I'll check Paul Roberts out, petr. Thanks for the resource.

Thread drift, perhaps, but related: I listened to a piece on NPR a couple of weekends ago about a photographic exhibit of the San Francisco earthquake and the aftermath. Comments were made contrasting the difference between the photographs of people in the tent cities that arose in the aftermath of the earthquake to what we saw and see in photgraphs and video in the aftermath of Katrina.
    I kept waiting for one of the commentators to note the difference in the two places in pre-disaster living. In 1906 people did still chop wood and carry water routinely. They were aclimated to heat and humidity. The were used to living with and enduring the bugs. Their lives were much more low-tech and less dependent on public infrastructure. I don't mean to say they didn't suffer. But they were more likely to have the skills to create some basic comfort for themselves within the context of the living conditions of the times.
I don't know that they actually 'walked lighter on the earth' but being less dependent of public energy sources certainly helped them out of that catastrophy and made it less psychologically distressful.
    My point being, sort of, that conservation needs to occur right down to the basic ways that we live in the 1st world. I fear that few people will be willing to give up some comfort for independence and sustainability of the planet.

Janie