--I admire cycleops for the courage of that (long) post.

Whether one "believes" in global warming or not--and I find it hard to swallow the idea that humans are not having SOME influence on their surroundings, given the sheer amount of activity--it's really dubtful that the planet can sustain 10 billion people at the level that all of them will want. And competition for resources leads to conflict . . .

It's almost a no-win. If one assumes that we will continue to innovate sufficiently to provide larger numbers of people with a middle class Western lifestyle, the ultimate problem becomes pollution. If we can't, the ultimate problem becomes deprivation.

I, too, have given up many posessions over the years, both for abstrct ideological reasons and because with illness, a young son, etc., I just have no time for them. I still do have a lot of the trappings of Western middle-class lifestyle--after all, I'm posting this by computer--but the idea of having more than one car, or a second vacation home, or even a large private home with a big lawn I'd have to waste resources on due to some ridiculuous community standard involving property values, is anathema to me.

There's a lot of research out there now that seems to indicate that the happiest people are not those with the most things, but the most human connections. I'd bet on that.