A Star Trek World is Impossible

Here's a disturbing quote from a brief but good article, Making Sense of 7 Billion People:

But the fact remains that, for all humanity to experience a material standard of living now enjoyed by a tiny fraction, we'd need four more Earths. It's just not possible. And that, in the end, is the significance of 7 billion people. It's a challenge.

Although I am very appreciative of the amazing advances of technology even in my lifetime (I'm in my 30s), I could live without much of it. What worries me is that a world in which wars are being fought over scarce resources is one in which freedom will no longer be possible. We already have seen how our need for oil has led to endless conflict in the Middle East, where I think most of it realize we have no business. What will it be like in 20 or 30 years? We have plenty of coal, but that's environmentally still a disaster compared to other fossil fuels, or so is my understanding, especially in places without the wherewithal or political will to design cleaner plants (hi, China!). And I don't hold out much hope for renewable energy resources, though perhaps big advances are coming in the next decade or two (but isn't that always the refrain?).

As you can see, I'm still a humanist at heart. Part of the reason I am think more about civil liberties than the environment is because I am resigned to the fact that governments are bought by corporations and that little headway will be made on the environmental front for some time. We live in a capitalist world, where profit drives policy. Mother Earth has a disease and I'm not that hopeful that we can cure it before we do even more serious damage.

On the other hand, environmental and social policy are intimately bound up with each other. Perhaps the way toward a more stable and enduring human freedom is through ecology. But it's hard to believe that such a world is possible with capitalism as we now have it in all parts of the world.