[SamPhillips]

You shouldn't sometimes question it, you should persistently question and change it. It isn't just possible that we destroy civilization, it's actually quite likely. We know that dominate life forms have exhausted the resources which allowed them to thrive before, leading to their extinction. We can see it in the fossil record. The difference is we are smart enough to see it coming, yet we spend our time worrying about stuff that really won't matter when it comes crashing down.

[pygy_]

I wish we could find a way to get an economy that strives at equilibrium rather than mandating growth for prosperity as we do now.

[mcdonji]

Unfortunate that academics have reasonable solutions (or at least something reasonable to try) to many of the troubles we are encountering but we are unable to hear and internalize them. This poor guy has been singing this song for a long time. http://timjackson.org.uk/ecological-economics/pwg/

[pygy_]

I didn't know about Jackson, thanks for the tip :-)

[benjaminmhaley]

Living systems are in dynamic equilibrium. They bound from one extreme to another. A large adult gives way to a small child and back again. If they reach static equilibriums we call them dead.

The beautify of life is that it is perpetually moving towards new equilibria. We can't really settle it down without killing it. Instead we need to be sure it keeps going through boom and bust.

[pygy_]

It's almost poetical, but we're talking here about a species whose activity keeps on growing while the rest of the ecosystem dies. We're in the middle of a human-driven mass extinction, a third of arable land has been destroyed in the past 40 years. The CO2 crisis (warming and ocean acidification) is a cataclysm that unfolds in slow motion before our very eyes.

So I'll phrase it differently. I wish we could manage to turn what is currently a predatory/parasitic situation into a symbiotic one before the earth can't sustain us anymore. There's a dearth of terraformed planets to move to once we're done with this one.

I want my kids to be able to have kids with a conscience cleaner than mine right now.