If you are not happy on the inside, you will never find happiness on the outside.  Yet today, it is common to see people seek happiness on the outside without having done this inner work.  They seek some sort of lasting fix from something out there, somewhere.  They expect the next TV show, consumer gadget, website click or paid-for experience to provide some happiness, even when it never does.

The urge to find happiness on the outside leads to addiction and delusion.  It is possible to be addicted to anything in this world, even pain.  The root of all addiction is simply the urge to find pleasurable stimulation, to cover over the emptiness felt on the inside.  It is not possible to treat addiction without addressing this very emptiness — you have to teach the addict how to create happiness first, then the addiction will go away, naturally.

And it is possible to be deluded about anything.  So many people today are so obsessed with their religion, with their politics, with their ideas about how the world must be.  They cling to some belief system to interpret their emptiness and sense of existential anguish, to give it meaning, to give it some dignity  This is a very human thing to do, but no matter how much you dress up the empty void inside, it remains an empty void.  The fundamentalists of religion, of politics, even of science — those who refuse to question — have made this world a very difficult place for the rest of us.

I want to point out that our entire economic system today — consumerist corporate capitalism — is itself a product and reflection of this attitude that we can find happiness on the outside without doing the self-inquiry and personal work necessary to make ourselves happy on the inside.

Indeed, the entire premise of our society is that happiness can be purchased.  It doesn’t matter what it is you purchase, as long as you are purchasing something.  You could be buying a flat-screen TV, or a pet, or a year supply of Prozac.   In each instance, we make the assumption that the purchase itself leads to happiness.  That moment when cash exchanges hands, when units of money are swapped for some consumer experience or consumer item: this is the sacred moment of our society, worshipped as the sum total of human civilization.

If you want to understand the damage cause by this philosophy, all you need to do is look at the waste caused by consumerism.  Consumerism and waste go hand in hand.  Humanity has generated more waste on this planet in the last 200 years than in the last 200,000 years.  Thanks to consumerism, we have littered the world with our plastics, which scientists say carry a toxic poison.  We have created so-called “dead zones” in the ocean where life can no longer exist.  An entire island of trash, twice the size of Texas, floats between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Our need for cheap energy to fuel non-stop consumer acquisition threatens the habitability of life on this planet.  Fossil fuel emissions, air pollution, spent nuclear energy — all these things are produced because we give short shrift to the consequences of waste.  We prefer to have the luxury of cheap energy and fast cars even if it means poisoning the air quality and melting the ice caps.  There are so many evils associated with these waste products — health evils such as cancer and asthma, as well as environmental evils such as climate change — yet today, these evils are ignored.

Consumerism generates internal waste as well.  In addition to the physical garbage produced by consumerism, we accumulate mental garbage in our minds.  Short attention spans, fix-it-now attitudes about life, seeing people as worthy of respect only if they look like the people we see on TV: these are the types of mental waste we produce when we dedicate our lives to consumerism.

So we live in a world where we are told that buying things on the outside will soothe the inner void on the inside.  But this never happens.  Instead, all we end up doing is creating and living in our own waste.  Can you see how destructive this logic is, how truly brainwashed we must be to buy into the consumerist point of view?  We are so brainwashed that we cannot stop our behaviors even when they are toxic to the planet and to ourselves — even when we recognize the damage we are causing.

But let us look on the bright side.  The bright side is that more and more people are waking up to the reality that consumerism is a poison that prevents us from being happy.  More and more people are taking a holistic approach to the problems of our society — the problems of happiness, the problems of health, the problems of waste and climate change — and seeing that these problems are all linked together, linked to the very basic desire to find contentment.

Today, it is possible to talk of a world based on sustainability, and not consumerism.

What is sustainability?  Sustainability is a way of life that asks us to cultivate happiness from that which we have, instead of expecting happiness to come from that which we can purchase.

A sustainable world will look very different than a world based on consumer acquisition.

A sustainable world begins in our own minds.  Sustainability says, “what I have is enough,” and uses that foundation as a basis to do the inner work necessary to cultivate happiness.  Instead of seeing the world as a vast resource to be exploited, the attitude of sustainability seeks to live in harmony with the world and minimize human impact in order to preserve it for future generations.

A sustainable world will not be focused on the production of new consumer items.  Today, we all work to get rich, so that we can purchase things.  In a sustainable world, we will not work to get rich, but to maintain our essentials so that we can have the free time to cultivate happiness.

