We all know the ocean liner Titanic glanced off an iceberg very late in the evening of April 14th, 1912 and then took two and a half hours to finally but irrevocably sink to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, resulting in a large loss of human life. The great ship of human civilization has also been involved in a collision, but this one is head on with a living "iceberg", this planet's life sustaining biosphere.

Like those passengers on the Titanic who realized the terrifying truth of their dire predicament, some of human civilization is aware of the awful truth, that we are now well into inducing what appears to be an immanent ecological biosphere collapse. It will be as devastating as the fatal plunge into the cold icy North Atlantic water was to passengers not fortunate enough to make it into Titanic's lifeboats.

The collective of human life on this cosmic planet has commenced the slow but inevitable slide into the dark underside of existence, a direct consequence of a careless arrogant mercantile formulation of planetary life. In the Titanic's case one third of the passengers on board were able to take to lifeboats and endure exposure to the cold North Atlantic ocean. Our little planet has its own life saving boat - human awareness and the potential for responsible actions.

If some of us do withstand the impending planetary ecological meltdown it will be because we took decisive measures to alter what can only be perceived as a prescription for life that was carelessly and haphazardly conceived. We have created a world of fast paced progress that gives little thought or concern to the underlying responsibilities and realities involved in always maintaining and taking care of life sustaining planetary integrity.

The builders of the Titanic perhaps dreamt, after the tragedy, of going back and redesigning its basic structures; they might have included a double hull hoping the outcome would be different. However, like them, we simply can not go back to correct fundamental existing flaws in our living systems. We can however recognize that they do in fact exist and embark upon responsible actions.

At the end of the nineteenth century it was predicted that the continued burning of fossil fuel would ultimately lead to serious global warming problems. The novice science of that time thought that it would take several thousand years for the green house effect to eventually manifest and become a genuine threat to human civilization. It would now appear that there were some important elements missed in those early scientific calculations. The phenomenal human population explosion mushrooming out of control over the past fifty years, along with the incredible growth in our industrial appetite, has lead to the planet's biosphere warming up more quickly and steadily in direct response to fossil fuel powered human activities.

Throughout humanities history the aggressive mercantile thinking stream we have bred and nurtured into being, has literally been concerned with only one thing in mind; how to cut away, rip out, kill by clipping or sawing, drill and mine, or scoop up. As well we have willfully crudely drag netted the oceans bare; purposely slaughtering most wild organic cosmic matter that we humans have found alive. In essence the removal and reworking of primordial cosmic matter to generate societal profits. This primitive immature formula for existence concocted to enrich what can only be described as a throw away disposable material life.

During the past one hundred and fifty years we human beings have been in the process of bartering away our planetary biosphere life sustaining system for industrialized materialism. The awful truth is, this manufactured wealth is ultimately discarded into local landfills. As we daily fill up our refuse dumps with this discarded material affluence we are in the process of carelessly throwing away the potential that exists on this planet for an endlessly sustainable planetary life stream.

We should expect and receive much more from ourselves, from our intelligence, our ingenuity and resourcefulness. We should expect a civilization that engenders planetary honor, one that it is a privilege to be born into. Certainly not one that only thinks about and constantly chases the profit motive out to the point of carelessly destroying the planet's biosphere in a mad insane chase for material advancement.

The awful truth is this, all of our cultural upbringing, our educational and even our religious systems of belief, have literally paved the way for an overwhelming endorsement and acceptance of the violent aggressive tone of our lives, and the industrially driven material obsessed formulation we have forced onto our ill conceived badly warped intellectualized reality of living life on the planet.

We are seldom if ever encouraged to think outside of the collective material obsessive norm. To question if the driving intentions of a blindly driven industrialized motivated civilization could ever provide a decent on going planet wide life enriching environment that was morally and ethically worthy, and most important inherently responsible. To also question if our industrialized impetus and driving motivations would ensure that everything alive and living on this planet is carefully safeguarded from willful industrialized abuse and permitted a safe non-threatened life stream integrity that is endlessly supportable and sustainable.

Does humanity consider it a responsible and worthy action on cosmically sentient life's behalf, to literally pollute into destruction the planet's biosphere reality. This intrinsic cosmic manifestation that took literally millions upon millions of cosmic years to fully resolve and make perfect is literally frittered away for an incredibly fast paced industrially driven human juggernaut, a fossil fuel powered blind and unaware force of crude cut and thrust with a coarse brutish mechanized appetite. This uncaring, careless energy, a tidal wave of seemingly never ending development with a perpetually addicted need for non-stop expansion and continual destructive growth inflicts itself on all reality.

