The world as we know it is at a tipping point which will determine the future of our species one way or the other.
So say the climate scientists, so say the mobilisers such as George Monbiot, and Billy Meier (whom I've only very recently heard of) has been ploughing the same furrow for any number of years.
The Mayans have darkly suggested that the end of 2012 is where our species falls off a cliff - they are the latest in a long tail of prophets and visionaries whose apocalyptic predictions have proved to be unduly pessimistic.
Short of a total wipeout when God visits revenge upon our decadent and atomised selves - I feel that a trillion gallons of Birds Custard weeping from the skies and drowning every last one of us is at least as likely - then pressure for resources is likely to cause what Monbiot frighteningly refers to as an 'adjustment' in our population.
Something must give, inevitably, at some point in the future. I remember reading that if the human population continued to expand at the same rate as in the 1990s, then in another 500 years we would have expanded to the distance recesses of the Solar System. Without a degree in scientific methodology (for reasons touched upon, sarcastically, in my last blog) it seems we have already bitten off more than we can chew.
What an opportunity for the gifted handful of people in the world who can comprehend the science, extrapolate its consequences into the future, and express it to the masses in plain, unambiguous language.
What an opportunity, too, for the legions of doom-mongers who would predict our (and point out, more specifically, my and your) demise, and promise to postpone it if some pledge or sacrifice (normally monetary) is made.
This, then, is the problem. If the planet is resonating desperately on its axis because the capitalist model is proving so rapacious and unsustainable, still the capitalists (in their disguise as concerned environmentalists, also known as 'greenwash') leak through the gaps and perpetuate the problem further still.
All of the above assumes, of course, that the premise of the earth ringing its alarm bells is based on fact and not a) horrendously bad science or b) the seed of an excuse to kick off another spurious war (in the future, when the present existing stock of cartoon bad guys has been exhausted) with an 'enemy' of whose identity we can currently only guess at.
Not to labour the point too much, because it's been made million times by more eloquent scribes than I - but even if we are in imminent danger of obliteration, it's in someone, somewhere's interest to state and then overstate that case for reasons other than concern about saving our environment.
A mass consciousness can only begin to grow, and to thrive, when access to money or embellishments is cut off. Only then can a movement begin which is for salvation, and not for itself.
