1.5 Earths already

Paul Gilding, photo for 2010
Spirituality, Leadership, &
Management conference

A few weeks ago ("Feeding animals to the masses"), I cited a study that concluded we'd need five planet Earths if everyone on earth consumed like an American.
    Well, in his op-ed piece in today's The New York Times, "The Earth Is Full," Thomas L. Friedman, citing a study by Paul Gilding, says that we're already "using about 1.5 Earths." That is, "we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished."
    Says Friedman for emphasis:

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados [sic] plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

    Personally, I'd already been wondering, and I'd come to the same conclusion as Gilding (according to Friedman):

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World. “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response.”

    Denial's everywhere, particularly when it comes to established facts that require people to give up cherished religious beliefs (such as God's going to take care of you and Santa Claus will be nice to you if you're good) or their favorite unsustainable traditions (such as eating meat, driving everywhere in your own car, and leaving every man to fend for himself). Everyone wants to be left alone, to not have to think about what's happening.

But why is Paul Gilding smiling? It must be good, being invited to conferences to congratulate everyone there for appearing to be willing to face reality.