[pest]

I havent bothered to read all (any) of the responses, but here is my take. Yes, we are destroying our environment, but when big oil controls the economy and government, theres not much happening in alternative power sources. Its getting better, but not fast enough. Currently, solar energy costs about 20 times more than fossil fuel power and until there is any type of economies of scale, it wont get much better. Forget hydro, now we have to deal with tree huggers and their free flowing rivers. Wind power is gettig better, but it is only useful in very few places. There are some new deep water tidal/current projects, but they are extremely expensive. I personally think the government should do more to promote green power, but their ties to oil make that unlikely.

Overpopulation does not come from 1st world countries. At least not the biggest offenders.

Your biggest environmental abuses and disasters also happen in emergin 3rd world countries, not the 1st world.

I thought the ozone thing was getting better with the discontinuation of use of hydroflorocarbons. Dunno.

The world wont come to a screeching halt when fossil fuels are depleted. First it will get hard to find and very expensive, making alternatives more attractive and leading to more efficient use of what we have.

Global warming is kind of scary.

Augusts blackouts had nothing whatsoever to do with fuel.

I cannot say if everyone will live with the first world standard of living some day anymore than you can say they won't. The future is uncertain. Anything can happen. 100 years ago you would have been stoned if you stated that we could travel to the moon and back or that we could travel across country in 3 hours and that that was slow compared to what military aircraft could do.