Causes and Effects
Dear Reader,
I'm going to tell you what the politicians are afraid to. Brace yourself, this is the straight dope:
At this point in history, we humans don't have a snowball's chance in hot Hell unless ALL of us are willing to accept drastic lifestyle changes. I emphasize the word "ALL" because the whole world - all humanity - must get on the same page about this. Our only path to a future we can look forward to is to recognize our kinship with all peoples and all life. We must stop all fighting, all competition.
We have, for thousands of years, fought each other and the rest of the living world - resulting in escalating waves of ever greater destruction, till now we enter a world in which: relatively minute sections of the planet have any forest cover left; water everywhere is polluted; our food has become poisonous and expensive; and the air we breathe shortens our lives rather than refresh us. There are consequences to the actions we have taken, and we're seeing them now.
We need to drop all subsidies for fossil fuels and nurture renewables, immediately. We need to almost entirely transition from combustion processes in our industries. That means no burning. We can't burn gasoline. We can't burn oil. We can't burn coal. And we can't burn natural gas; it was wishful thinking to delude ourselves into thinking methane combustion was an okay transition ("bridge") fuel to get us through till renewables got on line and became affordable. Combustion (burning) anything means by definition the creation of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
The horrendous environmental effects of our addiction to combustion include wars such as what's going on right now in Syria - caused by epic, years-long, drought which has made it impossible to live in the countryside there and so driven people to the cities and now becoming refugees from their own country. This type of problem is happening all over the Earth. There is no escape from it; there is no Planet B, we only have one Earth.
Parallel to the destruction we humans have done has also been enormous technological advancement. With this exponentially mushrooming technology, we now have the ability to renew, re-enliven our word, and quickly. In our purses and pockets we hold communication devices capable of collapsing space. Dial up any place, regardless of how far away, and you can (if you've the money) be there with your eyes, ears and mouth. Our ability to instantly connect at such distances allows us to fix problems so large they would have been overwhelming in past times. The merged creativity of billions is yielding solutions for problems as fast as the problems are reaching crisis state. The Paris climate talks of last year, for instance, allowed world financial and political leaders to agree that we all must change if any of us are to survive.
For a hundred years, inventors have been finding ways of providing energy without burning and they have been suppressed by those with a financial advantage in slowing progress. This must and will be stopped. Our schools have become instruments of propaganda by which the children are taught the lies the parents have come to believe. Ask yourself why the name of the world's greatest inventor, Nikola Tesla (who worked in Pittsburgh, by the way, there's even a street named after him) was not taught in the grade school you went to even though he was on a par with Albert Einstein. Every single one of us uses technology Tesla helped engender - motors, hydroelectric power, alternating current, fluorescent lighting, radio. Edison, Westinghouse and J. P. Morgan profited from Tesla's inspirations, then shut him down when his work threatened their profits. We do not need to burn anything to get energy, and Tesla knew this.
We do need to get working all together to regenerate the ecosystem. With the quickness.
Every plant is your friend. Feed it. Make sure it has enough water to drink. Give it the friends it needs - birds, bugs, worms, cats, bees,... We don't just have to stop making carbon dioxide, we have to extract a lot of the too much carbon dioxide that's already in the air - and plants are the ones to do it. That's the name of their game - eat carbon dioxide and make oxygen.
We have to stop doing things like burning fossil fuels to ship garlic grown in China to the United States. This is only one of many examples of how our economic system has been so perverted that it defeats common sense. Why would you feel the need to grow a plant thousands of miles away when you can grow it right here? Our world is all full of this kind of ridiculousness. Turn off your lawn mowers and let the grass and other plants grow; we need every plant we can get.
Plants and animals like us humans are family - we can't do without each other. It should be enshrined in law and made ethically sacred - Plants are alive and conscious, and must be respected. Only when we humans wake up to the fact that we're not the only ones around will the birth of the new age become a joy rather than cause of overwhelming suffering. We have the chance now to play our part in the creation of a new Earth. As the song goes, "We'll make Heaven a place on Earth."
