I appreciated the Fall 1999 issue of PCM . Your choice of articles and your editorial putting them in context were truthful without being depressing. I particularly loved your comparison of the millennium to waiting for the odometer to turn over. I had just finished a book by Niles Eldredge called Dominion which puts the issue of global survival in a different context. After reviewing the evolution of humans into the only species capable of living outside local ecosystems, he comments that we are the only species that thinks only of its own kind.
Squirrels think of owls, foxes, oak trees, etc.
But humans think only of humans. And on that happy note, let me simply say thanks for making a little noise about it all. If population forecasts that project a doubling of human numbers by the middle of the next century come true, our use of available photosynthetic energy might climb to 80 percent. Essentially every fact in this quote is incorrect. The second fact is the projection that population will double in 50 years.