Well we hear a lot of tales of impending doom, and the fact of the matter is, that since man first learned to communicate, some loon from the cave down the track was waving a banner proclaiming, "The End Is Nigh", and these were easily just written off as kooks.

Now kooks used to be relatively easy to identify, but nowadays with the proliferation of catastrophic environmental issues being presented to us, how are we expected to know who is a kook, and who is giving us very accurate and honest evaluations of very dire problems?

I just watched another TED Talf clip where this ocean ecologist was basically saying we have totally buggered the Oceans, and ultimately that means we have totally buggered ourselves.
It was very depressing stuff from a guy in his sixties who seems like an old hippie who has resigned himself to the fact that humans are a greedy selfish species whose avarice will seriously damage the planet, on the course to their own destruction, which he seems resigned to.

So are we racing toward certain cataclysmic doom?
Will the myriad environmental issues we are seeing be too much for us to deal with?
Will we even try to actively limit the scope of the worst possible extinction event scenarios we are challenged with?

Ultimately, the big question, the huge question, the only question, is?
Will humanity stay locked into the ideology of growth and consumerism?


Anyway, here is the link, I think I will go and get pissed, even trying to get my head around the magnitude of the damage we are doing to the ocean is a struggle for me, and as a surfer whose most personal spiritual moments are linked to the sea, whose majesty and power were something I considered almost unassailable, this was just too much to bear. (sober)
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html

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I haven't watched it yet, but completely identify with that statement. I grew up surfing at Coffs Harbour, and although I don't get to do it as much as I would like now, it's always magical when I do.

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To answer your question, I can't see anything changing soon. As the economies of what were once poor countries become stronger, their greed will grow to be comparable to ours.

lmao, "an ascetic prophet monger"???, well that is certainly an interesting perspective, and definitely one I would not have ever contemplated, without your suggesting it.

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I assume that because I take the climate change issue seriously, is the reason that you assert I am akin to the paranoid kook from our our collective consciousness, and therefore can be dismissed and trivialised as merely another paranoid delusional?

Personally I give myself a little more credit than that, and always attempt to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism to any analysis of new information.
With that in mind I consider myself to have an impeccably fine tuned bullshit detector which recognises extremist misinformation, and eccentric hyperbole with ease.
While you and I disagree vehemently about the climate change issue, I still staunchly maintain my opinion that it is you, and not I, who is being swayed by the real illogical bulldust, so that would make your ability to provide "kook" assessments, a severely compromised ability, in my opinion.

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I also fear you may be projecting a little of your own personal psychology there, with your final assessment, albeit with your tongue planted firmly in your cheek, by likening me to that which I most detest, a cheeky little assumption indeed, but still with enough good humour to bring a smile to my face.

So unfortunately your post did nothing to revive the optimist in me, who is currently on life support, and fading fast.
This massive accumulation of negative facts about just how badly we are effecting the planet's eco-systems, with our consumerist lifestyle, are not fabrications, they are not the paranoid delusions of eccentric old hippies, they are scientific facts.

Now we know the earth is pretty damned resilient, but we also know that it is not without limits, and we are currently seeing those limits being tested on almost every ecological front that can be imagined, and that is not paranoid delusion either, but just the unhappy coincidence of what you get when you have a population of over 6 billion encouraged to compete for resources, and forever consume more and more.

Unfortunately I feel that the kooks are not the ones who say we must find ways to change this behaviour, but rather the ones who seem to think such behaviour will always be able to be supported.
To seem to think that the earth is limitless in it's ability to cope with such massive pressures being imposed on it, that is the really inexplicable, and unjustifiable position.

You kook.
(sorry but I just couldn't resist, you know me, born a smart arse, die a smart arse)

mozzaok wrote on May 7^th, 2010 at 3:51am:

Ah, the old quasi-religious delusion... God/earth gives and gives and gives...

What's that Skip? No worries? The Lord will provide?

lol, the best reply I can give to that is, I sincerely hope you are right.

Fascists preach doom and gloom as they are selling protection....WAKE UP: THE ANZACS FOUGHT FOR THIS LAND AND THE METROSEXUALS ARE GIVING IT AWAY COS THEY ARE HIGH ON EXPENSIVE CRAP!