We could start our discussion examining controversial topics: global warming, political tyranny, religious fanaticism, etc., but there are more pressing issues at hand. The current industrial civilization considers itself an elegant experiment in progress and stability.  In reality, it is a lunatic who defecates in its bed and demands the obedience of its subjects in a headlong rush toward global suicide.
      Let's begin with water.
      Much of the world is already experiencing a crisis obtaining potable water.  Human beings are essentially animalized water.  If we pour water into ourselves it immediately becomes us.  It moves, it thinks, and it forgets that it is water.
       98.25 percent of the world's water is saline.  Of the remaining 1.75 %, eighty percent is frozen.  That means that less than 1/3 of 1 percent of all the drinking water in the world is available to all the life that needs fresh water to survive.  No new water is being produced.  Supplies are finite.  Currently, human toxins and practices have poisoned a significant amount of that available water.  In the U.S., 50 % of our drinking water is from underground aquifers that are being pumped dry or poisoned from waste seepage.  Those aquifers took 100,000 years to create.  They cannot be replaced.
      Technocrats insist that science will find a way to de-salinize the oceans for our use, meanwhile local governments can't afford to fill the potholes in our streets, let alone balance the federal, state and local budgets.  It's estimated that by 2015 many countries will face severe water shortages and in fifty years whole countries may be completely depopulated by the total absence of drinkable water.
      How about soil?
      It has taken about 100,000 years to build the world's topsoil.  Due to the giant shift in agriculture and population growth over the last 5000 years, fifty percent of the world's topsoil is gone.  In twenty years, 30% more will have blown away.  That's eighty percent of the world's arable soil, gone forever.  There have been positive discoveries that could redevelop soils, but not even the slightest interest in actually paying for it.
       North and South America have been devastated. 6 billion tons of soil is lost per year in the U.S.  A Soviet scientist once recommended that the Soviets stop the arms race because he estimated that in 100 years the U.S. could no longer grow enough food to survive.  In Asia, 20 billion tons are now being lost annually.  Millions of children starve to death annually in reach of this great and modern industrial civilization.  Third world countries are encouraged to grow cash crops, harvest resources, or develop industrially so as to pay back their international debts rather than grow food to feed their peoples.  In the face of deforestation, development, progress and lack of necessities (like water), 10,000 distinct and irreplaceable species are lost every year.  The loss is permanent.
       What could be a better indicator of the sanity of a civilization than its desire and commitment to protect the very resources essential to its survival?
        Still not convinced?
        Let's talk DNA.
        The architectural elegance of DNA, the genetic material of the planet, is evidence of the vulnerable quality of creation.  All of the DNA molecules of all the humans who have ever lived would fit into one teardrop. That is, 80 billion molecules in a teardrop.  Everything that will happen to the future of human beings on this planet depends on the quality and protection of that teardrop.
        War on Terror?  Here is the real Terror!
         There are 264 million tons of hazardous waste spread liberally around the U.S. each year in the form of 70,000 (mostly untested) chemicals and their by-products. To these, add 1000 more untested chemicals each year.
          DNA contains the information and intelligence at the root of an
Organism.  It is known that chemicals can enter the body, and go straight to the cells, attaching themselves and disrupting, modifying, mutating or destroying that information and intelligence.  This is damage that cannot be altered and will be part of the human species forever.  Some defects can be carried, only to show up in later generations. Serious birth defects in humans alone have doubled in the last 25 years.  The worst effects are not expected to appear for another 10 to 20 years.  We will spend billions to fight a war on terror yet to come, and only pennies to fight the daily poisoning of our children and the chemical threat to the DNA of our species. Sanity?
         Population growth is the next issue.  Africa has 550 million people, many who lack food and water, as well as basic necessities.  In one hundred years it will have 2.5 billion.  What then?  In hunter/gatherer societies, the ratio was 3 people per square mile.  If we manage to protect our water and regrow our soils--what can the land sustain?  Endless population growth is not an acceptable formula.  Which governments are committed to determining these ratios and demanding compliance?
         The economic systems developed on the principle of an endless compulsion to growth are obsolete and must be abandoned immediately for systems which demand society be outfitted with artifacts that last centuries not days or months. Systems that judge their success by GNP must be outlawed and replaced with systems that operate on renewable resources, recycle non-renewables at 100%, and produce no more waste than a local region can dispose of naturally.  The U.S., in order to survive, must cut production and use of resources at a minimum of 50%.  Third world debt must be forgiven outright or traded for the establishment of wilderness systems. The present economic structures are based on a process that begins with the depletion of finite resources, proceeds to the manufacturing of disposable products which immediately begin to depreciate in value and quality, ending with their disposal as non-renewable wastes which are beyond the natural capacity of the earth to dissipate.  Sanity?  Common sense?
         Each instant, one million new faces appear on the earth--representing many species and forms. The vanity and arrogance of human beings in creating and expanding the role of potentially deadly toxins and weapons points not to a healthy society, culture, or civilization but to a scorched psyche that has become resistant and maladaptive, even sinister.  Primary human bonds, which connect families and provide roles that incorporate citizens of all ages into familial relationships, have been replaced with the secondary commercial bonds of consumerism.  The new revelations of quantum science and universe cosmologies demand that those who believe in technology commit to a new understanding of the Universe as one entity- inter-connected, inter-reliant and inter-related in every way.  To separate humanity from this cosmology will result in a continued insanity that will bring about nothing less than the suicide of our species.
        Scholars have long lamented the destruction of the library at Alexandria at the hands of barbarians who burned the manuscripts to heat their bath water because they were unable to grasp the beauty they cast into the flame.Those who discount these warnings have only to examine themselves in a mirror to see the faces of those same barbarians.

              Much of this material was gathered from "Canticle To The Cosmos", DR. Brian Swim.  Mathematical Cosmology