Through the sheer act of living on this planet we all accumulate unseen baggage, known today as our carbon foot prints. The awful truth is, almost everything we do requires the use of ancient fossil fuels - from the production and transportation of our food supply, to our many and varied industrial processes, to heating or cooling homes or office buildings, lighting in the evening, driving automobiles or trucks, traveling by airplane - simply living a life produces carbon gas. In truth even the simple act of breathing in and out contributes to a personal carbon foot print as we all exhale carbon dioxide.

Human development is now faced with some very tough choices. The awful truth is, either we drastically reduce our entire population base through a process of carefully planned attrition, thus allowing those who are left to carry on using fossil fuels but with drastically reduced human numbers. Or we try to curb and work towards ending the use of fossil fuels, so that the burgeoning seven thousand million of us might survive in a long term equitably sustainable manner.

The ideal solution might lie in attempting to do both. Acknowledge the impact we have on the environment as a grossly overpopulated species and reducing our numbers down to a more appropriate ratio for this planet. At the same time drastically limiting and eventually eliminating our continual dependence on these ancient fuels. The awful truth is, there are simply too many of us on this tiny planet to permit a fossil fuel supported infrastructure to continue on like it has. Seriously curbing human population growth would help reduce the overall collective effect we are having on planetary biosphere realities.

Humanities continuing use of ancient fuels has unfortunately instigated an awful planetary climatic reality, that is provoking a cancerous like assault on our life supporting biosphere, as surely as tobacco smoking induces lung and other cancers in many human bodies. This human manufactured industrially forced fossil fuel epoch should certainly relinquish its tight reign on our lives and give it over to a new cleaner renewable green energy reality. To do this societies should, as we tend to do during a war, go into a tightly knit mode of survival, by doing what is best for the collective of humanity. In my mind we must begin to think of the fossil fuel powered ways of doing things as literally unwanted and an unwelcome presence. The same way most of us now view tobacco smoking - it is no longer socially acceptable by a majority of the public in general.

The awful truth is this, failure to act quickly literally means the immanent death of future birth, an inter-generational genocide manifesting on this cosmic oasis. There is literally no where for us to go even in our own near by solar system. If we as a sentient civilization actually wish to survive and live long term on this lonely little lifeboat of a planet, we should immediately cease burning all coal or palletized peat for electrical power production and for all of our industrial processes. Oil or natural gas burning should be phased out, as well as gasoline kerosene or diesel fuel.

What exactly would switching over to fully renewable energy entail? What if we were to enter into an energy regime change, dedicated to simply stop the burning of all fossil fuels. Each one of us would have to embrace a complete change of mind set on the nature of global existence; a redefinition of daily life and an overhaul of present values that are based on an excessive material joy ride that in its process simply forgot to connect the dots between our fossil fuel powered actions and eventual disastrous planetary consequences.

Ironically, we currently have the means and ways to replace much of the old style fossil fuel supported infrastructure. What is required more than anything is aggressive knowledgeable leadership to give this new green world epoch the nod and push to manifest itself into a cogent formalized reality. Current mainstream government thinking pushes hard for more large scale nuclear power generation to try and maintain the old guard status quo lifestyles. Governments and large scale industry have a symbiotic relationship and always walk together hand in hand. The awful truth is, changing over to alternative green renewable sources of energy will not be made without difficult and painful birthing problems.

As it turns out it is much easier to conserve and not require energy than to try and produce it. Extremely tough monitored conservation measures should be our first behavioral transformation. The general attitude we have towards energy conservation is a mild one; of course everyone is willing to conserve, the very idea sounds logical, just as long as it does not interfere with the present day life style.

And here lies the fundamental problem. Intellectually we know what we have to do. Technically we have the ability to do it. But it is physically and mentally difficult to make it an every day part of living one's personal life. It is not easy to change habits, we struggle with them ourselves. Morning showers should be no more than one to two minutes long using luke warm water. Heating hot tubs and swimming pools must be done by solar methods. Turn off lights and electrically powered equipment when not in use. Avoid phantom electrical loads by using power bar switches. Take reusable shopping bags to all stores. Live close to where you work. Live without air-conditioning and limit your demand for a cozy level of winter heating. Air dry clothes. Convert to a manual dishwasher, yourself. Support local farmers and producers by eating as much locally grown and produced food as possible

You should think before using gasoline or diesel powered vehicles, and when you do, as you will, try and limit their use as much as possible. Think about every trip, is it absolutely necessary or merely a "Sunday drive." Reduce or eliminate your consumption of meat; pound for pound, meat verses aviation kerosene, meat is a much worse green house gas offender than air travel. It would be smarter to support local sporting and entertainment events rather than commercial or olympic events where teams, performers and spectators have jetted in for the day. One should not be traveling by jet airplane; given time flying by jet will be considered among the greatest crimes of our time.

