The previous two posts advocated increasing production of both energy and food as a strategy that serves multiple environmental purposes while also improving the human condition. These are related issues when we consider the current state of the planet and changes expected in coming decades. We are taxing the biosphere now without producing enough for the development of much of humanity, more so as time passes and population increases. Just as there is energy and climate inertia, there is population inertia, or perhaps momentum is a better analogy.

The political approach is too often regressive, destructive and based in short term unproductive habits of mind. Rather than talking in terms of increased production to satisfy un met needs, they talk of redistribution. They are bullies who either man up, or gang up, and beat it out of others rather than producing to meet their own needs. The result is increased need. When they have their way even less is produced. Knowing that others are just as needy as you are is cold comfort. This is the B.O. approach - at least rhetorically - which I think of as Euro-disease. It's a death spiral of increasing need met by increasing force to keep the yearning masses in line. None prosper but the politicians.

I'm not advocating an end to bullies. That seems to be a human predisposition, however disgusting some of us may find it to be, that many support with pride. They are happy to be thieves and wastrels, thinking - as my old dad used to say - that the world owes them a living. But the more of us that think in larger and longer terms the better, since we do in fact need to increase production. We will likely always have a large parasite load to carry, and that's tedious, but consider the alternative.