Ray I agree with everything you said here, just the one off-the-cuff remark about technology hit me in my anger zone. Yup I get angry when folk blame technology, when it was profit, always profit, the unspeakable live beast which is the profit monster, that we have to blame, and this is technology telling you this, it's systems Engineering, which is just applied science, specifically it's the stakeholder analysis, which we should really be valuing, like we should also be valuing the energy of the sun, recogniziing also we need everyone to be aligned and empowered / incentived by the issue of solar indexed stimulus, to start doing the right thing instead of being rewarded for always doing the wrong thing.
So I hope you'll recognise when I was working with you, this is what needs to happen, everyone working together, understanding one another.
You need technology to undo this mess, dude, and I hope you'll accept it does have a solution.
If you reversed an old car, hundreds of miles into a one-way tunnel in a desert, to a dead end, and you knew you could get back out by just putting car into forwards gear, to drive the car all the way back out in a fraction of the time it took to drive in, would you choose to just try walking instead?
That is what the comparison is like. We could repair pretty much all the damage done to date, and much more never expected - re greening desert areas is a natural outcome, if we just move to creation rather than destruction.
Its incredible to me what you've seen already, driven by instinct, you know instinctively what is good and bad, and this is a really unusual and commendable attribute you have, imho Ray, it's more than I would have if I didn't have the Systems Engineering experience I"ve had.
But with the best will in the world, there is only so much you can do without technology.
This technological problem was caused by profit. It's profit that screwed up the whole project of humanity to date, and I am almost sorry to say it can only be fixed by technology.
I am sorry because it might not fit with your belief, but it's reality.