I enjoyed your site and believe you're on the right track (haven't had time to look at it all, yet). We, like you, are frustrated at what's going on both locally and around the world and are seeking solutions.

What we do know is that what we've been doing for the past 100 years (environmentalism, cleaning streams, recycling, environmental legislation) hasn't worked. We have more aware people, more legislation, more regulations, more environmental groups, more protected areas, and yet the ecosystems of the planet are worse off today than they were 30 years ago. What we're doing isn't working because we haven't addressed the source of the problems: human population growth and economic growth. In my experience, I don't think you can lump the two together for most people, when I bring up the topic of growth, invariably say, "yes, but how are you going to stop people from having children in the third world?" They fail to see that economic growth in the first world is having more of a detrimental impact.

Frustrated, a few of us here decided to put up a satirical web page that we've been toying with but have not released for general distribution yet. It still needs some work but you can find it at: www.islandnet.com/qualicuminstitute.

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