Thanks, Ray. Here's the thing that really bugs the crap outta me: most of the shit people do that burns fossil fuels just doesn't need doing (building cities, for instance). The real important bullet point is the least sensational and basically an assumption of intent, "People don't want to stop using fossil fuels."

This is ignoring how much advertising, tax credits, research money and politics went into making fossil fuels cheap (at the pump), making roads and zoning to enable car culture, convincing people that they always want more than they need of everything, and putting them in debt with things like mortgage interest tax breaks so they are enslaved to a job that the only transportation to it is a car, and all their spare time should be some version of consumerism (buy new clothes to walk stylishly to your stylish yard to drive your stylish tractor to mow a stylishly landscaped yard).

Stopping fossil fuel use is calling for an end to what we perceive as this Empire of Consumerism, and there is no significant alternative available in the minds of our politicians or media because they refuse to look for any.

It's not because there aren't any, it's because money has become the decision maker, and only works by spreadsheets and committees that do 'what worked before.'

As insurance and food systems continue to struggle and fail, only desperation is going to break them out of their fog of war against Nature.

The Saner work must be to inform, research and promote alternative processes that allow a choice. Trying to teach profiteer bully pigs to be anything but pigs wastes your time and annoys the pigs. Consumers make all decisions at the purchase point. Those are the votes that actually count.

If you can't get government to put real costs at the price tag, you are surely not going to get retailers to do so.

That said, we have to try something...or do we? Maybe the systems will fail as fast as they are able to, no matter what we do to convince ourselves we can overcome the inertia of human stupidity.