I got into diagnostics in my last column, on a global scale. My thousand words went to what humans' misuse of the planet is costing us and all other living species. It was a grim diagnosis. But unlike Mencken, this week I'll make a modest therapeutic proposal.

Far better summaries of the environmental crisis than mine have appeared recently. Last month, Tom Brokaw's two-hour TV special was a bleak prediction for the near and long term. And the film "An Inconvenient Truth," held over for weeks in Oneonta because of the crowds flocking to it, addresses the same issues with facts and figures so clear that they should be incontrovertible.

But they are not. For instance, many in this country are angered by the film and want to dismiss it as political tract, the work of one political party. Forgive me, but that view is embarrassingly parochial. The statistics, the conclusions, the predictions in the film and in Brokaw's report were not developed inside any one political party or one nation. They represent the voices of the world's most respected scientists, speaking with amazing unanimity.

The reason some are angered by the film is captured aptly in the title: The truth of our situation is hugely "inconvenient." We are in really bad trouble. And it's easier to deny the fact angrily than to face it.

Believe what you will, but here's some anecdotal confirmation of the crisis. I heard it right it in Cooperstown from two older residents, back from two separate cruises along the Alaskan coast. Each had had a fine time, but each spoke with deep concern about the glaciers that they'd seen-glaciers dramatically smaller, steadily melting.

One traveler quoted the ship's science officer as saying sadly, "We're losing the glaciers. We can see the changes from cruise to cruise." And the other traveler told of a shipboard lecturer describing Canada's present scramble to assert its rights over new Arctic waters: Melting ice is leaving a passage right across the top of our continent, linking our bordering oceans.

We can deny it angrily, but a changed world is evolving, and with frightening rapidity. And beyond diagnosis of the disorder (life systems badly damaged and getting steadily worse), a grim prognosis looms: rising global temperatures, weather steadily more violent and unpredictable, eventual swamping of coastal areas, massive shifts in population, violent strife over a diminishing supply of food and drinkable water.

Those of us with grandchildren must think of them, grown to our own present age, grieving for their own grandchildren's lives in a devastated world.

But what about therapeutics? What can be done? What can individuals like us do against a shift that already seems to have the strength and momentum of a juggernaut? Well, we must do something, for to sink into fatalism is as inexcusable as is angry denial.

I think that a first, essential step for each of us Americans is take a serious look at one of Jefferson's unalienable rights. I meant "the pursuit of happiness." We need to note how it's been twisted off course. For most of us, "the pursuit of happiness" now means a quest for unlimited personal goods, comfort, and convenience, all snatched at greedily through manic consumerism. We need to back off from that. And to whatever degree that we do, we improve the future slightly. We need to step toward deliberate simplicity.

I'm not proposing reducing yourself to wearing rags, living on gruel, commuting on a skateboard. But I am proposing calm appraisal of what we have and what we truly need. I do suggest a deliberate reach for simplicity in our lives. For the plain fact is that we can live with less goods, less complete comfort, less unqualified convenience. And doing so is part of the price of salvaging the future.

For here is the basis for optimistic hope: It's not pantheism to recognize that the earth's surface systems are interdependent; the whole works like a vast organism. And like our own body, the earth tends toward self-repair, cleansing its air and water, rebuilding its soil. And any step one of us takes to reduce a cause of damage, or remove it, is a step in support of the earth's repair.

And so, beyond recycling and florescent light bulbs, a modest, deliberate simplicity; that's my proposed therapy. An ethical stance, instead of a blind rush after fads and other fake values. That shouldn't be beyond any of us. And if enough do undertake it ...

I'm reminded of the fable that has a proud, handsome stallion trotting down a forest path. He pulls up short at sight of a sparrow lying in the road. The bird is on its back, staring upward, its two legs and feet straight in the air.

"Why are you lying there like that?" asked the horse. "Ah," said the sparrow, "word has come that the sky is going to fall. I'm braced here to help break its impact." The horse snorted contemptuously. "You mean you think you can stop the sky's falling with your skinny legs?" The bird glanced up at him, then toward the sky, and said, "One does what one can."

Exactly.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.