By Bart Vogelzang | VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA -- Strange as it may seem, we are seeing the very same phenomenon today, and not just at home, but all over the world. It seems that people simply cannot see anything not immediately in front of their faces, and worse, refuse to see it if it is inconvenient. An Inconvenient Truth, shows that some do see, but it’s just not enough people or action.
So what flames of imminent destruction are being ignored? Admittedly, the following is hardly a full list, but it may give you something to think about.
Global warming, which should really have been named ‘global energization’ if anyone expected anyone to act on it, was ignored for a long time. Everyone felt that a warmer winter might be nice, and another degree warmer in summer wouldn’t really be that bad. Of course we can now see that the energization of the weather has created storms of unprecedented strength and numbers, dropping rain that won’t stop, causing droughts that won’t let up, and winds that just ripped all our frail structures to bits. Worse, the climate change has caused huge tracts of trees to become infested with insects that are no longer controlled by cold weather, and the ice is melting in the north, a deadly situation for many animals that depend on cold. Of course industry looks at this as an opportunity to rip into the resource ‘bank’ now revealed, completely ignoring the next disaster, already manifesting itself up north, the melting of the permafrost. That, in case you don’t know, is the permanently frozen ‘soil’ just below the surface of the earth and which covers just about the whole of what we call the arctic, that isn’t a mountain. What we fail to see is that the whole area will become one huge swamp, completely non-navigable except by hovercraft, and that even buildings will not be able to stand firm, much less roadways. Imagine, if you will, a swamp that stretches from Colorado to Virginia, the tip of Florida to Maine. It will beat the Amazon for sheer impassibility; yet have next to no flora or fauna, since it will still have too little warmth to sustain much life. Believe it or not, this is already happening now, and will only accelerate. If that isn’t bad enough, the oceans themselves are warming up too, causing fish populations to either die out, or reducing the size of those remaining fish tremendously.
Chemical and genetic alteration of animals and plants is having a huge impact on not just us, with children everywhere getting sicker each year, but also on all the animals in the wild. The leaching of our pesticides and our medicines, and also all those unneeded food additives to make things last longer or look more enticing, is causing dramatic changes in our plants, and our water supplies, and is putting all life at risk of uncontrolled and uncontrollable mutations, illness, and death. Indiscriminate additions to our foods are bad enough, but the thoughtless spreading of proven poisons throughout the world is even worse. The stresses that the air, land, and water are already feeling from global warming are only worsened by the assault of deadly toxins from everywhere. Defenses against the one are completely defeated by the two-fold attack. Frankly, we could hardly be more destructive if we actually tried.
Population is completely out of control. Maybe it is a human right to procreate, but if everyone had limited themselves to just two, to replace the parents, we’d probably have been okay. Sadly, many religions have preached that we need to multiply, and that we did. The end result is that we have so many people now, that unless we reduce our numbers by about 4 billion in a generation or so, we will simply overwhelm, completely, any and all efforts to reduce our consumption of resources. We already suffer decreasing production due to weather and poisons, and the increasing numbers wanting and needing ever more is not helping things. Even if we decrease our demands and expectations enormously, and live like they do in many Third World countries, the whole fragile structure is still going to collapse in under 20 years due to the perpetual increase in people numbers. And, rather than even allowing same sex marriages and acts, those religions are fighting tooth and nail to ban one of the few things that might actually help reduce the population growth…that, and family planning.
So, what do the politician and economists talk about…none of those critical things. They talk about jobs, which mean nothing if there is no food and your house is flooded or blown away. They talk about international tensions, which mean nothing if there is no food and your house is flooded or blown away. They talk about your rights, like free speech, bearing arms, jobs, religious rights, which mean nothing if there is no food and your house is flooded or blown away. They even talk about taxes, but none of those ever end up working to fix the big issues, like those mentioned before.
So, what does the media talk about? Well, today I watched a news piece on some people who spend their lives figuring out exactly which snack foods work best with specific alcoholic drinks. There was also a piece on a celebrity wedding, and discussion on just how popular that couple is with the viewers. Oh, and yes, they spend an inordinate amount of time guessing who is going to become President of the USA in a few weeks. News flash, we can all guess just as well, or as poorly, so why not actually report on something that could kill us all? Hell no…let’s just fiddle away…after all, that’s much more entertaining.
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