Now here was a big tree….

I agree we are maturing. I realize greed cannot be eliminated. I just want it to be considered a negative rather than a positive trait. That way we can rein in the excesses (hopefully).

If not, we are all dead and extremophiles like the tardigrades will inherit the earth.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1303/tardigrade_eyeofscience_1024.jpg
Water bear (a type of tardigrade)
The Water Bear is the only tiny life form that has survived hard radiation and the vacuum of space for extended periods without ill effects.

My father’s family traveled to the West Coast sometime early in the 1900s. It was before my father was born in 1908, but he had brothers several years older than him.

My oldest uncle would talk about how many trees there were “out there” and how we could never cut them all. He certainly wasn’t a greedy capitalist or anti-environmentalist but someone who grew into adulthood long before we started pushing the limits of our planet.

I’ve evolved within a generation to understand that we have limits and we are pushing up against them.

I suspect people younger than me, especially those under 30 have grown up realizing the limits.

I don’t think we will stop greed anytime soon. But I think we can channel it in different directions. Let those who must get massively wealthy do so off wind turbines, EVs, efficient refrigerators. And fence them in a little so that those on the bottom get a decent share.

That’s my grandfather on the left. Perhaps dropping trees the way they did back then they wouldn’t have ever cut them all….

The quote came from Dilworth’s peer reviewed book, “Too smart for our own good”.

He has a larger theme than simply the energy use of Homo sapiens.

He makes many points but his main issue is that techno-fixes to energy needs have always backfired because, instead of the population and infrastructure making use of new technologies and efficiencies to live symbiotically with the biosphere, we instead continue our parasitic behavior with nature and each other.

He may be right. However, I have hopes that a paradigm shift is in the works and we are maturing as a species and will soon stop shooting ourselves in the environmental foot.

The “ism” involved isn’t the problem; it’s the rampant, conscience free greed celebrated over cooperation and altruism. If we do not put the kibosh on parasitic greed, we perish.

Jump on the way back machine and go back to that war you thought worked out just great for the USA, the first Iraq war back in 1991. Read what this peer reviewed book (for those who disagree with the data, that means the facts are not disputable) quote by Dilworth has to say about how we-the-people have been suckered big time for many decades.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. ”

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.