I've thought about this for a long, long time and I think the trouble is our population explosion is now a physics problem, not just a social problem. The upward trend-line for the past 200 years has a pattern that is so rapid, so out of character with the rest of human history and is accompanied by an exponential increase in resource consumption that I'm not sure there is any elegant social or technological fix for the problem. For better or worse and regardless of what anybody "wants," biology usually seems to have mechanisms for sorting this kind of thing out.
Haven't there been human-caused large scale climate changes that we have detected and corrected pretty successfully? Acid rain and the ozone hole used to be pretty scary threats, but I don't seem to hear much about them any more. Obviously, I'm no expert and maybe they still are big problems, but I get the sense that both those problems have at least been reduced, if not eliminated. With respect to climate change, I still don't get the strong desire to discard any evidence of it and then cross our fingers that the impact we have on our environment is less than naturally occurring climate changes. Granted, much more work needs to be done to assess the extent to which we are causing climate change, but doesn't it make sense to study it? Doesn't it make sense to begin to develop ways to reduce our impact? I'm not saying that we go crazy and stop all use of fossil fuels worldwide...just sensible steps as we determine the magnitude of the problem. Last I checked, a lot of political and economic problems could be alleviated if we reduced our dependence on fossil fuel, so it's possible it's a win-win.
Make no mistake. The policies proposed to react to climate change are meant to gain control over people, not to fix any problem
Reducing our consumption of energy, raising its cost, limiting our sources, reducing the choices of where and how we live (via mass transit, cost of automobiles, developing rural land to suburbs, etc.) is about control. It has nothing to do with reducing our carbon emissions; that's just an excuse.
Yup. And here's a sneak-preview: Klein, David R. "The introduction, increase, and crash of reindeer on St. Matthew Island." The Journal of Wildlife Management (1968): 350-367.
If people are making their consumption decisions based on what's best for themselves and not on what's sustainable and reasonable for our population, then all those things you list are going to happen anyway over time.
