THE Question Of The Twenty-First Century

An interesting and disturbing article on how 20% of the world's animal species are dying off. Reading this article and watching a good documentary last week on the global issues surrounding water -- it's called Flow and my friend edited it, by the way -- it occurs to me that THE question of the next century probably has to be: is the modern world sustainable? The impression of impending doom certainly isn't helped by our current financial meltdown, but, on a grander scale, the question goes beyond our momentary crisis and deals with the heart of the principles upon which our life is built: technological progress, democracy, capitalism. In other words, will a world which believes that everyone is entitled to strive for equality and deserves to live a good life of material wealth and also one of individual freedom, which seems to lead to ever-increasing needs, will this world outstrip its global resources or will it be able to accommodate itself to those resources?