[nirvana]

Regarding screwing up the direct environment- I only want to say that I believe a historical survey, and economics, would support the perception that as societies advance in standard of living, they tend to clean up their local environments.

People start having higher standards for everything, including the quality of their local environment, when mere survival is no longer the primary concern.

So, it could be said that this environmental damage is more a sign of poverty than a result of success. And that if/when the world economy is unleashed and allowed to grow for a couple decades, as a side effect of eliminating poverty we'd likely see massive improvements to the direct environment.

This is also consistent with the evolution of business- when its more competitive you want to minimize waste because its cheaper to use more efficient methods, which has a positive environmental side effect.

[gouranga]

This is a fair point and one I agree with, however the issue at the moment at least is that as standard of living grows, problems are pushed to other places. This is because they are truly uneconomical to solve locally due to people wanting to protect their standard of living.

The lowest rung of the ladder always gets to solve the problem at the end of the day.