A sustainable world will honor mental and physical health.  Today, there are a variety of diseases that accrue due to our unhealthy lifestyle, diseases of the mind as well as diseases of the body.  Because we sit for so many hours of the day, we get heart disease later in life, and we develop cancers due to the poisons we put in the air and the earth.  Because we are constantly looking for happiness in consumer acquisition, we develop addictive and delusional traits that lead to psychosis and greater feelings of unhappiness.  A sustainable world will ask us to confront these ills, and heal them.

A sustainable world will ask us to take individual responsibility for our every day needs.  In a sustainable world, we will have to take a hand in guaranteeing our shelter, our food supply, our modes of transportation.  We will have to work with our friends and neighbors to ensure that those common necessities of life are shared by everyone, so that all can pursue their happiness in the way they see fit.

A sustainable world will have a different attitude towards technology.  We won’t use technology as a stand-in for human happiness, but we will use it as a tool in making our lives easier.

A sustainable world will be a world of peace.  Our current attitudes about acquisition play themselves out on the world stage this very moment.  What are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, if nothing other than America’s desire to acquire stable energy supplies and greater power in this world?  No, we don’t need to acquire any of those things.  We can do with what we have.  Ninety-nine percent of the wars in this world result from a desire to acquire resources from another.  When we adopt an attitude of sustainability, we will come to see war as the disrespect that it really is, both to its victims and to ourselves.

A sustainable world is a world based on the wisdom that we cannot acquire happiness.  Happiness comes about through cultivation of the soul, through self-examination, by looking at our lives and making constant improvements so that we can feel ever closer to the grand consciousness which permeates all of existence.  If we can adopt this attitude internally, then the world will reflect this attitude as well.

The problems of the world today are the problems of unhappiness.  We are all just looking to be happy.  There is nothing wrong with this desire, but we should be critical of the methods we use to obtain happiness.  And we must discard those methods that do not in fact bring us happiness, ways of life like consumerism.

We can fix a lot of the problems of the world today with a new attitude: an attitude of sustainability.  It is a difficult thing to examine this collective way of life called consumerism which we live day-in and day-out, without thought of any alternative.  But it is a way of life that is killing us, and killing the planet, and prevents us from being happy.  It is time to think of another way.

What do you have to lose in this endeavor, other than your own misery?

To be plain, the energy free ride we’ve received from fossil fuels — cheap, abundant, and easy to refine — is over.

Every week, oil prices hit new records. Last week, they were at $112 a barrel.

Last year, oil prices were $75 a barrel.

In 2003 — just five years ago, and before the war in Iraq — the price of a barrel of oil was under $25 a barrel.

Oil is the blood of civilization. It powers everything. It is used in every manufacturing process and is the key component of plastic, which is ubiquitous in our society. It is used to make fertilizer and power tractors — the basic elements of modern food production.

Without oil, our lives change dramatically, and not for the better. All the modern conveniences we take for granted are a result of cheap energy, of cheap oil.

Because oil is so important, it is no surprise that the control of oil has led to war. This is what led the British to seek control of the Middle East and install puppet kings in the 1920s, and what led the United States to continue this legacy after World War II. It’s why the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1953, and why the United States gave weapons to Iraq in 1980 against a nationalist Iranian regime. It’s why the United States went to war with Iraq in 1990 and rescue Kuwait — to preserve the balance of power in the Middle East and preserve its access to cheap oil.

It’s why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003: to control the oil of the Middle East.

Today, people are beginning to suffer from the effects of high oil prices. They are the poor, the marginalized, the invisible — the people who cannot afford to pay the high premiums for gas in cities without functional public transportation (e.g., cities in states west of the Mississippi), who have to choose between food and energy (and God forbid that there is a health need, because health care is largely unavailable as well), whose faces are not the faces that you see on the six-o-clock news because they are neither light-skinned nor rich (so there must be no newsworthy stories about them); today, at this very moment, it is these millions who act as unchosen vanguards of a future without cheap energy.

And their experiences appear to indicate that life without cheap energy will be very difficult indeed.

There is so much hope placed on technology — fuel cells will save us, or solar power, or wind power, or geothermic, etc. The list is endless, the snake oil salesman undusting their tried-and-true techniques to get a little private funding (or even government funding) on the hope that the energy free ride can continue.

In the meantime, there continues to be little concern over the effects of oil: that the use of cheap oil is melting the polar ice caps and leading to a world of potentially dramatic changes in terms of environment.

Oil has allowed humanity to live a way of life that is just not sustainable. This is especially true for Americans. Americans are five percent of the world population, but produce 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, consume 25% of the world’s resources, and generate roughtly 30% of the world’s waste. If everyone in the world lived like Americans, we would need the resources of four Earths. That isn’t possible. We only have one Earth.

