In this ongoing series with Dr. Jack Alpert, we hope to educate, enlighten and activate American citizens toward a sustainable future. In all great social change, it takes an educated citizenry to create "consciousness shift which moves to "critical mass shift that ends with a paradigm shift via "tipping point.
When you look back on history, the good things that made your life better started with the Magna Carta for human rights. From there, humans fought and died to establish the U.S. Constitution. Gandhi guided India and all humanity toward peace. Susan B. Anthony won the right to vote for women in the United States. In most of the Middle East with their ancient cultures, women cannot vote, drive or enjoy an education. Martin Luther King marched for equal rights for people of color. Yes, the human race faces a great deal of educational challenge to move past antiquated paradigms.
But along the way, we need to change our energy, population and environmental paradigms sooner rather than later.
In Dr. Jack Alpert's, "Civilization's Perfect Storm , he illustrates our current dilemma with the movie starring George Clooney, "Perfect Storm . www.skil.org
"The "Perfect Storm is a movie about down-on-their-luck fishermen who went fishing in a storm because they needed to make a living, Alpert said. "Unfortunately it was not just a simple storm. It was a perfect storm. A perfect storm forms at the intersection of several colliding weather fronts. High winds and gargantuan waves sank the boat and drown the crew.
"Is it possible that global problems could join together to make a perfect storm and sink human civilization? Could fights over hunting grounds, famines, mal-distribution of wealth, slavery, genocide, ethic cleansings, religious or economic competitions, deforestations, fishery depletions, oil exhaustion, climate change, species extinction and global terrorism, combine to make the perfect storm that kills the human experiment?
"On fishing boats, people take precautions to weather storms. They close watertight doors, and wear safety harnesses and cold water survival suits. And they usually come home safe even in bad weather. However, in the "Perfect Storm," none of these actions were enough to save their ship or their lives.
"Maybe we should ask, "Will our recycling, driving a fuel efficient car, insulating our house, sequestering our CO2, having only two children, and investing in technology to produce more with less, be enough to get us through a perfect storm of global problems?" Is it possible that if everyone copied our behaviors, "It would not be enough to survive that storm?"
"Is it possible that six and a half billion people don't see global problems integrating into a perfect-storm? Is it possible they don't see their politically correct, social justice, and green behaviors as being impotent to address these conditions?
"Is it possible they don't see that civilization surviving the perfect storm conditions will require rapid population decline? They don't see that each couple on earth must have at most one child per family. And they don't see that even if everyone does, the ride to a nice future is going to be bumpy for some and dreadful for others.
I find interviewing with Dr. Jack Alpert a study in certitude born from his scientific models that combine our current energy use, carbon footprint, Peak Oil, species extinctions now running over 100 per day planet-wide and climate destabilization.
Our predicament encompasses our refusal to manifest changes fast enough to guide us out of the approaching "Perfect Storm rolling toward the United States as well as worldwide. As you might have read in my reviews of Chris Steiner's $20 PER GALLON, we allow ourselves to run out of time and ability to outrun the approaching energy crisis, let alone climate destabilization.
When you include the multitude of predicaments facing our civilization "such as water shortages for starters "doesn't it dawn on you that while our leaders push for population growth by adding 3.4 million people to this country annually mostly by immigration "that those in power to make positive change continue snoring even while awake?
When humans add 77 million more people to the planet annually, and those that suffer in overpopulated civilizations instead of practicing birth control " escape to other countries while continuing their profligate population increases "it doesn't take a sixth grader to figure out the equation cannot continue.
The result, as Alpert said, we face a "Perfect Population Storm that engulfs our ability to survive it no matter how much we might ˜think' we can avoid it. We shake hands with the devil with a Faustian Bargain that leads to Hobson's Choice.
Today, the United States ˜storms' toward adding 100 million people in 26 years by 2035. Yet, we sleep, we snore, we yawn into our perilous future! It's almost beyond comprehension how this ˜educated' civilization allows itself to follow in the footsteps of China, India, Bangladesh, Mexico and others "without blinking any eyelash!
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