Beginning of Essay
This is the litany: Our resources are running out. The air is bad, the water worse. The planet's specis are dying off-more exactly, we're killing them -at the staggering rate of 100,000 per year, a figure that works out to almost 2000 species per weak, 300 per da ....

Middle of Essay
.... we have to act now. That's the standard adn canonical litany. It's been drilled into our heads so far and so focefuly that to hear it yet once more is ... well, it's almost reasuring. It's comforting, oddly consoling- at least we're face to face with the enemies: consumption, population, mindless growth. And we know the solution: cut back, contract, make do with less. "Live simply so that others may simply live." There's just one problem with The Litany, just one slight little wee imperfection: every item in that dim and dreary recititaion, each and every last claim, is false. Incorrect. At variance with the truth. Not the way it is, folks. . ....