Take That, Doom-and-Gloom!

I have spent most of my adult life trying to answer a deceptively simple question: Why does the world look the way it does?
I don't mean the biosphere in general. I mean the human world, the built environment, the structures and cultures and systems that collectively encompass the whole of human experience. It has been clear to me for a very long time that our way of life has a rather limited future, akin to the kind of self-restricting situation that a group of shipwrecked sailors, adrift on a raft, would find themselves in as they tore up the raft to provide fuel for their fire.
Our career here on Earth seems to be tumbling head-long toward the same sort of finality, for a thousand different reasons motivated by a million innocent decisions that were taken in good faith and in isolation. There is little evidence that our predicament was promulgated by conspiracy, although absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. We face the inevitable results of exuberant growth within a finite environment with limited resources, limited carrying capacity, and limited ability to absorb our waste products.
This does not make us bad people, or a failed species, or an evolutionary dead end. It does mean that we are no different than innumerable other species that came before us, acted as we have, and eventually so polluted their environment that it was no longer able to support life of their type and specific requirements. This left the field open for other species adapted to live on the wastes left over, which flourished in their turn, and so on.
This process is called succession, and is one of the inviolable laws that governs biological activity on this planet.
We are having a real problem accepting these facts. We believe we are different, we believe we are immune from the laws that all other species are subject to, and we thus resist an active recognition of the ways in which the biosphere is warning us that time is short, and in fact it is likely that it is already too late for us to do anything about our behaviours and lifestyles.
I have come to the conclusion that all our problems begin with population size. There are simply too many of us, living resource-intensive lives, for the earth to effectively compensate for. This is a fact. Arguments to the contrary inevitably either ignore certain salient portions of the population equation, or include rather juvenile factors such as the ability of the market to develop alternatives that will alleviate the difficulty-du-jour that are at best wishful thinking.
Absent our enourmous population, we might have a chance to really come to grips with our growth-based perspective on our relationship to this planet. We might have the opportunity to develop a different ethic, based on balance and ecological humility, that would allow us to live harmoniously and respectfully within the limits set by the natural systems that we depend on.
Unfortunately, this will not be the case. We have had our chances, and spurned them on religious, emotional, economic, political, or moral grounds, and so the stage is set for the endgame imposed by any ecosystem whose existence is threatened by the species supported by it: Negative feedback loops activate, and a process called 'die-off' begins...
I felt that population was the key to all other problems. I felt that having a child at this point in history was irresponsible, immoral, and flew in the face of any kind of respect for the environment. I felt it so strongly that I had a vasectomy a few years ago, prepared to put my money where my ethics were.
I have since had that procedure reversed at great expense, and my wife and I are busy with the task of conceiving a child.
What has happened here? Am I a hypocrite? Have I lost my sense of ethics, values, and principle? Is the massive amount of information I have collected concerning the technical where-fores and whence-come-we's of how we got here been somehow rendered irrelevant?
No.
It has been made known to me that life, any kind of life, is the most precious thing in the universe. That the earth is a variable, changeable place that operates on a timeframe previously unguessed and never witnessed by anyone now living. That we are just another in a very long line of species that did as we are doing, albeit not on the scale or to the extent that we are doing it.
That there must be someone to carry on the great adventure that is humanity.
I am by nature a cautious optimist, but I am not stupid. The times to come will be fraught with extreme difficulty and unimaginable hazards. If anyone is to survive, they must be taught to do so. More than this, however, they must also be taught the difference between mere survival and worthwhile living. That there will be a time for a certain toughness in their decision-making, followed by a time for whole-hearted compassion and unquestioning love. That honour, integrity, truth, and faith are still worthy of devotion...
My wife and I have decided to have a child, not because we believe in that old cop-out that 'our kid might be the one to save the world', and not because we are hoping for the best. We aren't brainless animals that can't control our biological imperatives to breed, and we are certainly not particularly stupid. We are having a child because any future chance our species has at a kind of long-term survival will depend on changing the way we relate to the earth, first and foremost, and we will begin that process by educating our child with the things we have discovered in our researches, the things that will make a difference, the components of a new paradigm that will enable a sense of balance between humanity and the earth.
The paradigm of growth-at-any-cost-cause-the-bible-says-it's-okay that has driven our species for the last thousand years must be undone and unlearned if we are to continue. We need to enlist the help of the next generation to do this, since we cannot complete the task by ourselves. There is simply too much to do and insufficient time in which to do it.
What haunts me is how to explain why their lives will have the character I fear they will. Hardship, privation, danger, shortened lives, and a seemingly endless time of misery will be their lot, and the answer to the question 'Why?' will be very, very difficult to produce.
That said, in the face of so much potential for despair, and so many factors contributing to a certain bleakness in one's outlook, what greater expression of optimism can there be?