I liked this man. He smiled and looked me in the eyes and played me an equal. I’m sure he made 40,000 more than I did, which is saying nothing since at the time I was an unpaid intern with the Nature Conservancy and accepting a state job in Utah for 9.77 an hour with no benefits, not even sick leave or paid holidays. But we were equals. Those things didn’t matter enough to unbalance us.

He sold me a bare bones policy, talked about Tort Reform and what right I had to sue someone. For 30 extra per 6 months I had the right to sue anyone right on the spot of an accident, away from Allstate. It’s funny what rights you can buy.

In New Orleans the rich bought the right to escape Katrina with their lives in SUV’s with 12 mpg.

“So what do you think of oil?”

He asked me that. I smirked. He was shorter than I am, which is to say he was shorter than average. Wearing a non-descript yellow polo shirt tucked into brown khakis. Entirely neutral. His persona saying, ‘I’m not saying anything’. Just a breeze.

“So what do you think of oil?”

“That’s a big question.” I said to him folding my leg on my knee. The office was small, only two desks facing each other. I sat perpendicular to him and had to turn my head for conversation.

“That’s kind of like asking, ‘what do you think of money?’ or water, or walking.”

He began clarifying: “Well, you hear a lot of people talking about running out of oil, others say we have enough oil to last forever.” He paused to see if I’d speak. I did. For I was an expert on that side of the conversation.

“We won’t run out of oil, our kids might and if not them then their kids. But that’s not the danger. If we use all the oil we’ll be dead long before from intensified natural disasters. When people talk about running out of oil they mostly mean we’ve found it all.” What I was telling him could be learned from watching a program on the Discovery Channel.

“Yeah.” He said. I couldn’t tell what he knew and what he merely wanted my opinion on, being a young, starry-eyed-environmentalist full of a rebellious Utah-driving-freedom. To men who’ve lived their entire lives in south-central Pennsylvania, small things like the idea of Utah are dumbfounding. The day before a dental hygienist gushed to me about being able to do something similar, leaning her heavy breasts on my arms and picking scraps of plaque off my teeth, wearing a sanitation mask, her bright green eyes the only thing visible on her face. Months before she’d gone to Montana and ‘cried it was so beautiful’. That was the farthest west she’d ever been. I was envied. But, I had nothing. She too, made at least 25,000 more than I did, or would. Plus benefits.

People want this nothing and will pay a lot for it. Refusing to accept that it’s free.

“So what about these hurricanes?” He smiled. He had thick eyebrows like I did. But his were highlighted by his freshly shaved, glowing white head. He also had a carefully trimmed goatee with a touch of mid 30’s grey. Rita was currently a category 4 storm and Katrina had not three weeks prior flooded New Orleans and embarrassed the President. Records were being set weekly. “Are they because of global warming or…” he looked for the right words as he rose and grabbed the copy of my new policy from the printer. “Just environmental…” he trailed off again and I spoke.

“There are fluctuations in storm intensity.” I said wondering what example to give, the Oort cloud full of comets streaming just outside Pluto. Racing masses delicately pulling Earth this way and that, tipping her, wobbling an infinitesimal degree away from the heat source and plunging life into an ice age. “But it’s pretty safe to say this is due to human induced climate change.” I said and he smiled and went to the copy machine. I thought about telling him that evolution, in-and-of-itself, is, for all practical purposes, dead; at least not free. Humans being the main evolutionary force in existence. In this sense God was dead. Proved unessential. Negated to the depths of our own psyche. No longer the ultimate Other.

“Hurricanes feed off warm waters.” I told him as he sat back down.

“Yeah, the gulf is like 90 degrees now?” He said distracted and excited.

“Yeah. It’s a couple degrees above average.” I said and he smiled and pointed his finger at a line I had to sign over and date. Fall had started a few days before and the local paper ran a story about how it was the hottest summer on record for the mid-sized capital city. This was without breaking a single record for a day. The average was just shifted.

I shook his hand again, closing the deal. My thoughts as I drove away, passing a Hummer parked at a video store: I was very close to being this man but he was far from being me. That may be a pretentious thought. But realize: I am nothing. I have nothing. All my belongings fit into a mid-sized car. I do not own a mattress and stressfully grind my teeth from the unemployed horizon at night. I’ve had a year of unemployment and three months as an unpaid intern and now, finally do I have a job that lasts for nine months after which they lay me off for two weeks and I start working again, at 9.77 with absolutely no benefits. I don’t get paid for Christmas. This is with a college education.

And yet, if I “gave up” I would fall into a job selling auto insurance in the outskirts of a capital city. He would have to try very hard to get a job that I have. Despite embarrassing wages they are in high demand.

I used to think population was the only problem. It is the major problem and possibly negates all others. There are simply far too many people for the land. Especially since the average human appears to be advancing toward the ludicrous style of the American. I’ve read that if everyone in the world stood shoulder to shoulder, we could all fit on the tiny Caribbean island of Jamaica. But an American CEO is equivalent to an entire African nation or two, in terms of ecological footprint.

If murder was ever justified. It would be for this above. It would be for offing people who righteously think they are worth more than millions of others. People who silently, distantly, righteously murder other races of people. Murder is instead saved for wars for oil. Wars for lifestyles. Saved instead for wars to perpetuate and increase the devices that create enemies and destroy the planet and it’s ability to sustain existence.

Since truth is clamed to subjective, and evolution is hardly considered more correct at the kitchen table than creationism, I write this. Since these are the end times and Mormons accordingly carry two years supply of food in their house I write there is no god besides the one we create. Because it is a war of propaganda and spin I add my voice to the cacophony. Past population and consumption I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem is structure. As time goes on more people slip into poverty and must do, at an increasing rate, “what ever it takes to survive.” In American it means living on the sketchy side of New Orleans in a two bedroom apartment with 10 family members. In Latin America this means pushing up into the cloud forests to grow more coffee beans. In Brazil this means burning another hectare to feed a herd. In Iraq this either means standing in line for a policing job or joining a radical cleric and going to heaven by sending as many American’s to hell as you can.

I’ve rambled. The problem is structure. The problem is there are no leaders willing to employ people at reasonable wages to do what it takes to stave off a mass, institutional, civilization-wide suicide.

This is serious. I believe. There is work to be done and it cannot be work for a small fringe group that can subsist off nothing.

For too long the world, and America, has been so frightened of state sanctioned fascism that they’ve ignored the need of state and allowed private industries to become fascist themselves. In America, corporations are protected under the same Bill of Rights as people. A strong state is needed to prevent suburbs from suffocating all the natural world. For that is the current trend. There needs to be a moratorium on growth. It can’t be said clearer than that. No more malls or apartment complexes, no more building past the current growth of the current cities. No more babies. Never more than 2 per family. We’re not talking about wild west Republican or Libertarian freedom here. We’re talking about survival as a species. The world’s ability to support live, which WE ostensibly belong.

I’ve rambled but that was the point. Enough. Enough, enough, enough. Stop. Please. For Christ’s sake. The problem is the structure of the mind and my problem is that this structure cannot be changed fast enough.

The point is reached from the question: “who are you?” or “who is he?” and it’s consequences. “I’m an accountant” one might say. Or, “I’m a biologist.” “I work for General Motors.” Whatever. Jobs are shells. They are the main carriers of identities. And we as a culture have the ability to select for certain shells. To select for certain identities by making their existence, i.e. jobs, common, or at least desirable. The question is not only what kind of world we want to leave to our children, the question is whether we, as a species, want to live at all.

Joel Van Noord lives in the mojave desert and sells energy from solar panels to the US government.