Greetings from the Post-Mayan Apocalypse!

The major problem of our future is finite resources being stretched to supply 10 billion people. As I see it a two pronged approach is needed to combat this problem going forward 

1. Get people to consume less, while still enjoying a good standard of living.

2. Recycle everything that can be recycled.

Our economy is built on consumption, so #1 is difficult, but here is what I propose; don't let India's and China's economies consume to the point where their countries' are full of self storage facilities. Americans have so much crap that they will never use and they cram it into self storage units, most of which stop being paid for by the renter and have to be auctioned or disposed of. Having things is not a bad thing, but having 3 houses worth of furniture and 5 closets of clothes is. The average Chinese citizen born today will consume more than 8 times the goods and services that the previous generation consumed. We might really need to mine asteroids to get the materials we need to keep consuming.

The second part should be easy. We know the recyclable materials, most of them are labeled, and yet we continue to pitch them in the garbage because we are so used to our throw away ways. I think the recycling issue needs to be reexamined and a new education campaign needs to be crafted to reach the public and inform them truthfully about the finite nature of the resources that we pull out of the ground. Perhaps then people would recognize the importance of recycling.