Jan and Mindchild,
Just spent a weekend on the University of Vermont campus with a group of futurists, and last week met and heard Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute speak. Lovins is pretty amazing - doing a lot of things that other folks are only talking about. For instance he just completed the design on a 5-passenger SUV that gets nearly 100 mpg - and can be returned to the factory and recycled every few years (I understand this is becoming much more common in Europe). Lovins also grows bananas in his headquarters office building - which is located high in the Rocky Mountains.
I too am struggling with the dire warnings of deep ecologists and then those like Julian Simon who question whether we're facing as severe an ecological crisis as some are saying. There do seem to be some things to be seriously concerned about though, and among them are the fact that we are for the first time experiencing mass extinctions of plant and animal species (about 27,000 species per year) as a result of one species overusing the planet's resources.
And there can be little doubt that we are using up oil and gas resources at an incredible rate with often bad consequences to the water and air that we all need to survive. And no matter how much oil and gas there is, they will eventually run out. What this will result in is hard to say - but my feeling is that it is better to err on the side of assuming serious problems and responding so those don't happen rather than assuming minor glitches only to find that we've woefully underestimated matters.
Writers like Paul Hawken in "The Ecology of Commerce," present what seems to be a balanced view that sees the solution in an integrated effort involving science, environmentalists and business. His view of businesses actually IMPROVING the environment year by year and ADDING to the supply of energy available instead of decimating energy sources at the SAME TIME that they make profits and improve the overall quality of life and living is an idea that is gaining momentum. Lovins idea is to make things 4x as energy efficient, which is not that difficult to do, and then get 4x the use out of it through reuse and recycling instead of throwing things away.
The synergistic reduction in energy use of such an approach is amazing. As Lovins and Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders noted when Lovins spoke, we now have all the technology and know how to do these very things. What is lacking is the political will. But perhaps we'll see the scientists and the business people just go ahead and do this all on their own.
I recently started writing for a socially responsible investing website and the number of people involved in this sort of thinking is growing at a tremendous rate. I've been thinking that the events of Sept. 11 are indeed a powerful reminder that no longer can some of the world's population (a small percentage) demand and use the vast majority of the world's resources to maintain an oppulent lifestyle while billions live in squalor, violence and poverty. And despite the JW teaching of how wicked humans are, my feeling is that most people would like to see an end to human misery for as many people as possible.
And for futurists there is a wonderful website you can find by simply typing "thinkers and visionaries" in a search engine. TONS of links to interesting people with lots of good ideas. Lovins and Hawkens are also well represented on the web.
Nice discussion, and thanks for the new thinkers you've brought to my attention.
S4