jebatty said:
The elephant in the room are the wealthy -- they always will be able to afford to adapt to environmental change and continue to exploit everyone else. So long as the wealthy control the economics, government and the military, the rest of us will suffer, be poisoned, and die. Hopefully the wealthy too will act reasonably before war for resources and revolution from despair are again visited upon the world.
I don't think it is quite that dire.
The "wealthy" are, in fact, often the only people who can affect change on a very large scale.
If you look at prominent environmentalists, you will find many of them among the wealthy.
I think you should replace "wealthy" with "thoughtless" or "selfish".
For instance, the person who lives in the woods and has dumped all their trash and old cars over the hollow for a couple generations....might not be wealthy, but surely is thoughtless!
On the other hand, the people backing large scale science and R&D and environmental efforts these days...are often very wealthy....one dude who supports the Sierra Club and a number of other efforts is detailed here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09green.html
Wealth is no different than many other kinds of power (arms, strength, fire, etc.) - it can be used for various means. Obviously someone very evil with wealth (the Koch brothers, who back the Tea Party come to mind) can do great environmental harm. However, you can't fight against them by rounding up some homeless people and picketing! You need to fight against them with strength and power (wealth).
The reason so many wealthy people, for instance in the Northeast, are relatively liberal...and environmentalists...is that they are wealthy enough to have some time and energy to devote to the cause. The wealthy person can buy organic food at Whole Foods, the poor person cannot.
A poor example, I know, but when you buy locally grown organic food at Whole Foods, you might just be helping the environment a little......
In other words, wealthier people and societies have more time to think and more time to make choices. The person scraping by and working in a polluting factory can't say much about it.