But what about the children...

[latefordinner]

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Ah.. the usual peak oil nonsense. Got Howard Keunztler? I have some farmland in Dakota to sell you... hahaha

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Well I'm not looking in Dakota, but I do expect to be living in a reasonably rural-ish area completely off the grid within 5 years and self-producing at least 50% of my food. so there :P

[Girchuck]

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I'm not talking about oil... I'm talking about everything.

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You don't, but oil and coal are the resources which enabled the growth of consumption. Oil and coal made us wealthy, allowed us to feed several billion people, financed our technological advances, allowed emergence of global economy.

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The food allows us to feed several billion people, not the oil. Oil is just one part of the system, yes our world would be radically different without it, but people would still eat. My problem has nothing to do with oil, the problem is that if the entire world consumed things like we do, there wouldn't be much left to consume after a couple years, and the entire world is becoming like us.

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And how is this food produced? What are the techniques that allow us to grow enough food for 6+ billion people?
The entire world is not becoming like us. Rather, it is us who are becoming like the rest of the world. The current consumption is mostly on credit. Credit runs out. Then, we'll consume less.

[Kaj]

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...we are no more to blame for the evolution of our society than a bird blamed for their nest.

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Americans can be blamed for a lot of things related to that "evolution". In the quest to accumulate wealth, this nation has repeatedly, as a course of widely accepted policy, violated its principles over and over and over. How is this beyond blame?

Don't mean to nit or derail your thread, but felt it necessary to point out that the evolution of our society has as much to do with our "imperialism" (whether economic, political, or military) as it does technological advances and capitalist growth. And IMO, the objective isn't to check consumption, but rather check the unfettered power of our government over our daily lives, the lives of those across the globe, the businesses in this country (mostly by helping the big and implicitly hurting the small through some needless regulation and complicated taxation), and the world at large. Innovation is hampered through government's influence aided by corporate interests, savings is discouraged by govt bailout/welfare programs, and our military-industrial-congressional society aids the insatiable appetite for more GDP, more tax revenues, more, more, more...

Edit: An example of what I mean... How much would our society's consumption differ if oil was more expensive? We've meddled in the Middle East for the last 60 years to prevent losing our influence there. I think it is fine to "meddle" through free trade, it is not right to meddle through propping up governments, arming dictators, aggression, etc. If we simply stuck to our supposed principles, we might pay a bit more for oil, and it might hurt production / consumption in this country ... so which do we value more? The freedom, self-determination, non-aggression, and human rights we loudly proclaim when convenient ... or cheap resources to feed our precious economy? History has answered that question quite definitively. Our actions as a nation are by no means the natural evolution of a free society... but those of an imperialistic society which places GDP over its so-called values.