Mother Earth, much like old Mother Hubbard who lived in a shoe, with so many children she didn't know quite what to do, is groaning from her childrens' wanton fertility. Today, January 30, 2008, it is reported in the New York Times that it is estimated that Mother's children will increase from 6.6 billion today to 9 billion in 2050 -- an increase of 2.4 billion souls in 42 years.

I suppose if you're a PC maker, chewing gum manufacturer, software vendor or pharmaceutical manufacturer, this news will be met with great relish and renewed vigor to plan on how to profit from this inevitable invading horde.

But, what if you are someone who relishes open, unspoiled, unregulated, naturally majestic and aesthetically and spiritually inspiring spaces? What are you to do? How can you preserve your dreams without seeming to be (or being) reactionary? Is it inevitable that crowding, poverty, squalor, division and discord become the norm? Do we have any right to load Mother down so thoroughly that we return to the medieval norm, in which, as Thomas Hobbes put it, life was "nasty, brutish and short"? Do we, in other words, have the right to shirk our responsibility to leave future generations with some fighting chance of creating good, worthwhile, reasonably pleasing and productive lives?

Is is right that we escape our bodies, knowing that in our wake, we left our Mother bedraggled, besotted, bereft and not even a little bemused?

Saving our Mother from an iniquitous future, which will almost certainly involve mass genocides the likes of which no rational sane being willingly contemplates, is a little like a weight-loss diet or improving your health after a long endorsement of indolence and irresponsibility and sloth: You have to take it one step at a time, on a gradient. But, if you don't get started, no matter how long it will take you, no matter if you have no idea how to reach your goal, or exactly in what direction it lays, then your good intentions, as the saying goes, will "pave the path to Hell".

So, let's get started. One gradient step at a time. Let's make our Mother proud. Stop our bickering, maligning, carping and complaining. Get along. Join in the one goal that each of us must share, if we share anything at all ... and that is to leave Mother better off than she was when we first laid eyes on her. Let's all, each of us in his or her own way, leave the world a little better off than when we got here and, when we come back, we'll surely be glad we did.