Does The World Need Fixing?

I'm currently reading a book called Seven Ways To Fix The World by Christopher Barnatt. It's proving to be a really good read.

It's basic idea is: We humans are building up a lot of problems for ourselves; We need to solve them; and the only way we can do that is change the very way society functions.

The problems Barnatt lists are peak oil, climate change, peak water, food shortages, resource depletion, population expansion, and unchecked economic growth.

Most of these have been covered in my blog (and best summarised here), so you'd expect me to agree that the world needs fixing. However, a few things have occurred to me while reading the book.

• Since I first talked about peak oil (Here), it's become apparent that there are now enough reserves of oil to theoretically last a another couple of decades before peak oil is reached. However, because most of the new reserves are in difficult places (e.g. The Arctic and deep ocean), oil prices may reach unsustainable levels well before then anyway.

• The first 5 items on Barnatt's list are basically all a result of a combination of the last 2. There are just too many people on this planet demanding more and more stuff. This may sound like the same old, tired rhetoric the greens come out with but there's an important point here: Any one of those first five items will have profound consequences for all of us - The current global financial crisis is like a tea party compared to what they could do to us - and all of them will happen if we stick with business as usual.