Yeah were one of those rare pockets of intelligence...virtually everyone is some kind of academic or planning to be or even if they do not have formal university or college training they are the kind of person who would expand their mind anyways and consider something more than just when they should drive to the store to buy some more milk.
We are what Noam Chompsky (a guy I generally don't like but he says some good stuff from time to time) calls the 20% of the population that the governments spend most of its time trying to convince. The other 80% is already convinced and it doesn't take much...
I say it and I keep saying it but it'll take a major ecological distaster to get the governments of the world to wake the hell up and start doing something about it. Western ideals don't have to die and western life doesn't have to go away but there needs to be changes to the way that our nations conduct themselves and I believe it will solve
problems...but it will also require some sacrifices. Still...as it stands right now...we've got plenty of new clean energy sources available now or in the near future. With the right kind of investment they would be cheap, easy to use, easy to maintain, and with incredibly reduced environmental impact.
I'm a realist...its likely that cutting greenhouse emmisions to zero would be impossible unless we go back to farming (even then its impossible - think of the cows) but we can reduce it to such a level that the Earth can more than handel the levels (its a complex system and it works very efficiently to maintain stability). But the current practices of governments everywhere are appauling and this is yet another example of total stupidity and lack of clear long term focus.
