Many of history’s great scientists, Einstein in particular, remarked on our fragile position on Earth, and cautioned us to be kind to one another. Carl Sagan was another vocal proponent of the unity of humankind. At left is what the 20th Century intellectual giant Buckminster Fuller had to say on the subject.
It’s worth noting that, in contrast, none of our most intelligent ancestors said, “Ya know what? Screw other people. If they can’t fend for themselves and make a success of themselves under capitalism, let them starve, or at least, suffer.”
A friend of mine has a huge client in Helsinki, and he asked me the other day if I was aware that Finland was perennially at the top or near of the World Happiness Rankings. I smiled, and replied that I happen to write about this frequently on 2GreenEnergy.com. I went on to explain that there are several key differences between that region of the world and the U.S., but that two of them are major. Scandinavians pay higher taxes, but:
1) They derive huge benefits in terms of free college education and healthcare. They don’t have people who live without education simply because they can’t afford tuition, and they don’t have people dying of treatable diseases because they don’t have health insurance.
2) They live with a sense of community that is extremely rare in the United States. Sure, we have the Amish and ethic communities like our Chinatowns and Little Italys. But in the main, as a Swede I met recently told me, Americans caring about the welfare of others are almost completely nonexistent.
For most of our lives, many of us boomers have believed that the biggest threat to the United States was our president, starting with Tricky Dick Nixon, the inventor of the “trickle-down economics,” liar Ronald Reagan, and GW (the moron) Bush.
But yes, none of us was prepared for the cold, calculating criminal who is Donald Trump.
There Were Prior Threats to the Nation Stemming from the White House
The fact that human activity is unsustainable has been revealed to us gradually over the last century. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published 63 years ago.
That said, the ideas of climate change, ocean acidification, and loss of biodiversity have been essentially unchallenged by scientists for just the last couple of decades.
The only thing standing in the way of rapid environmental progress is greed, and in the end, that may prove to be an unbeatable foe. Decarbonizing our grid and transportation sector will eventually destroy the fossil fuel industry, a group so powerful that it has a stranglehold, both on our lawmakers and on our corporate-owned media, that works so hard to misinform our citizenry.
It’s still possible that our most senior military leaders will insert themselves in time to prevent some truly catastrophic event here in the United States/abroad.
I keep thinking I’ll read about an exchange like this:
Trump: We’re invading Greenland.
Some four-star general: The f*** we are.
This may sound like a pipe dream, but these are people of real honor and integrity who take their oaths to our constitution quite seriously.
Will the U.S. Top Military Intervene Before Trump Inflicts Irreparable Damage
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