They will not entertain any policy that undermines the power of the elite. So, for example, they propose technical fixes like burying a bit of our carbon to stop climate change. But given the accompanying expansion of coal burning, this would prove wholly inadequate to even begin to address climate change. Most large environmental groups offer chimerical reforms that promise continued over-consumption through better management. The WWFs of the world tell you that logging the few remaining unprotected primary and old growth forests a bit more carefully will sustain both ancient forests and the global ecosystem. They are wrong. We cannot “have our ancient forests and industrially log them too.” Ancient forests are lost forever when consumer products are produced by logging critically endangered forest ecosystems for the first time.
For the earth and humanity to have a chance, we must choose to stop ancient forest logging, reduce carbon emissions by 60 percent, make water conservation a global imperative, place under protection large areas of oceans, dramatically reduce human populations and stop consuming ourselves to death. Failure will lead to massive ecological upheavals, collapsing ecosystems and massive human deaths and suffering. However unlikely, difficult or unpleasant, these are the truths; this is what is required to save the earth.
Knowing the truth regarding the earth’s pending ecological collapse, feeling and moving through the despair, may lead to personal transformations powerful enough to fuel a bright green revolution that transforms society. This is the only way home. Granted, without hope we are not going to save the planet. Similarly, without knowledge and true understanding we are not going to know how. False hope only obscures the truth and impedes progress in achieving transformation in humanity’s relationship with the earth of a magnitude necessary for actually achieving long-term global ecological sustainability. The world was simply not designed to hold 10 billion super-predators, all consuming at the rate of an American.
