CarolC, I'll agree with you that we should live more sustainably, but I just can't see how we can do more than use less, which is still wasting stuff, and I'm quite sure we won't use less until we are forced to.

There's all kinds of other things people can do. It's not just using less that matters. It's also what we use that can really make a difference. There are a lot of new and innovative materials that are more environmentally friendly, as well as old materials that have fallen in to disuse. Hemp and bamboo are two plants that have all kinds of uses that we currently are using trees for. Plant derived oils can be used instead of petroleum for plastics and things like that.

Re: farming, there is a new kind of agriculture that is being used mostly in third world countries so far, but that will probably be used in industrialized countries eventually, called agro-forestry that has a lot of potential to make agriculture much more sustainable. And here in the US, the small family farms, which cannot compete economically with the large agri-businesses, understand that organic farming can save their way of life by giving them a niche in which they can compete and in which the large agri-businesses cannot.

You are in New Zealand? Is the population growth there more from immigration from other countries, or is it from the local birth rate? I agree that the people of the world really need to address the problem of population growth.

I applaud you for being someone who fixes things. We need more people who can do things like that.

So, in the democratic countries, greed (or artificial need) is promoted by those who want to sell things, and in the totalitarian countries there is no accountability for the controllers.

There was a time when people said that "organic" food would never catch on with the mainstream public. But there is now a chain of stores here in the US that are as big as regular grocery stores, that sell a wide variety of organic and natural foods and other environmentally responsible products. These stores are mostly found in large urban centers, but they are becoming more and more common all the time. The stuff they sell is at least as good as, and usually better than what you can get in regular grocery stores, and they are using economy of scale to make their products economically competitive with products sold in regular grocery stores.

We can make a huge difference with our purchasing decisions. Things are changing, even if you can't see it right now where you live.

This is no reason for those of us who know better to not do what we can. And when enough of us do, others will eventually follow along. At some point, even those who are the most resistant to change in this regard will know that they don't really have any other choice.