We have been relying on short-term profit-centered strategy for so long that we (American business interests I mean, and by extension their drones-the American public) really are no longer capable of thinking outside the box.
You can bring up all the counter-examples you like of isolated businesses and concerned environmentally-aware citizens attempting to live in harmony with nature, it doesn't matter. To turn away from this quickly approaching "tipping point" we keep hearing so much about, we need to make radical, painful changes NOW, and when I say we, I mean the majority of citizens here and abroad. Do you see that happening? Do you see any massive investments in alternative energy sources that have the potential to turn this situation around?
There's a big push right now towards corn-based ethanol. That's good right? Wrong. Corn-based ethanol is the least efficient model (it takes a great amount of energy to distill it), and will hardly make a dent. So why are we pushing this model so hard? The corn lobby.
Even when we try to come up with a solution, we f*ck it up. People don't seem to realize that we don't have time for trial-and-error. We don't have the luxury of choosing shitty solutions to avoid political/economic static.
That's not even taking into account the rapid industrialization of China. I was listening to an expert (a climatologist I believe) on National Public Radio yesterday who stated that we (the world community) would likely have to reduce carbon emissions by 50 or 60 percent in the next 50 years. Instead, we see China embarking on massive programs to build power plants across the country to support their economic expansion and at the same time the U.S. dicking around instead of doing anything to stop our headlong charge towards the precipice of the tipping point.
In short, we're f*cked.
