Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
Population is one of the issues, but not the only one. If we could get the people to consume less, population wouldn't matter as much.
Consumption may be part of the puzzle, but re-using baggies and riding a bike is not going to change the world. This is a game that industry plays to try and make citizens feel like they are the problem. It is not us, as individuals, who are the problem; it is government bureaucrats funded by industry, and industry itself that is to blame.

Which is not to say we can maintain our current lifestyles and stop the destruction of the earth. But the entire culture has to change - car culture, globalization, "defense", technology. Clotheslines and CFLs (and even the simplest living) are not enough.

Trying to tell people that they can do "50 simple things to save the earth" is just a distraction, a way to make people feel guilty instead of angry. Angry that there is a mass of plastic garbage the size of Africa floating in the Pacific; that human breast milk is tainted with dioxin; that plastics in the ocean outweigh phytoplankton by 10:1; that 200 species become extinct each day; that are bodies are full of toxic waste; for global deforestation - for so many reasons, we should be outraged.

It is greed run amok that is the problem, and it can and should be stopped.