I just found this Yahoo page and it's fun. You can read and answer questions from famous people, and everyday people alike. Questions like the Obama one below, or this one from an everyday person that is: How can we establish an on-line portal sponsoring a Global Forum dealing with Energy and Environmental Issues?
The only problem with these types of questions is there's no real answer. They sound astute, but really they're silly. Talk, talk, talk... what's needed is action. Homesteaders have a good handle on environmental issues and how to solve them, but it's unlikely that those solutions will happen on a global scale in our lifetime baring true social and/or economic collapse. I don't even see how we can go 'back to the simple life' in a real full world sense. Too much of our lives is dependant on machines and big business. Oh sure, a select few of us would be okay. It would be hard but we'd survive... but how would the millions upon millions sandwiched into big cities survive with no food resources or electricity or gas? It would be devestating. Even something as simply complex as automobiles, trucks, and other fuel driven vehicles could not be taken out of the equation without causing total havoc.
Electric cars, alternative fuels... they all sound like positive moves forward, but in the end, they are simply a means to a different end. No one sixty or so years ago would have thought of the damage gasoline driven machines would create, but here we are. There's really only one biologically safe 'engine' and that's animal driven. As much as I am a homesteader, I have a difficult time envisioning the world actually replacing automobiles, buses, trains, etc with horses and wagons anytime in the near future.
I wonder what futuristic visionaries like Jules Verne, or Arthur Clark would have seen if they'd stopped looking at the future through scientific advances eyes and saw the pollution and smog and considered going backwards instead?
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