Yet countries like India and China see the American way of life and they are motivated to obtain it as well. For centuries, so many countries have been mired in poverty and oppression. They see the good life of America — a society powered by cheap energy, and all the benefits of that — and they want that way of life as well.

As the prime users and beneficiaries of cheap oil, Americans will have to take the lead in coming to terms with its overuse. They will have to take responsibility for an unsustainable way of life, and start to develop a new way of living — one that is more sustainable and healthier. Americans will have to give up some of the comforts and benefits of cheap energy. That is a difficult thing to accept, but if there is any chance of dealing with the effects of climate change and expensive energy in the future, then it will have to be done.

We are not talking about buying Priuses and putting the thermostat lower. Our habits, assumptions, and behaviors are intimately tied to our thinking about energy: that it is cheap, plentiful, and harmless to the environment. None of these things are true anymore. Energy is no longer cheap; it is no longer plentiful (at least with regard to fossil fuels); and it is now generally accepted science that the use of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, which is contributing to climate change.

We need a totally new way of thinking that is based on that reality. Then we will be able to successfully deal with the problems that arise from the consumption of cheap energy.

Think about how difficult that is. I write these words on a computer made from plastic (and thus made from oil), powered by energy coming from an outlet in my wall that comes from electricity (produced either by natural resources such as coal or even nuclear power). If I am hungry, I will go and eat food that was grown with fossil-fuel based fertilizers and gas-powered tractors, and delivered by a gas-powered truck to a grocery store, where I went and drove my gas-powered car. Every moment of my current existence and all of my basic needs are based on the availability of cheap energy. This will all change in the near future.

Instead of waiting for the effects of this to ripple through society — and those effects will be harsh — people need to start affirmatively changing their lives. The best way to do this is to live a life where less energy is consumed. Live in smaller communities, walk more, use less energy; the suburban sprawl that we have generated in the past 50 years must come to an end. People will have to start living together again as they once did before the advent of the suburb.

This may mean a return to urban areas, but new (and better) models of social living can be created as well. Suburbs can be transformed to incorporate elements of food production — yes, growing food in the suburbs — so that food is local and doesn’t have to be transported hundreds of miles by truck to get where it needs to go. In fact, all sorts of manufacturing and light industry can be recreated within the suburb so that all basic needs are met within a small radius. There is simply no need for our goods and services to be manufactured in China and then shipped (by a gas-powered ship) to the United States. This may benefit the industrialist who saves on cheap labor, but it is destructive to the common good and to the environment as well. American industry will have to be reborn and retrofitted for sustainability and incorporation into the community.

But the most important change takes place in the mind. We have to learn to recognize the waste of everyday life and seek to change it. When you walk into a drug store, and find yourself surrounded by aisles and aisles of plastic goods, consider the energy use (and the oil use especially) in manufacturing all those plastic goods and shipping them to that store. Consider how many of those items will be wasted. That way of life is just totally unworkable in a world without cheap oil. It is nice to go into a upscale grocery store and see so many different items from around the world — but that way of life is just not workable without cheap oil. We’ll probably all have to eat locally grown food in the near future if we expect to meet our food demands.

We’ll have to rediscover the fact that global problems — no matter their size and scope — can be best met by local solutions. Let the people, at the local level, come up with the solutions on their own and they will learn to take care of themselves. This is the essence of American-style democracy, and in reality, that way of life is the key in confronting the challenges of the 21st century.

Everything I’ve described here will become obvious in the coming months, if it is not obvious already. Oil will climb higher, more people will suffer, the economy will falter as it starts to stall on the decline of cheap energy — cheap oil is its blood. At some point, the news of melting of polar ice will become difficult to avoid and shut out. This is all inevitable.

What is not inevitable is the reaction to these events. They may seem catastrophic, but these problems can be managed. But that will require effort, and a change of thinking about the world we all live in. It will require a recognition of reality. Sometimes, reality is the most difficult thing in the world to accept.

The British Times writes that the world is only “ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies.” The shortages will be eliminated within a year, but this is the first time in 50 years that food stocks of wheat have been so low.

The Financial Times, in a piece entitled “The rising cost of food,” quotes food-industry insiders who note they are seeing “cost increases that we’ve never seen in our business” as a result of increasing demand for food.

The Sydney Morning Herald comments that corn is reaching all time highs on the Chicago exchange.

The BBC reports that the United Nations is calling the rising price of wheat and corn a “major global concern” and that food shortages rose 40% last year.

The Los Angeles Times writes that food prices last month jumped 1.7% — or 20.4% annualized if that rate stays the same.

