Who are the hardnosed realists?

Conservatives see themselves as solid, rational, feet-on-the-ground folks. In contrast, they view liberals as just the opposite.

Yet when it comes to the environment, many or most conservatives come across as flaming Polyannas. Everything's fine! We don't have to give up anything--and if a problem does come up, well them science fellas will fix it right up fer us.

I will agree with them in one regard: most American liberals are nearly as much in denial about the environment as conservatives are.

If people really understood how much we're cantilevered over the abyss, they'd realize that at the very least every single nation on Earth needs to adopt Communist China's One Child policy. All our resource consumption issues stem from there simply being too many of us--like, about five billion too many, plus our total head count is growing at 140 a minute, 24x7.

But American liberals went into denial about this when people started accusing them of racism when they spoke about overpopulation. Conservatives chimed in with those who feel all the problems in the third world are the fault of the West.

Well, liberals would just about rather die than be seen as racist, so they fell into lockstep with the most reactionary fundamentalist Bible-thumpers about overpopulation, producing mass denial of the crisis.

And so we busy ourselves rearranging the deck chairs as our little boat called Earth as it sweeps closer and closer to the brink.