How can you assess the "end" in and of itself Marty?

There are many stories like this one [truthout] warning of world wide wars, civil wars, water wars and others of the like. These are all primarily wars over resources as many wars are. It seems that as the resources start to dry up and the amount of people competing for them grows larger this would be the natural outcome. I think most every thinking person realizes that wars are horrible and should be avoided, especially avoided in one's own neighborhood. There are; however, wars of all types currently raging all over the planet all the time. They range from gang wars to clashes between nations and if you are not affected by one directly that's just a matter of coincidence.

Humans have within them the capability to rise up above these kinds of (what are ultimately) petty disputes. Humans, if we were willing to, have the capability to shape earth into a utopia where everything operates as it should, everyone gets what they need and nobody has to work a 50 hour week, or probably even a 20 hour week although you could if you wanted to. I'd imagine that if people were doing what they wanted to they'd probably work reasonably hard at it.

Why hasn't that happened? The answers to that question are complicated and nuanced as well as varied but I think a lot of it boils down to "because things haven't gotten bad enough for the right people yet."

If you look at the "re-election" of George W. Bush to his second term it may seem puzzling and irritating to those who knew early on that he was the worst president in recent history (or perhaps all time). My impression of that event was "well I guess americans just haven't had enough. And true enough, once things started to get really bad (these things take time) more and more americans started to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, electing the leader of your country based upon whether you would like to have a beer with him wasn't such a good idea after all.

So too, here we are. People throwing trash out the windows of their car, corporations dumping in the rivers, trash barges dumping in the middle of the ocean, gyres in the oceans filling up with continents of plastic, and now the looming spectre of vital resource wars.

These wars might get fought, they might not, and the pollution problem may get worse but there is a critical mass of awareness building and at a certain point enough people will have had enough of this. Enough people will realize that we can't really eat the fish anymore and my children seem to cough all the time due to the density of air pollution. It's actually already happening. The tide is beginning to turn. As things get worse enough to achieve this critical mass people may not have the kinds or amount of resources they were used to. They will have to band together to achieve community projects. Neighbors who haven't spoken to each other even though they've been living next door for years will begin a dialog about what they can do to improve their common sitution. Which is as it should be. And these lessons we've learned will be passed down from generation to generation replacing racial hatred and those other close minded ideas that got us here in the first place.

Even one of my long term co-workers, a man who used to not like black people and referred to spanish as "that weird stuff" has lately turned that energy towards building his own solar panels and installing them in his house. Rising energy costs were, for him, just a good excuse to start getting more eco-friendly