I understand your frustration, the problems of our time are larger in scale than ever before. And there are an infinite number of examples where corporate interests and failure to take prudent risks towards sustainable energy production lead to ecological destruction. However, the push towards renewable energies is well under way. Many project that solar will be able to shoulder the majority of nation states energy burden before 2040. Obviously it would be ideal if it happened sooner than that, but it may be soon enough to prevent environmental collapse on a massive scale. I'm well aware of this, and have written about it extensively. Humans completely transformed the biosphere by restructuring it around ourselves. Throughout our evolutionary history we always eliminated the other megafauna that would have been the top competitors for energy. In the 21st century we should be trying our best to reverse the extinction trends that have followed from this epoch. No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy but it seems like we will make good progress with this between now and 2100. The Ratchet is cumulative culture. Our species has the ability to stabilize cultural complexity and build upon it. All of human life is dedicated to this. For example, I've spent the past 6-7 years studying evolution (trying my best to acquire all of the human knowledge we have about the process)... with the hopes of now contributing to the literature and expanding our knowledge even further about human evolution. We all do this in our own way, whether it is with the environment, physics, government, business, you name it. That is The Ratchet in action. Our ability to produce complex technoculture that couldn't possibly have been produced in one lifetime... unless we were standing on the shoulders of billions of other intelligent agents who preceded us.Within 1'000 years of human appearance of Australia and the Americas 2/3 of these continent's megafauna disappeared (quaternary extinctions).
I haven't quiet understood what you imply by "ratchet" but I wonder if it even matters.
I much appreciate your thoughts and explanations, but they make me think of the Swiss Federal Councillor Willi Ritschard who said that the meeting of two optimists more often than not is cause for pessimism, as optimists typically tend to overlook the problem. I tend to think that my friend Helmut Lubbers (www.ecoglobe.ch) and Albert Bartlett (www.albartlett.org) share a realistic outlook. Yet we should all do our best to avert collapse. Nature, however, is cataclysmic, catastrophic, and humanity will be hit hard again sooner or later, be it as a consequence of shortsightedness or by events entirely outside our control, or both, most likely. Our ability to ecologically integrate economy and society has to evolve massively and quickly: How do you suggest we do that and what is your "action plan to save the world"?