All of this is a result of growing demand all over the world for food, as well as our increased use of these basic materials for our way of life. Bio-fuel anyone? People who think that we can grow our way out of global warning on the back of corn or soybeans are leading us to a world where we’ll have to literally choose whether to feed our car or ourselves. That sounds like a nightmare world. But it’s where we’re headed.

In the meantime, the destroyed housing market in the United States, a bubble purposely designed by the Federal Reserve to off-set the economic effects of a protracted war effort in the Middle East, is shrinking the credit supply. Creditors no longer want to give people credit, but the lack of real money means that without credit, people don’t have a way of buying the things they want, or even need (as in the case of food). And if people aren’t buying things, then our economy stalls and grinds to a halt.

The economic problems facing America are deeply structural and there is no quick fix. They are the problems faced by all empires at the beginning of their decline. The military is overextended; meanwhile, the lack of investment in the home economy causes a break down in infrastructure (such as the “lights out” in Florida). Things literally start to fall apart. The middle class disappears as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

In these times, where there is so much distraction all around us, with non-stop entertainment and technological gadgets, it is rare when a person can put two and two together. The longer the United States is at war with the world, the greater the economic instability and turmoil.  A society’s resources cannot be dedicated towards making the weapons of war without negative consequences. You can spend your time investing in yourself, or investing in a bomb. But you cannot do both. For now, the American government chooses to invest in the latter, and not the former.

The greater the economic instability and turmoil, the more significant the repercussions that eventually arrive. In times of great economic stress, people have turned to demagogues like Napoleon and Hitler to lead them from their troubles. As food prices rise, civil liberties will fall in tandem; those who start to ask questions will become a threat to those who profit from the breakdown of a civilized order.

The United States must remember its republican roots. It must come to see the danger of neverending military adventures. It must decrease its federal government and give freedom and money back to the states, and to the people. If it does not, then it risks a serious social breakdown. Societies do not thrive in conditions filled with food shortages and war.  They suffer, and decline, and often commit horrible atrocities against others.  This is the historical reality.  If nothing is done, it will become an avoidable destiny.

It is hoped that by 2020, four-person crews will make week-long trips while power supplies, rovers and living quarters are built on the lunar surface. Once the base is completed in the mid-2020s, astronauts will stay for up to six months at a time to prepare for longer journeys to Mars.

For a nation that has lost two out of five space shuttles over the last 20 years to human error, the plan to go to the moon is ambitious at best, foolhardy at worst. For a nation that is now spending $1 to $2 trillion dollars on a failed war effort in the heart of the Middle East, the plan is nothing short of lunacy.

While NASA did not give specific estimates of cost for this venture, the original Apollo missions — which simply wanted to land on the moon, not set up a permanent mission — cost the United States an estimated $135 billion in 2006 dollars. Costs for a long-term manned settlement will be equally high, if not higher. Technology must be researched that will allow people to live in space for long periods of time; spacecraft will have to be designed which will ferry people back and forth; rockets will have to be funded and built to propel people out to the moon; the costs are truly extravagant, and as with all government expenditures, are almost certainly being underestimated at this point in time.

Consider NASA’s announcement within the context of another news item from last week, this one almost totally ignored by the mainstream press: the richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth, while the bottom 50% the world’s adult population owns barely 1% of global wealth. The report, from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University, also found that North America, Europe and some countries in the Asia Pacific region, such as Japan and Australia, account for 90% of total world household wealth. The rest of the world — Latin America, Africa, Asia — get the remaining 10%.

And what are the rich countries spending their money on? Not on rectifying these disgusting levels of inequality, but enforcing them. The planned colonization of the moon, if it were to occur, would be the next chapter in a long sorded history of human conquest. The United States does not go to the moon to benefit the human race — it goes to benefit itself, and more accurately, a small subset of Americans who have discovered the large profits that can be reaped from war, conquest, and exploitation. It is no coincidence that Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, has also been granted the right to build NASA’s next moonship. American tax dollars, derived from the public, are funnelled to the benefit of a handful of corporations and a handful of people. The common good is sacrificed so that this planet-dominating technology can be ever improved, exploitation made cheaper and more cost-effective, oppression made more profitable as an enterprise.

Human beings and nation states have no right to colonize the solar system when there is so much that must be done here on Earth. The continued depravity of war, the scourge of gross disparities in wealth and power, the ongoing destruction of the planet and the challenge of climate change are problems that beg for attention. Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of outer space conquest are puerile in the face of the continuing challenges of life here on planet Earth.

