What if this happens next year?

Sounds like only one of the bunch of old timers was thinking properly. We need to be changing our habits and our living arrangements. So if there's a flood, or a fire, or you're running out of food, it's not a question of 'when will this be over', but 'how can we do things differently so that history doesn't repeat itself'.

But when the stock markets are focussed on short termism, it's easy to see that probably that is a reflection of a much wider mindset. Resource prices are low because the economies of the world have forgotten for the moment how scarce they have become. This naturally leads to an increase in demand/consumption over time, with no adaptive strategy for scarcity.

clipped from news.yahoo.com The destruction was fast and total because the homes "were like matches, and they caught fire one after another," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Sunday. However, many of the residents were elderly and disabled, and the fire moved into the area very quickly — so quickly that firefighters dropped their hoses and left them to melt into the concrete. Under a freeway overpass just outside the park's gates on Sunday, dozens of residents stood in the still-smoky air, ashes flying around their faces, waiting for more information on their homes. "I don't know how long I'll be around," McGurn said. "And right now, I don't know if I'll come back because I'm thinking, 'What if it happens again next year?'"