And we have to stop wasting our wastes. That's for another article.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher 412-421-6496
I'm going to tell you what the politicians are afraid to. Brace yourself, this is the straight dope:
At this point in history, we humans don't have a snowball's chance in hot Hell unless ALL of us are willing to accept drastic lifestyle changes. I emphasize the word "ALL" because the whole world - all humanity - must get on the same page about this. Our only path to a future we can look forward to is to recognize our kinship with all peoples and all life. We must stop all fighting, all competition.
We have, for thousands of years, fought each other and the rest of the living world - resulting in escalating waves of ever greater destruction, till now we enter a world in which: relatively minute sections of the planet have any forest cover left; water everywhere is polluted; our food has become poisonous and expensive; and the air we breathe shortens our lives rather than refresh us. There are consequences to the actions we have taken, and we're seeing them now.
We need to drop all subsidies for fossil fuels and nurture renewables, immediately. We need to almost entirely transition from combustion processes in our industries. That means no burning. We can't burn gasoline. We can't burn oil. We can't burn coal. And we can't burn natural gas; it was wishful thinking to delude ourselves into thinking methane combustion was an okay transition ("bridge") fuel to get us through till renewables got on line and became affordable. Combustion (burning) anything means by definition the creation of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
The horrendous environmental effects of our addiction to combustion include wars such as what's going on right now in Syria - caused by epic, years-long, drought which has made it impossible to live in the countryside there and so driven people to the cities and now becoming refugees from their own country. This type of problem is happening all over the Earth. There is no escape from it; there is no Planet B, we only have one Earth.
Parallel to the destruction we humans have done has also been enormous technological advancement. With this exponentially mushrooming technology, we now have the ability to renew, re-enliven our word, and quickly. In our purses and pockets we hold communication devices capable of collapsing space. Dial up any place, regardless of how far away, and you can (if you've the money) be there with your eyes, ears and mouth. Our ability to instantly connect at such distances allows us to fix problems so large they would have been overwhelming in past times. The merged creativity of billions is yielding solutions for problems as fast as the problems are reaching crisis state. The Paris climate talks of last year, for instance, allowed world financial and political leaders to agree that we all must change if any of us are to survive.
For a hundred years, inventors have been finding ways of providing energy without burning and they have been suppressed by those with a financial advantage in slowing progress. This must and will be stopped. Our schools have become instruments of propaganda by which the children are taught the lies the parents have come to believe. Ask yourself why the name of the world's greatest inventor, Nikola Tesla (who worked in Pittsburgh, by the way, there's even a street named after him) was not taught in the grade school you went to even though he was on a par with Albert Einstein. Every single one of us uses technology Tesla helped engender - motors, hydroelectric power, alternating current, fluorescent lighting, radio. Edison, Westinghouse and J. P. Morgan profited from Tesla's inspirations, then shut him down when his work threatened their profits. We do not need to burn anything to get energy, and Tesla knew this.
We do need to get working all together to regenerate the ecosystem. With the quickness.
Every plant is your friend. Feed it. Make sure it has enough water to drink. Give it the friends it needs - birds, bugs, worms, cats, bees,... We don't just have to stop making carbon dioxide, we have to extract a lot of the too much carbon dioxide that's already in the air - and plants are the ones to do it. That's the name of their game - eat carbon dioxide and make oxygen.
We have to stop doing things like burning fossil fuels to ship garlic grown in China to the United States. This is only one of many examples of how our economic system has been so perverted that it defeats common sense. Why would you feel the need to grow a plant thousands of miles away when you can grow it right here? Our world is all full of this kind of ridiculousness. Turn off your lawn mowers and let the grass and other plants grow; we need every plant we can get.
Plants and animals like us humans are family - we can't do without each other. It should be enshrined in law and made ethically sacred - Plants are alive and conscious, and must be respected. Only when we humans wake up to the fact that we're not the only ones around will the birth of the new age become a joy rather than cause of overwhelming suffering. We have the chance now to play our part in the creation of a new Earth. As the song goes, "We'll make Heaven a place on Earth."
And we have to stop wasting our wastes. That's for another article.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher 412-421-6496
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 7:06 AM
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