According to Bill McKibben, author of several popular ecology books and international organizer of carbon warming protests, the heat added each day by human activity is the equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. If you know the square mileage of habitable land mass (which excludes extreme deserts and steep mountains) and divide that by the number of bombs, it actually seems possible. One might easily believe that we are trying to destroy the biosphere.

In addition to all that, we’ve lost half the summer Arctic ice. Furthermore, it is estimated that the coral reefs will have collapsed by mid-century, even if you now hear that some of them show signs of regeneration. The planet’s atmospheric hydrological cycle has been thrown off kilter by warmer temperatures in drier areas, making it yet even drier and sending virtually all their evaporated moisture to the normally wetter areas. Hence, we have horrible droughts and floods at the same time. The U.S. recently had its wettest 12 months on record. Quickly melting Artic ice affects ocean currents that normally move heat north from the equator. Additionally, natural gas from methane is even more environmentally destructive than petroleum and the use of gas has increased even faster than petroleum.

Two years ago it was estimated that fossil fuel production will have to decrease 7.6 percent a year worldwide in order to achieve a climate equilibrium. Based on use in the last two years, we might need 10 percent reductions to compensate for lost time. Can you think of any country in the world that is able to reach this standard right away? So not it’s too late… We will just have to adapt to a more difficult existence and hope to maintain food production, according to the climate scientists. Then there’s Ray Davies’ song Apeman: “With the over population and inflation and starvation and the crazy politicians.”

If you study the dynamics of capitalism and read what people and scholars in the field of economics are thinking, it becomes evident that capitalism, by nature, implodes unless it keeps expanding. If you try to establish a steady state of zero growth, the system performs very poorly. Then if you try to decrease production because we make too much colorful plastic garbage, the never-ending cycle of borrowing stops working. This is one reason politicians want expansion to continue. Growth at any cost means increasing the deficit forever and environmental ruin keeps growing too. To sum up, we have become growth junkies by choice and necessity, and by lack of ability to see the horror of our actions.