"The Perfect Storm: Six Trends Converging on Collapse"

This writer sounds a little too bleak. But you'll get the point. The years ahead will be very difficult. And we are not prepared. We are acting like the problems we face are only temporary and will somehow resolve themselves. Either way we are too complacent or apathetic. We need to start acting like we are facing a serious crisis. The politicians won't tell us the truth because they don't want to be bearers of bad news. They will only tell you what you want to hear. We need to start thinking and acting for ourselves, and stop waiting on some savior to get us out of this mess. Barack Obama has shown himself to be a fraud. We bought into that garbage about "change." He is just another politician. The press isn't telling us the truth because that requires commitment to truth. They are only committed to selling a product. And for that they have to keep us dumb-downed. Democracy requires participation and critical thinking. We are doing neither. That's why we face dark days ahead.

There are dark clouds gathering on the horizon. They are the clouds of six hugely troubling global trends, climate change being just one of the six. Individually, each of these trends is a potential civilization buster. Collectively, they are converging to form the perfect storm--a storm of such magnitude that it will dwarf anything that mankind has ever seen. If we are unsuccessful in our attempts to calm this storm, without a doubt it will destroy life as we know it on Planet Earth!

There is a popular saying that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." If we keep doing business in the same way as we have for the past century, each of these six trends will continue their steep rates of decline, collapsing the natural systems that form the foundation for our civilization and the lifeblood of the global economy. Perhaps the current Gulf oil spill is the wake up call that mankind needs to snap us out of our complacency, realize that we are soiling our nest and that continuation of "business as usual" will destroy the world as we know it? Time will tell whether we heed this warning, go back sleep once the oil spill is contained, or simply tire of the endless media coverage, numb ourselves, and set these critical issues to the side.

We already have the technology and the means to turn this dark tide, but we lack the commitment to make the hard choices and sweeping changes that are necessary for shifting the future of our world from its current course of collapse to a new course of sustainability.