The incredibly awful truth is this, it requires a lot of thought and endless perseverance to alter societal taught biosphere damaging behaviors. Our dreadful collective historical record of careless attitudes, lack of will, and our inability to believe in the possibility of actually creating a full sustainable green world realm holds us back. Our species must learn to accept the fact that long term sustainability is well within the limits of our own imagining and in truth is humanities ultimate cosmic role.

It is my belief that we should be forming an all encompassing planet wide fossil fuel regulatory body, a recognized international organization that would decide upon and implement a plan for country binding, sustainable planetary codes of ethics and regulations. A body that sets and carefully regulates all future emission guidelines and provides rules and procedures for countries to follow towards the eventual eradication of fossil fuels. An international body to shepherd and guide the change over to a renewable green energy. One that provides guidance and acts as a controlling planetary mechanism. Countries who choose not to participate would be thought of as a planetary pariahs and would have their foreign trade trickle to a complete halt.

This regulatory body would also be charged with making decisions on exactly what industry is allowed to design and manufacture. So much of the production of material goods if examined on the grounds of being a necessity for our species survival, would fail to pass. A great deal of the world's present fossil fuel energy is simply wasted on producing frivolous unnecessary but marketable items. Human industry without controls has craftily created the perfect loop, designed to keep consumers continually on an endless treadmill with items purposefully produced with rapid obsolesce in mind.

Digital equipment (computers, cameras, communication devices) just one tiny example, should be conceived of through careful design to accept upgrades as technology develops, and not craftily designed to be quickly cast aside and abandoned to the nearest rubbish heap when the latest model arrives. Our civilization suffers badly from gluttonous energy intensive industrial over production. The automobile manufacturing sector alone usurps enormous amounts of biosphere harming energy and the products are themselves very pollution emissive. Do we really need such a voracious waste of energy squandered on producing countless makes and models of ultimately pollution prone vehicles? Ethical standards of longevity should be set for all household appliances so they are not slyly designed for critical part failure in a few years time.

When given complete unfettered societal freedoms and left to wide open moral and ethical corporate interpretations, our business moguls have created an energy consumptive completely unsustainable horribly polluted throw away human reality. This unscrupulous manifestation is nothing less than the industrially produced evil child issuing forth from a mating of greedy intentions with careless human actions.

In truth all our transportation issues must be rethought. We should not be lulled into false hope and a belief that hybrid automobile technology, or cleaner diesel engines easily and quickly solves our transportation problem. Those hybrid and new diesel automobile reworks are nothing more than false hope, just temporary stop gap measures, it is certainly not the solution that we truly require. A more logical answer right now would be to burn hydrogen fuel in our vehicles. The emissions are pure, drinkable water. The current issue with hydrogen is that we tend to rely on the use of fossil fuels to actually create the hydrogen. We should be funding our brightest scientists and entrepreneurs to come up with ways of producing mega quantities of hydrogen in a clean sustainable manner. Then begin to set up the infrastructure required to support the production of hydrogen fuel cell automobiles busses and trucks.

The aviation industry, an extraordinary mega carbon emitter, and would no doubt suffer the most if we simply put a halt to the production of fossil fuels. At present there is no alternative to the high octane kerosene they burn in jet engines. However, without changes, the day is soon approaching when air travel will be viewed as being deadly to all life on this planet; an ecological crime continually committed against the reality of sustainable planetary existence. The awful truth is, the aviation industry by doubling their flights in the coming decades could very easily destroy all of humanities other carbon reduction efforts. None of us can truly buy our way out of air travel through using carbon off set donations made to the slowly greening infrastructure, anymore than we could pay someone to loose weight for us.

International container shipping of goods by ocean going vessels is also a huge fossil fuel fed carbon emitter. From space one can witness the incredible smudge and trail of atmospheric pollution that shipping routes leave in their wake. The boats rely on the dirtiest burning bunker fuel oil for propeller power. When shipping was done by means of sail and wind power alone there was virtually no carbon pollution emitted. Why not for example utilize the latest modern design techniques to fashion retractable metal or plastic sails that could be automatically employed from ship masts when wind conditions are right, and at least we should be demanding that all ocean going vessels quickly be retrofitted and make the switch over to much cleaner burning liquid natural gas power.

