The following quote is from an article,  “China's new consumers get a taste for luxury goods”, in yesterday's (Saturday's) Guardian.

“ . . . environmentalists . . . say the planet will be doomed if China's 1.3bn population starts to eat and shop like Americans or Europeans”.

All the indications are that China's 1.3bn people (as well as billions more in other parts of the world) DO want to eat and shop like Americans or Europeans, and - once they can afford it - will do so.

So, our planet IS doomed, and one wonders how we can be so matter-of-fact and complacent about it? After all, it's our own children's and grandchildren's future we are talking about: if the planet is doomed, so are they.

I have spent a long time thinking about this very question and believe that I now have the answer.

It's quite simple really (which is, perhaps, why it is so persistently overlooked): although since the late 1960's, in varying degrees, we have become increasingly aware of it, we are essentially still in denial of the situation in which we find ourselves, i.e.  the non-sustainability of our growth-dependent economy and the grossly materialistic lifestyles and aspirations it engenders. We talk about it as we might talk about our own death, in ways that avoid really facing up to it. We have a life-threatening disease which we are monitoring with much effort and sophistication, but are not seriously contemplating curing.

In respect to our own death, not facing up to it makes some sense, since it is difficult and painful to do, and when the time comes we will have to (and should) accept it anyway. But in respect to saving our planet it is an entirely different matter. It doesn't have to be doomed. If we face up to the situation, we can save it (from ourselves), maintaining it in a condition that our children and coming generations will thank (rather than curse) us for.

But we MUST face up to it, instead of pretending to, as we are at the moment (even many a well-meaning environmentalist amongst us). We must face up to the fundamental non-sustainability of our socio-economic order, along with many of the values, attitudes and (material) aspirations that underlie it.

Admittedly, it is difficult to contemplate the extent and magnitude of the changes necessary without a sense of despair and hopelessness; similar, I imagine, to that which must have befallen many well-informed Britons after the fall of France in 1940. As then, we need a miracle (or two) to save us, but also the determination to confront the evil we are facing. Only now it is not an external enemy, but one that lies within: within the structure of the very socio-economic order we are so familiar with and depend upon, and within each and every one of us (I explain this in more detail on my homepage).

What greater pleasure could there be than to pass on the planet to our children and coming generations in the wonderful state we inherited it in? And conversely, what greater pain and shame could there be than to spoil it for them? Yet the latter is what WE are doing, and deep down many of us know it.

It is no good making excuses for ourselves and pointing at others. WE have to create an alternative, sustainable socio-economic order, and not be too long about it.

Some insights and ideas on how to proceed, although still under development, you will find on my homepage at www.spaceship-earth.org.