I read in the Telegraph the other day that the UK is set to become the most populous nation in Europe in about 50 years time. We currently have over 60 million people, which makes us environmentally unsustainable, according to the Optimum Population Trust, who reckon we could possibly support about a third of that figure, if we we lived a bit greener.
And I remember reading the words of a North American Indian, in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, expressing incredulity at the white man's destruction of the earth. They/we kill everything for short term gain, thinking there'll be something else around the corner. It's surely very stupid, basically unsustainable, so why are we still doing it?
I suppose we don't know how to stop. Personally I don't know what "sustainable" means. I don't know how much land I would need to support myself, and the thought of scrabbling in the earth and maybe killing the odd rabbit isn't very appealing for me. Well, it's slightly appealing.
Am I missing something? Or are we all in total myopic denial?
I'm trying, a little bit. I have no car, no kids, and haven't bought any meat for a while now. I'll eat meat if I find some or am given some, but I hate to support factory farming. I'm appalled by human cruelty, both to our own and others species, and wonder about the cause of this.
We're genetically aggressive perhaps, or passive/aggressive, i.e. we're herd creatures who follow the loudest and angriest of our fellow creatures.