Reducing consumption is imperative, but it's pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children.

You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself. That adage suits consumer capitalism perfectly, since the illusion of changing ourselves is a successfully maintained through shopping.

So far in facing this huge [peak oil] challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don't even need to be talking or thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous.

Reducing consumption is imperative, but it's pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children.

What Alpha offers, and what is attracting thousands of people, is permission, rare in secular culture, to discuss the big questions - life and death and their meaning.