more steel, distillatemore oil, purify more aluminum and other activities that negatively impact the environmentally.Some people may have the idea that,to not impact on the environment, we should live like the old days, when peopleextracted themselves the nourishment from the soil, made their own clothes andutensils, and lighted the night using oil lamps. But this is not possibleanymore. Nowadays we are over 7 billion people. It is no longer possible tomaintain such population without mechanized agriculture and industrializedproduction. If we abandon the cities and turn to the country, there would not beroom enough for everyone to plant food, especially without using modern methods.If we would be forced by decree to abandon at once all technological resourcesthat we have, chaos and barbarism would be established shortly. Millions woulddie without food and millions of other by diseases or wars that inevitably wouldhappen as a result of disputes by the few resources available. Therefore, wecannot abandon science and technology. What we need is a way to better utilizethe resources that we have. In order to give Gaia an opportunity to self-recovery,we need to reduce to almost zero the resources that we extract from the planet.It means that we should have to deal with the resources that we already extracted,with no more extraction. This is what constitutes sustainable retreat. Therefore,we need to radically change our consumption structure. We should manufacturecars to last at least 50 years, TVs sets to last 20 and phones to last 10. We shouldrecycle 100% of our garbage, and our energy consumption should be minimal. Weshould have to improve energy efficiency for cars, appliances, industries, etc.Maybe we should ration food. However, we can avoid it by reducing losses intransportation and storage. The first victim of a sustainablewithdrawal would be the industrial capitalist production model based onconsumption. In the early 90s of the twentieth century, many people said thatthe fall of the Soviet Union represented the victory of capitalism. However,many people did not understand that both capitalism and communism are two aspectsof the industrial production system, based on consumption of goods and market.The difference is, while capitalism preached about free market, communism preachedstate controlled market. Both systems are not sustainable because they arebased on the false premise that wealth can be produced, when in fact it needsto be extracted from the environment. A sustainable economy must be based on amodel that takes this principle into account. The concepts of wealth andproperty should be revised. It is a challenge for philosophers and economists,but they cannot take too long to provide a solution. It is essential that in-developmentcountries become the first to adopt a new model, mainly because the planetsimply does not have sufficient resources to provide to these countries adevelopment standard like America or Europe. Unfortunately, this new economicmodel is not created yet. However, some actions should be taken immediately. Someof them are quoted below:1. Collection of strategicinformation - Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by governments (or at leastby serious ones) is reliable information based decision making. Historically,all governments have been engaged in collecting information about populationand economy. Nowadays, a new type of information