Sustainable Earth

* It is high time for more people to begin imagining a sustainable earth, how to achieve and occupy it peacefully and happily, how civilization and the economy will differ from what they are today.
* In numerous parts of the world, forests, grasslands and farmlands are giving way to desert; rivers, lakes and aquifers are being emptied and/or polluted; and sea life is being depleted toward the point of no return. Humankind and the earth are out of balance - all this with about half of the 6 billion people living very-small-footprint lives.
* The world is getting flat, ie many poorer nations are catching up to the richer ones, acquiring or expecting the resource-intensive conveniences to which richer nations are accustomed. Therefore, even if world population were stabilized, over-exploitation will certainly accelerate, and this will be compounded by further population expansion.
* Ethical nations, religions, races, cultures, tribes and families will do everything possible to promote birth control and small families within and outside themselves. Unethical ones won't - believing that war, famine, pestilence and population dislocation are OK, inevitable or in God's hands.
* Population shrinkage is necessary but not sufficient for a peaceful and happy future civilization on an hospitable earth. Additionally there will need to be a variety of adjustments of expectations, individual choices and economic organization, inasmuch as our economic opportunities today depend significantly on such drivers as population expansion, GDP growth, luxury lifestyles and wasteful behavior. How can a satisfactory economy and satisfactory opportunities prevail in absence of these drivers? How will employment be distributed? How will hard jobs get done? What will be sources of self respect and contentment?
* I suspect that we will eventually recognize the need for rational regulation, incentives and coercion. We will need an anti-Reagan revolution. So far, no utopian society has endured, so our prospects aren't good.