


There are two trains of thought here. One, my own, is that we need a big, fat comet to come along and wipe us out. The Earth might have a chance to rejuvenate life again while she cruises through the Goldilocks Zone, to start anew with a different set of equal values. I'd like to think that, given the apparently unstoppable train which drives us towards the inevitability of self-destruct, we could embrace the end of our time here and bring what we have learned to light in a new surge of planetary existence. The other train of thought, which my friends tend to prefer, is that there is hope for us to travel a new path and salvage what is left before it is too late, that we can somehow collectively come round to a way of thinking which leaves avarice behind and fosters self-sustaining ways of living. I'm not holding my breath. I'm not sure that we haven't lost too much ground already in busily bleeding the planet dry.