Paul Ehrlich is convinced our planet can’t sustain its current population. The earth is getting toxic. He blames the superrich and their predatory consumption. He also says women all over the world should be granted equal rights, and that everyone be given access to birth control methods, to counter the population explosion.

However, Paul Ehrlich also thought millions and millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970’s. Although hunger remains a problem, technological breakthroughs have prevented famines killing hundreds of millions of people.

Sperm counts are plunging so perhaps there will automatically be less and less people, which will let the planet regenerate.

Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist movement will probably agree that the world can’t go on the way it has, but he does think that the planet can sustain its current population, if we would switch to a different economic system. Cities could for example collectively build the most modern food growing system to feed everyone at a very low cost, and with less use of land than is now used in a market based agricultural system.

Is our civilisation heading for collapse?

Well, the big question of our age is what we are going to do with amazing technological breakthroughs. Are we going to use these for the benefit of all, or will the machines be used by the superrich to keep raking in profits at the expense of everyone else.

If the world would be an island with 100 people then one out of 100 owns the whole island and tricks the 99 to work for him or her.

On an island with 100 people it would be so easy to spot what’s going on that this one person would be ousted very quickly, but on a global scale this one person is out of reach, safely enjoying his or her megalomanic wealth, while most people accept that the world is owned by a tiny minority.