Perhaps the problem is even worse than you seem to understand. After all, you seem to be wearing ideological blinders that make you imagine that elimianting capitalism is a sufficient solution. You want to know why the governments aren't doing anything to stave off disaster?

BECAUSE THERE IS BLOODY LITTLE THAT CAN BE DONE.

The correct way to look at the problem is to recognize that the fossil fuels which we have bee "mining" and which have supported the rise of industrial civilization are about to run out. When that happens, it isn't a CHOICE about surviving on a sustainable basis. We WILL be limited to what can be produced on a annual basis once the minign of the past has ended. Which means........

The technological level of production and movement of what is produced will change to what can be maintained on a sustainable basis. The production will be limited to "without fertilizer produced from oil" and "without water pumped form the aquifers" and the "fish that can be caught without diminishing quantity", etc. etc. Now we can estimate that perhaps (it does depend on the level of technology that can be maintained) and also the survival level consumption required by humans to maintain that technological level. And we can disagree about what "survival level" means and it does make a difference how fairly distributed (the only place capitalism enters in).

But take all that as given (totaly fair distribution, some survival level per capita, some amount of sustainable production) you can divide one by the other to arrive at "number of humans" sustainable.

You have some reason (apart from a quasi religious ideological faith) that the resulting number HAS to be as high as six billion? What if it's 2 billion or one billion or a half billion or even as low as a few hundred million. I have seen all of those numbers proposed. But guess what, "Anon", I haven't seen any estimates by those willing to talk numbers as high as six billion. Oh, plenty of people say no problem, just elimiate capitalism and repeat the mantra "never enough for greed but always enough for need". But these people aren't talkingn numbers but expressing "faith" that "numbers don't matter" (and if instead of 6 billion it were 16 billion or 60 billion or 600 billion?).

See what I am getting at "anon"? It's going to HELP for a government to spread the word that within 50 years the human population of this plante will crash to about half it's present value? You live in GB, "Anon"? Pray tell what is your estimate for the sustainable human carrying capacity of that island?

To some extent I agree with you if it just does a straight crash the population will probably stabilise at about 500 million.

There will be islands of hell and islands of sanity.

I believe that given effort and realism we could, to some extent garden our way out of the situation. I'd rather have hope that we will cooperate and find solutions than evaporate in a nuclear spasm.

The ones who survive will be those that create stable mutually dependent tribes.

Would you rather give up completely?

All I meant was that those of us who wnat to try for solutions have to start talking about what is REAL and not get lost in irrelevant ideological byways. We need to understand the nature of the crisis, not confuse social artifacts with reality.

Thus questions of social justice ARE relevant (do away with capitalism) becuase if with fairer distribution of what there is we can squeeze in a few more people. But we need to look at this is real and not "paper" terms. One of the problems we face is that as long as people consider the unreal "paper", increasing fairness appears solve FAR more than it does when considered on a "reality" basis.

See, the rich do not consume greater amounts of REAL things at anything like the ratio implied by paper accounting. A Rolls might cost (in pieces of accounting papaer) 10-20 times what an ordinary bloke's car does -- but it consititutes just 2-3 times more consumption in terms of real things like mined iron ore and the fuel it uses. The fuel to heat the millionaire's mansion is several times that used to heat some ordinary person's cottage of flat -- but nothing like the ratio of their net worths. Same with the food they eat, how much land is consumed in its production.

So YES we should work to increase the fairness of distrubution of what is available. But we must not be blinded by ideology into expecting this will provide all that much "bang for the buck" in solving the larger problem before us -- How do we humans get back into sustainable balance with the rest of Nature. We need to address that problem in REAL terms, not paper accounting, becuase push come to shove, the paper, even the gold, is worthless.

You seem to think the initial problem is with "governments". Hell, our first problem is internal to our activist movements, to convince OURSELVES of the true nature of the problems we face. "Anon", have you ever TRIED that? Have you ever raised an issue like "suppose the sustainable number is 500 million" (or 1 even 1-2 billion)? Around here, even in some supposedly environmental organizations, that gets you called "fascist!".

We have to become gardeners. Plant every open space and every road (In containers perhaps) with useful or edible plants. We must permaculture the planet and we must do it now. We have no time to waste. Maybe if we have the sanity to do that as far as possible we can make the transition a bit easier.

We must convine people of the problem. Gently a bit at a time with evidence point them at the websites and say nothing else until they know. Then hit them with the solution. We can get through this I'm convinced of it. Let every man woman and child plant 100 fruit nut and coppice trees to start with.

Start propagating plants. Abandon the Market abandon hierarchy adopt sociocracy and get on with fixing the problem with a will. The alternative is hell on earth.

Yes "Original Anon", need to do all those things. They will be PART of getting to a sustainable future.

But you really do need to do at least a little math. Like on what land are these fruit and nut trees for food and those coppice trees for fuel to be planted? You need to estimate how much area you are talking about per person. You then need to take the available land area (for all of GB a little under 100,00 sq miles) and divide by that estimate. Is your quotient larger than or smaller than the current population? If smaller, then what does that say about what MUST be included in any meaningful solution?

Yes I know, I oversimplified, because not all the land area wou;d be suitable for growing anything. And there was no allowance for a "set aside" so that SOME wild Nature could survive. I also know it will not affect the conclusion because your current human density is about 1/acre.

As far as I'm aware there's 0.41 hectares per person in the UK if you discount existing forest. Permaculture works with nature. You don't remove the existing ecosystem you add to it. You create a more complex ecosystem than the one that was there before and you will see the wildlife blossom. We've done it in Kent we've seen species of insect on the project double over 10 years.

You just have to use common sense and enrich the environment. You make things to be easily recyclable after a very long lifetime. There are thousands of low impact solutions to every day problems and the standard of life is higher than we have now once it's established. We have to adapt to a massively reduced energy usage. Many of my friends have managed it with very little money and a tiny bit of land. I'm convinced it can be done. We must at least try.