of world community do we want to live in?

How can we encourage one another to grow....?
How can we together move beyond a victim culture?
How can we create an economy which actually works with life?

I find the second to last setence odd: "Quite apart from obedience to the universal moral imperative of saving living nature — the Creation — based upon religion and science alike, conserving biodiversity is the best economic deal humanity has ever had placed before it since the invention of agriculture." Wilson makes two questionable assumptiona. First, that the religious and scientific imperative of conserving nature is somehow seperate from the economic benefits of conservation and second, that agriculture was necessarily a smart economic and environmental choice. Wilson does justify the first assumption by claiming that the two reasons for conserving nature point in the same direction, but Wilson seem's to subordinate the moral issue to the economic issue. Clearly, if all people followed some sort of moral code and rejected selfishness for the better of society, the society would function better and the economy would likewise thrive. It strikes me as though Wilson is saying it's a lovely surprise that doing what is best for the environment and for the world is also what is best for the economy. It shouldn't be a surpise at all. Secondly, I take real issue with the agriculture allusion. Before agriculture, humans lived by hunting and foraging. Our populations were rising but at a slow pace. Our Environmental "footprint" was no larger than the rest of the World's species. Certainly, from such a state, we could cause no mass extinctions, create no catastrophic changes, and certainly not warm the Earth. By adopting civilization, we gave our population the means to expand rapidly. We laid the foundations for a path that would lead to the incredible consumption and destruciton of today. We also created modern science and technology, tools with which to combat the inevitable environmental harms caused by the benifits of civilized life. If people had never discovered agriculture, or better yet had never evolved, the world would not face the threats it faces today. Understanding this is the key to living a minimalist life and having the least Evironmental impact that is possible.