Not a criticism Bewolf but isn't this part of the problem? everybody feels that way and every day more and more of us are feeling that way because everyday there are more and more of us, all happily living our lives thinking everything is rosy....it's gonna be standing room only on this planet at some point......what do we do?

You are right there, but there is not much pride in our intellectual capabilities if holocaust is the only option, now is there?

Everybody "knows" we can't go on the way we currently do. Everybody "knows" we have to scale back. Despite everybody trying to find excuses and work arounds, that feeling persists. That, imho, is the reason for all that doosmday behaviour.

The solution would be to scale down. Not even "that" far, but a few inconviences were to indeed return to our daily lifes. But seriously, I'd rather like a bit less comfort, which we all will have settled in after a few months, then annhilation.

Of course, I certainly don't advocate mass culling etc.....but ultimately our fate is potentially far worse if the problem is not taken to hand, so what possible solution could there be to mass overcrowding of the planet?....I believe nature will make some of the choice for us but either way the whole mess is going to be of our own making so what difference does it make if we do something about it or Nature?

I do not think there is one big solution to it. And there currently are some scientific developments that make any predictions in this case entirely dubious. Genenics are making such jumps currently that our lives may look entirely different in a few decades. It's currently developing into a business for the upper classes in detecting genetic defects and deficits and attempts to counter them.

China has a huge stake in this as well, they have a rapidly aging population. Their only chance to maintain their growths is by trying to lenghen their population's productive life span. It's about aging in any case and the research on why we get older. That, btw, would be the second great dream of humankind, after flying, eventual immortality. Do not dismiss this as science fiction, despite this development not getting much coverage.

So we may not even have to deal with overpopulation, but ever longer life spans as well.
Humankind as a whole will have to grow up quite a bit to deal with this.

Just to put that into perspective. It is ever going harder today to get to ressources. You have to dig deeper, get more expensive high tech equipment to reach deposits. This is not pick axe material anymore. So if we let it rumble on a global level again, and that is I think what you are aiming at (would not make much sense in rebuilding if the chinese forge ahead meanwhile. In doubt, they will be the ones doing the rebuilding and nothing is solved), there is no coming back.

1st get rid if the elitist that manage the world with the only interest of profit. (bankers, politicians, top 1% wathever you call them)

2nd, get a new political class (after a "intelectual revolution") that adress the real problems of the world, more as the human race as a hole than individual countries with useless nationalism.

3 enact laws that are strictly persecuted so we can reduce world population peacfully in a few generations. enable abortion, no more than 1 son per family etc.

4 make the life controlled by laws si resources so we dont waste resources and human life is sustainable.

5 reach a stable population to mantain a faily good standart of living, if possible a lot more equally distributed

we have 50 years or we are all going to die horribly . we or our children :(

Yes. That's what I said, but not in so many words.

Europe is not America. There is very little commonality between countries in Europe. There are huge differences in culture, economies and aspirations. To be 'united' by the same money has not worked. It was a fanciful political utopia.

The reality of capitalism has emerged. Europe would have been better off without the Euro.

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

What lack of communality? You are projecting the UK's special situation as an island onto the countries of the continent. Most areas and people have been under one rulership or another, starting with the roman empire. There is a commonly shared and ongoing history of direct interaction and exchange for millenia, unrivaled anywhere else in the world.

There even is a common religion which was equally practiced eveywhere and the philisophical and ethical code coming with that.

Populations living at the borders of two countries often are more like one each other then people living on the borders to other countries. The same applies to ethnitices, which only corrolate superficially with dominant cultures. Most "differences" are simply based on the faith of being different, not actual differences. You will find when you move to other european countries that they differ in customs, not in basic values.

Added to that, we are not living in the 19th century anymore. There are countries coming up whose basic values differ to a far greater degree and the pontential to surpass any european nation with economic power by several multitudes, China the most prominent one.
Compared to these, Europe is a highly integrated cultural area and is seen at that in other parts of the world. That includes the UK.

You do not think one country alone, even the UK or Germany, stands a chance to counter that development alone in the long run, do you?

Finally, about the Euro. That stuff you talk about is bollocks. And it has become a self runner without anybody looking at how thbings really are. Portugal, Spain, Ireland, parts of the eastern european countries and also Germany have benefited enourmously from the Euro.
Even today the southern european countries, despite all the declines, are still leagues above from where they started out initially. Portugal was a Morocco style country before joing the EU and eventually the Euro.

The problem does not lie in the currency itself, it lies in it's basic construction, exposed by the collaps of an anglo saxon financial system, a system that helped a country like Greece fudge it's numbers into the Euro.

P.S. A little observation. Never in my life have I seen so much news coverage over the interiour politcal developments of other european countries. It's the same in any given eeuropean country currently I think. We have long reached the stage of european interiour politics in a strained and nerve wrecking situation without anybody by now even having gotten the idea to mobilize. Tell me what you want, but given european history, that is an achievement all by itself. I also prefer peace over capitalism.

How do you think this will go guys?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47342551

That would be very inconsequent, don't you think?

I'm talking about a situation where you'd have to expect a draft rather than volunteer.
I also decided against having my own offspring.
It has always been a pita for the past 10 years to talk my gf out of it...