Global Warming and Sustainability

Without getting into the argument about the correlation between human-caused CO₂ emissions and global warming (a theory that is at best questionable), I would like to take a look at the elephant in the room. The fundamental causes of human pollution which threaten life on this planet are two deeply interrelated factors - population and consumption (a.k.a. "standard of living"). As long as we persist in promoting population and economic growth, all other measures attempting to engender ecological sustainability are band aids on a virulent, malignant cancer. The only way to prolong sustainabilty for human life is to reduce both population and consumption ("standard of living") significantly - say 30% or more within the next 20 years. Short of this I fear that the trend toward self-destruction may be irreversible. There is no way to continue to encourage economic growth (growth in consumption) while reducing pollution. This is particularly true in so-called developing nations wherein economic growth ("prosperity") will concurrently result in further increases in population. Who or what is going to interrupt this self-destructive cycle?

As it currently stands there is no solution for this problem of growth versus sustainability. Sooner or later we must see that they are diametrically opposed goals. One denies the other. Only one is possible. Somehow we must break the seeming cast iron bond between GDP and quality of life. Haven't we learned that these two are nowhere near correlated? Perhaps we need to adopt the Bhutanese standard of Gross National Happiness, which requires little of Twenty First Century madness.