The continuous push to expand markets to increase profits.
The constant barrage of media advertising propaganda which encourages the constant and continuous accumulation of ever more commodities.
Humanism as a prevalent modern philosophy in which the human condition as material well being is the foremost consideration at the expense of the ecological health of the planet.
Democratic politics in which the success of the politician is based on the ability to expand the local or larger economy.
Or perhaps the most difficult problem is the propensity to look for superficial solutions such as technological saviors, adopt fashionable alternative philosophies and attire, or do anything but to change oneself, one's thinking and ones own lifestyle.
The fewer the people the less law and regulation that is needed, as in a small town with no traffic lights compared to the city. The inability of present social systems to constrain expansion necessitates eventually greater and greater regulation. In essence what will have to be done is what the purpose of the Cold War was conducted to prevent, which by the expenditure of trillions of tax payer dollars the world over, was to curtail the spread of the institution of socialism. What will become necessary, by the inhospitableness of hostile conditions of the natural world brought on by the warming, will be what all progressives hate more than anything, which is the requirement of the greater and greater regulation of human economic and social conditions which can only be accomplished and enforced by strong government and socialism.AFTER THE FACT (3 OF 4) NEXT PAGE