I see little value in waiting until the last bird has fallen from the sky, the last fish has been harvested and the last river polluted/overused into oblivion. Why must the assumption of a limitless resource base be maintained until we actually run out?

And further - why is it okay to assume that if the limit will not be reached until 20 - 50 - 100 years have passed it is fine to squander what we have now?

I don't usually wait until we have no food in the house to go shopping and I don't wait until the car has run out of gas before filling up (when we drove) On the other side of the coin I didn't wait until there was no more gas to stop driving and I didn't wait until the lights went out before I started to power down. I think the same analogy of preparedness should be applied to resource usage and to our usage of biological systems.

Just because we haven't hit the gross limits NOW doesn't mean the systems are not under stress and doesn't mean that we should embrace BAU

Just my opinion

Al