With today's existing technology all buildings could with some effort be retrofitted and made to be close to carbon neutral. Instead of continually constructing new why not have the construction industry retrofit all existing structures and bring them up to current ethical standards? New stringent building codes and retrofit programs should be implemented and well funded by governments. Highly insulated, passive solar dwellings, with geothermal ground source heating and cooling or wind turbine power and solar panels could easily off set and neutralize electrical grid use. The awful truth is, our mind set when building has to radically change from one of a strictly aesthetic appeal to one of including planet sustainable values in all of our latest building designs.

Large main energy grid nuclear and coal fired electrical power planets should give way to renewable energy mega solar arrays, and our fields, the great lakes or off shore oceans should be mushrooming with mega scale wind turbines, located as close as possible to the source of actual use. A good deal of energy is wasted through transmission alone. Industries that require high volumes of electrical power should be expected to provide their own sources from dedicated wind turbines and solar arrays or pay very dearly for the use of public supplied energy. Those that use it should also seek out alternate forms and methods of green energy production to replace gas oil or coal power factory generation. The awful truth is, energy should be cherished as a precious commodity and not squandered frivolously as if it was virtually a limitless resource like it is thought of presently.

As long as we continue to permit the incredibly selfish economically minded side of our human nature to literally have its own will and way, we will end up with profoundly unhealthy badly corrupted ill behaving societies. The awful truth is, complete freedom can only be granted to a fully mature society that is clearly aware of its inherent planetary and civilized responsibilities.

A sustainable planetary life style might unfold like this little wishful daydream: We would live independently ensconced in planetary wide communities, but not countries; we would walk, bike, or green public transit to our near by places of work. We would support local industry. The food we eat would consist more of what is grown and produced in and around the local areas where we live. Solar panels on all of our roof tops or in the yard tracking the sun and small wind power turbines for electrical generation on most dwellings would be common place. Main green grid power, large wind turbines, dammed up water, and solar arrays would essentially be produced closest to where it was actually needed, so that it did not have to travel long distances.

Long haul transportation of food items from other communities would be thought of as being a highly questionable practice and community self sufficiency and self dependent integrity a much more valued intrinsic societal concept. All of our winter heating and summer cooling would come from geothermal ground source environmental units that do not emit harmful by products. Our vehicles, when we used them, would be clean burning hydrogen powered fuel cells. Radio, television, motion pictures, the Internet, and virtually all publications and video games would through stringent regulations and tough controls be there to ensure the betterment enlightenment and future of the entire civilization.

In my little daydream, the depiction and mass media glorification of crime would be considered an affront to the core foundations of civilization and not tolerated on any level. The awful truth is, our young are literally awash from birth in a mercantile plethora of crime spree mania. Through watching and absorbing the seminal mental seeds prompting crime's endless arousal and provoking its ultimate manifestation we are encouraging and even glorifying criminals and crime, little wonder that our civilization is itself so crime plagued and our children seem literally out of control.

If we think back to the warning for humanity that the Titanic disaster left in its icy wake, the people of that time actually thought that the ship they were on was literally unsinkable. Consequently they steamed on with careless impunity and dismissive arrogance. The awful truth is, despite the many clues and warning signs that are presented before us, we carry on with uncaring behavior that is careless irresponsible and virtually unchanging. As a result the climate on our Mother Earth is rapidly fatalistically transforming itself with each passing day.

The most awful truth of them all is this; if our current non planet friendly human reality is allowed to continue on like it is doing for just a few more decades, with literally criminal intent indiscriminate biosphere poisoning, we will certainly warm the planet well past those very dangerous tipping points. It is even possible because of the thirty year lag time between our poisoning of the planet's atmosphere and the reactions that we see and feel that it might even now be too late to do anything.

This planet once offered all life that originated on its surface a resplendent cosmically inspired setting in which to grow mature and eventually become universally enlightened, an eons perfected biosphere womb like paradise, exactly like a snow flake, a completely unique one of a kind original cosmic manifestation.

Do we human beings somehow naively imagine as we do in our religious mythology that this cosmos and our true originating Mother, this symbiotically emotive planet, will realize that the incredible biosphere and surface damage being willfully perpetrated, is nothing more than unintended human collateral damage. A direct result of humanities petty, non-personal, business dealings and reckless societal affairs. And therefore not take it to heart and thus not react with catastrophic primal hostility, incensed outrage, or disdain and simply forgive us for our unethical actions?