Getting the Lid On

The oil continues to gush out of that hole in the bottom of the ocean... Gloom is increasing with each failed attempt to stop the flow from below. The damage from what has already leaked will be extensive, and worse is expected. It could take weeks, or perhaps months to get a lid on this thing. We have been soiling the Gulf for years, ruining what was one of the most biologically productive and diverse regions on the planet. This leak could downgrade, 'simplify' the ecosystem throughout the Gulf and west Atlantic seaboard. Extinction is forever. Evolution is slow.

Yet human population continues to expand on borrowed life support... Squeezing every last bit of whatever we can get our hands on, turning it into more human bodies to feed... Now we're cutting into the root, the foundation of support for humans in the future. We are destroying the capacity of the ecosystems of the Earth to sustain human beings.

We need to get a lid on it.

We need to produce fewer human beings.

'Growth' could continue - per capita - as we have fewer and fewer people... until population levels stabilized with what the planet can actually support over the long haul... until we reached a sustainable balance. 'Growth' could continue - growth of knowledge, growth of compassion and caring, growth in our connection with the Earth, growth in self-respect as a species. We could actually grow up.