Willful Decisions or Frivolous Whims?

These are comments I posted to the article on Culture Change:
 The “Stuff” of the American Energy Footprint
Found at: http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/689/1/

In my experience, while unfortunate, it seems true that most human beings are incapable of making intelligent conscious willful decisions based upon comprehension of facts. Habits, culture, tradition, comfort, convenience, emotions and frivolous whims always seem to weigh far more heavily on decision making than factual knowledge. It depresses me greatly that this seems to be the case. It seems that in all probability we will simply continue on our present course until factors external to our personal control start to limit our choices. Shock and anger, impossible demands, and ultimately -- conflict and war -- are predictable. Wars that will literally physically destroy the remaining functionality of civilization... which will eliminate most of the demand for material resources and energy (if there are any survivors at all).

I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that WAR will be our 'solution' which will 'solve' the problems of Peak Everything. What a horror. We should rename ourselves Homo ignoramus (literally: we have no knowledge), to at least get one fact straight.

How to make the Bulls on Wall Street Happy

One of the generally agreed upon, but rarely discussed and usually ignored aspects of reality... is that the Earth has not been  growing all that much larger lately. A lonely meteorite smashes in once in a while, that's about it. Yet we pray to invoke 'growth' as the salvation of civilization. It would indeed be a miracle if the Earth suddenly started growing significantly larger. New continents just popping up everywhere. New and improved oceans. Plenty of big new oil field discoveries, bigger than Saudi Arabia, daily.  Brand new phosphate mines. An ever expanding cornucopia of fresh fertile soils. Sparkling clean air.  Free xtra sized drinking water supplies. And, of course, increasingly larger dumps for all our crap, but NIMBY. It would probably make the Bulls on Wall Street very happy.