Post Carbon Authors have indicated that oil affluency has contributed to a mass population explosion--unsustainable without oil. Yet,these authors admit that human labor will be needed to replace cheap fossil labor. I disagree with the former and agree with the latter. We don't have too many people, we have too many machines, doing too much of the work that people won't/arent doing for themselves. It is preposterous that in an era of gluttenous energy consumption and its subsequent convienience gadgetry, people dont see the absurdity of squandering vast financial resources to these convieiences only to resort to joinging health clubs to get the jogging and aerobics needed to burn unneeded calories. Its a world gone mad folks. One author has suggested that such leisure would require the services of 300 slaves in previous generations. History teaches that nature not only seeks balance, but demands it. Therein lies the warning for all of us. It would appear that this is the right and moral side of the issue. Unfortunately, history also teaches us that change is resisted until it is all but too late. This is one debate that can't move fast enough. Nature calls.

Sustainability implies reaching an equilibrium at some point within the carrying capacity of the Earth. If we were at maximum efficiency of recycling our used materials, choosing materials that actually do recycle, and living within the biological systems of the Earth, we could possibly measure growth by the productivity of our economy that included measurements of waste minimization, recylcing, reuse, etc. Until our definition of "Growth" includes all phases of a product/economy's lifecycle, then we are only measuring a small piece of what is required to be sustainable. We need a new language and new definitions within economics, religion, science, all human paradigms, that includes the Earth and all life in its values, measurements and decision making. Further, until we get a handle on human population, and a willingness to manage our own numbers, any form of growth will end in catastrophe for life on Earth. It is CHEAP ENERGY that has allowed our human population to skyrocket over the last 100 years and it will be the decline in oil & gas fuels that brings our population back in check, since we seem unable/unwilling to do it ourselves. So until we reach this new enlightenment about factoring the Earth into all ways of doing, thinking, being, we can forget about the oxymorons that people hide behind like "Sustainable Growth" and "Sustainable Development".