These aspects have influenced and formed us. At the same time we were allowed to live in a golden era. Hardly any other generation had enjoyed its existence as freely. No wars or want, with a minimum of external constraints and a maximum of personal freedom. We have food in abundance at our disposal, adequate work, running water, warm homes, educational and research sites, hospitals, theatres and supermarkets. We live in democracies, believe in progress and feasibility, we are thoroughly insured, well-informed, watch television, drive cars, enjoy spare time and entertainment, use the internet, are free to travel, fly, own refrigerators, computers, mobile phones and are part of that fraction of mankind that believes its future secured by further scientific discoveries and technical achievements.
After being expelled from the biblical paradise, we have finally created our own wonderful and all to our liking: comfortable, intoxicating, controllable and worthy of imitation to other people. Is that not warranty enough that we are capable to get a grip on all the recognised problems, if only we want to?
Consumerism vs. the Future
After all, we are not ignorant. As informed and sceptical citizens, we should have realised in the meantime that our extravagant way of life can function only at the cost of nature and of other peoples. The millennia-old forests of the indigenous people of America, Africa and Asia must satisfy our needs for paper and end as timber, furniture and broomsticks. The logistics, processing and consumption of mineral oil regularly leads to great ecological damage with dire consequences, hardly ever foreseen. We know quite well that, while constructing our paradise, we are destroying fundamental aspects of life. We are also aware, that we live on loan and use resources without paying a reasonable return, or at least provide an equivalent replacement. The natural resources, the forests, bodies of water, game and fish assets represent a cheap goods market for our consumerist society. We shall continue to help ourselves for so long, until there is nothing left to help.
A Way Out?
But what happens then? Can we really provide the know-how, the power, the money and first of all, the time to lift us out of the dilemma? What if the already damaged global ecosystem collapses? The complex and life-threatening ecological problems we created may be unsolvable in part. What if the industrial worldıs adherence to feasibility proves to be a fatal error? The warnings from men and women with the power to recognise complex interrelations sound just as worried as do those of critical scientists, politicians or active ecologists. They emerge from personalities as variegated as Arundhati Roy, Julia Butterfly Hill, Franz Weber, Lester Brown, Alexander Nikitin, David F. McTaggert, Bruno Manser or Paul R. Ehrlich.
