It has been an interesting summer. During the past few weeks the worldhas seen a massive power failure in the east and B.C. becomingCalifornia North with more forest fires than one can count. A heat wave in Europe has killed thousands. U.S. aggression in the Middle East and Afghanistan continues to bring death on a daily basis, and California has turned the electoral process into a circus. Looking back on the idiotic recall campaigns that happened in this province a few years back, maybe one can say that California is aiming to be B.C. South.

The good news is that my 11-year-old grandson spent mostof the summer with me. The bad news is that I worry for his future. Not because of him in particular, but because of the mess that we have made of the world, a world in many ways far worse than when I was his age.

It is unpopular with some circles to point out that the planet is heading for an environmental collapse. Circles where the members play the ostrich game with their heads buried firmly in the sand. Circles that think that short term economic advantage is more important than long termecological survival. But, the writing is on the wall.

The global population is expanding beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, at least beyond the capacity to care for everyone comfortably. Millions die of hunger every year, something hard for us here luxuriating in the opulence of North America to comprehend, but a fact nevertheless. Vast numbers of people outside of the developed world take in less than $2 per day to support themselves. Fresh water is becoming scarce. And oil, the foundation of modern society, has reached the peak of its production and we are faced with the scenario of declining resources and increasing demand. Facts that do not relate well to our everyday life with all of its comforts, but facts just the same, and facts that sooner or later will determine what our future will be.

Add to all of this global warming, a feature compounded by our overuse of fossil fuels, and things get even bleaker. It is beyond dispute that the globe has been warming up for awhile. Ice fields are melting, penguins are finding parts of Antarctica too hot, weather patternsare changing and the long term effects of this are not a pretty picture. Yet politicians still quibble over doingsomething about this, and industries spend barrels of money influencing the politicians and the public to believe that either there is no problem, or that they are not responsible for it.

Water is a significant problem for the future. A report produced by 1100 scientists for the UN in 2002 predicted that by 2032 over half of the world will suffer water shortages, including almost all of the Middle East and a large portion of Asia. One can only imagine what will happen when millions of well-armed and desperate people go looking for a drink.

In an article in Harper’s magazine this year Jared Diamond, professor of Geography at UCLA, pointed out that a primary cause of the collapse of civilizations has been the destruction of their environmental resources. He sees a comparable situation with our civilization today and says that learning from the past may be our salvation. In another article in the Guardian, George Monbiot described the latest discoveries relating to the mass extinctions of the Permian period some 250 million years ago. It is believed that a 6 degree change in average temperature triggered global warming that caused the extinctions. Current estimates put our global warming as high as 10 degrees by 2100.

Many past civilizations have vanished and it took ten million years to recover from the Permian disaster. Will we leave a decent world for my grandson’s grandchildren, or are we more comfortable with our heads in the sand?