It will be a sad day if and when the rocket’s bright glare announces the dawn of human settlement in outer space. We have trashed and devastated the resources of one planet; yet we seem eager to spread our Midas touch of chaos and greed beyond the confines of this tiny blue home. I realize that many people today look up at the heavens and see the promise of wealth, fame and power, a beckoning frontier of human expansion. This is what the Europeans saw when they first landed on the Americas, and what their cultural descendants continue to see when they look with hungry eyes at the Moon, and Mars after that. But in spreading this perspective, we have only spread suffering. If we cannot change as a species, then we ought to contain our damage to ourselves. We have no right to curse whatever other sentience exists in the universe.

A global study to be published Friday by a team of scientists from 12 academic institutions in five countries concluded that “100% of [fished] species will collapse by the year 2048 or around that.” In addition, ecosystems will be unable to recover from shrinking populations of so many species of fish and other sea creatures.

“Our data highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale,” the scientists reported. “Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations.”

What a truly sad state of affairs this species has created for the Earth. We have trashed the oceans, destroyed the land, polluted the air, and, to top it off, seem to enjoy killing each other at intermittent intervals.

At this planet’s most desparate hour, there is only business as usual; and for those who notice, only a slow and steady erosion in the belief of any remaining nobility contained by the human race.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”

In making his prediction, Hawking joins the British cosmologist Sir Martin Rees in doomsday science. Three years ago, Rees published a book entitled Our Final Hour, in which he predicted that humanity had only a 50-50 chance of surviving the next century.

“This new century is very special. There is a greater chance of technology running away from us, of our losing social control,” Rees said a few years ago. “At the same time, society is more interconnected and vulnerable. A virus can be carried around the world in a day. The have-nots can see what the haves possess. Impoverished people in Africa get access to the Internet before they even have dependable food supplies or clean water. It aggravates the embitterment, the unequal benefits of globalization.”

Hawking and Rees are smart, educated scientists, perhaps the foremost people in their professions, and their comments are more than idle speculation. There is a growing sense amongst scientists of all stripes that something is going terribly awry between humans and the Earth, which will ulimately imperil the survival of the species itself.

The harms they speak of — climate change, population pressures, the spread of destructive technologies, and so forth — seem remote to us now. But now is the time to act. It does not take a psychic to see how terribly chaotic the future might be if people do not change their ways; and there will be no one to save us from the giant hole we insist on digging for ourselves and our descendants.

History teaches that from its earliest beginnings, civilization has gone hand-in-hand with the quest for more land and resources. Empires built themselves up in various river valleys, only to be eventually conquered by more powerful empires.

Our own time is no different. Even today, nations send their militaries across vast distances so as to control the land and take the resources of others.

Central to the relationship between humans and the Earth is the notion of exploitation. Trees turn to ships, homes, firewood and paper; soil is converted to agriculture; the oceans are harvested for their fish; and today, oil is sucked from the land and then used to power the tremendous inventions of the last two centuries.

In all these undertakings, humans have seen the Earth as having a bounty of almost endless duration. Little thought has been given to the fact that the Earth can give only what it has; that when it runs out of resources, there will be nothing left for humans to take.

Now, we are already beginning to witness the consequences of this relationship with the planet. Both the unquenchable thirst for oil (a primary factor of the Iraq War) and the phenomenon of climate change are the result of a mindset which treats the Earth as a never-ending source of natural wealth. Today, humanity is quite literally polluting itself into seeming oblivion with no thought of recourse.

It is difficult for many people to comprehend the scope of the abuse leveled against the planet because it is so integral to our daily existences. Most of us wake up each day, pollute our way to work, aid businesses and corporations in their taking of the land, and then pollute our way back home where we get a few minutes of much needed rest before repeating the process the next day.

What does a person really need? Basically very little — food, water, shelter, and the psychological space necessary for cultivating healthy relationships and self-knowledge. In modern life, we have come to worship the means to these ends as opposed to the ends themselves. By constantly seeking more material wealth, we have condemned ourselves to a futile existence of greed and perpetual thoughts of inadequacy; meanwhile, the precious little left on this planet stands to be voraciously consumed.

This century, the land will either be humanity’s greatest friend or worst enemy. It is a choice that we must make, for the land can only reflect the intentions we bring to it. If we continue to approach the land with thoughtlessness in our hearts, then, when we have done enough damage, it will be similarly thoughtless to us and we will struggle to survive. But if we approach the land in peace, and with the intention of living in harmony with the resources that remain, then the land will extend peace back to us.

Even to the last moment, the Earth will not forsake its most gifted creation. But the choice is ours and ours alone, and there is not much time left for us to change our ways.