And yet, 'we carry on drinking cappuccino on the side of the volcano' ..

I love your quote. Perfect picture of the human response to forces beyond our control. Elsewhere on Thinqon Berryman says 'we may not deserve order but we depend on it'. The only time I see order is when my eyes blink closed and the world is a formless pinky grey. When my eyes blink open I am presented by endless chaos. At my most optimistic I can only hope that today's chaos is no more harmful than yesterday's. But it's many years since I've been that optimistic. My sense is that mankind in its teeming billions is under threat of extinction equal to that when our multitude was reduced to a handful on the plains of Africa.
  Anthropogenic global warming, overpopulation, resource depletion are each capable of reducing mankind to a miserable remnant grubbing for an existence amidst the ruins. The way of life we have followed for the last 10,000 years has always led to greater wealth as we strip earth of her resources and exploit the commons. No one breaths clean air. It no longer exists. The only people drinking clean water do so by depleting aquifers built up over millions of years. Except for a small number of hunter gatherers our foods are loaded with chemicals whose effects can only be guessed at. But still our numbers grow. According to the Guardian I was roughly #2,250,000,000 when I was born and now there are 7,000,000,000 of us and 3,000,000,000 more to come by the end of the 21st century. I've read some ecologists who think the carrying capacity of earth is closer to 1,000,000,000.
  Global problems require global solutions. The idea of global cooperation is so alien in a world of national interests that my only hope is that the Japanese are only human, that if the Japanese society can transform itself in a generation as it has in the past then there is hope despite the American model. Instead of a successful society counting increasing consumption as a sign of progress it will have to change to a society which provides for all while consuming less. We will have to return to the values of our hunter gatherer ancestors whose leaders lead by example and who prayed for 'all my people'. Those people included all who walked, all who flew, all who swam, all who crawled and those who were rooted, all life.
  In the next few decades there is every chance that your offspring will personally prosper. I think that our offspring face diminished opportunity to be followed by crisis. We need to achieve McCluhan's global village. To examine our political and economic decisions as the aboriginals did, asking how does this effect our children for the next 7 generations instead of just me. Can the internet breakdown international barriers? Can we come together as inhabitants of this earth? Can we invent a new purpose of life, a new society? I dunno. But I do know a few decades ain't gonna do it. Paragraphs and I've said no more than you did in one sentence. Time to go get my 3 o'clock latte.