It's not alarmism, what I'm saying is that this civilization is unsustainable by any metric you care to throw at it. We've over run our phosphorous reserves. We're depleting energy, land and the ability to feed our civilization. We're systematically amputating ourselves while worrying about the blood spilling on the floor.
It just strikes me how far away from reality this debate has taken us. Yes, none of this will kill the planet or this species for that matter, but it will kill this civilization.
In fact, this has happened again and again throughout history as Jared Diamond points out in his book, Collapse. When you see the record of civilizations and the choices they have made then 5 key metrics stand out;
1) Environmental damage
2) Climate change
3) Hostile neighbors
4) Friendly trade partners
5) The societies response to it's environmental problems
What's interesting is how he compared these metrics and individually isolated cases in histories where only a few were present and used them as examples to see what was going on. It's a beautiful and thrilling exploration between the factors, stakeholders at play and why those choices were made (as far as we know). A comment simply won't do that entire thing justice.
The thing is that there is a delicate interplay between our surroundings and our civilization and stretching it too far without healing won't lead to pleasant consequences. A civilization is a delicate state of things that needs to be maintained at a certain cost be it resources, intellectual or cultural capital. Everything joins to create an integrated whole and that's the problem; you can't have one without the other.
So, essentially we need to make a series of choices about how we are doing things and how we could do them if we want this period of prosperity to survive beyond a few decades.
Yes there is hope, but there's loads of work to do.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_...