What hope for our future? It's a matter of hearts and minds

I've just been given the link to a superb essay My Great Hope for the Future on a great blog worth following Do the Math. It's by Tom Murphy, an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.


"Our predicament," he says, "is that we rode the fossil fuel bonanza to the highest possible heights, without a plan for what to do when the inheritance tapers off." And of course that inheritance is tapering off. But what to do about it. 


Tom is like me concerned deeply with the non-sustainability of our obsession with growth as an economic model, and the linked unsustainability of our profligate lifestyles. See his list of "problems", which he prefers to refer to as predicaments, and his ideas about what we would have more or less of  in his imagined new world. It all sounds good to me, but won't appeal to all, and he agrees with me that this all calls for a change in our values, not to mention a recognition of personal responsibility. Not the most exciting prospect of the future perhaps for some, but better surely than not much of a future at all? 

Any way it's a good essay - well worth reading!