Now that the elections are over the Democrats are happy but kind of surprised, the Republicans try to understand what happened--they were so sure they had won. What now?
First the Budget financial cliff, we are told.
How about deciding priorities.
Is it not obvious we should finally mention the words climate change? Superstorm Sandy, and another more normal storm a week later. A summer of over 100 degrees temperatures. Severely reduced crops. Isn't it obvious that the weather, the climate of this planet, global warming, should be a first priority?
Yes, finances. Yes, jobs. The economy. Foreign affairs. Terrorists. Wars, drone wars, undeclared and probably illegal wars in many countries. A war on drugs that is raveling. Infrastructures that are crumbling. All of those and probably a dozen more that I don't know about are serious problems.
But all of them are meaningless if we continue to spew ever more poison gases into the atmosphere, if we continue to use and drill for more oil, use and export coal, if we cannot stop wrecking the earth leading to dangerous destruction of biodiversity.
Superstorms, droughts, 100 degrees summer temperatures are the new norm. If we go on as we have done this century most of the biggest cities of the world will be flooded, the heating of the planet will pass two degrees C (3.8 - F) in five years instead of thirty. There are a hundred web sites where anyone can find out what those two degrees will mean to humankind. Humankind, our species, is in danger. Surely we can understand that.
There is only one priority.
This country has plenty of very smart and creative young people and maybe a few old ones who can figure out how that one priority can and will create millions of green jobs in a month while remaking a whole new green infrastructure. How about money to talk the oil companies into making solar panels, talk chemical companies into restoring soils and growing natural (organic) food. Many, perhaps most doctors and nurses are ready to make a much simpler down on the ground health system that covers everyone with the emphasis on health not sickness and will cost less than half of what we spend now. Perhaps even the military-industrial complex can understand that what we now need, urgently, is windmills, fast trains, a huge network of public transportation, not tanks, not jet fighters, not even drones, not weapons or cluster bombs. Let's bring all our troops, overt and covert, back home to work on remaking this country carbon neutral. A few small countries have done it in a few years. We can too.
Our whole world is sick. But of all two hundred countries the United States still, albeit just barely, has the ability to influence most of the rest of the world. We should have learned by now that wars do not make things better for anyone. Not for us, not for them. Terror cannot be fought with terror.
If we would change our country into a model of green survival that will change the whole world.
Let's do it.
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