Reading the article, "Steep Rise Is Forecast for Winter Heating Bills", in today's New York Times, July 5, 2000, I get the impression that someone has forgotten to tell America that natural gas and oil are non-renewable resources. Prices are not only bound to continue to rise - eventually these resources are going to run out! 

Instead of continuing to plunder our planet like a bunch of ruthless and stupid bandits, and complaining when the booty no longer flows as freely as it used to, perhaps Americans could spare a thought for the other 95 percent of humanity and for coming generations, including their own children and grandchildren.

The United States constitutes no more than 5% of the world's population, yet is responsible for about 25% of global consumption of non-renewable resources.

It should be obvious to anyone who takes a  long,  realistic look at the world, that on a finite planet with 6 billion (in 15 years time, perhaps 8 billion) inhabitants, it is not possible for everybody, or even a small majority of people, to have anything like the life style that the typical American now has. It is simply not sustainable, no matter how much oil etc. is still to be discovered, or how much we improve the technology.

Yet current attitudes, as well as received economic wisdom and economic necessity, demand that we continue on our present, insane course of non-sustainable growth. 

When are the democratic world's opinion makers (you, dear editor) and decision makers going to wake up to reality and the limitations that a finite planet place on us? 

If it is not very soon, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation - only on a vastly larger scale - as Commander James Lovell and the crew of Apollo 13 when an explosion in an oxygen tank seriously damaged that spacecraft's life-support systems. 

On Spaceship Earth we too "have a problem". 

But unlike the Apollo astronauts, we have nowhere to get back to. We have to sort the problem out while still on board, changing from a non-sustainable to a sustainable economy and to life-styles that do not threaten our planet's life-supporting ecosystems. 

At the moment things are not looking good. Most people do not even seem to realise that we have problem, or have allowed themselves to be deluded into believing that it is being addressed.