Another Letter to the Editor to the Washington Post that will never be printed.
Dear Editor,
Megan Mcardle did profound service to Americans and humanity
(Washington Post. “The looming disasters
we don’t prepare for”. Feb. 25, 2021) by
advocating we invest now in inevitable (but likely rare) disasters. Few give thought to the multitude of
inevitable disasters capable of disrupting earthly life in more damaging ways
the Covid19. Mcardle won’t be the only Cassandra history
will note (assuming civilization survives).
Richard Clarke’s 2017 book “Warnings” detailed eight events experts were
warning about and yet policy makers ignored. Clarke
offered eight more we should be preparing for (spoiler alert - #2 was
“pandemics”). His middle chapter offered
3 reasons why we don’t listen. But it’s
worse than that.
We don’t even do the things we know we should! Never have we had more information regarding our
need to eat healthy, exercise regularly, don’t smoke, or abuse drugs. Yet obesity, suicides, and drug overdoses were
increasing before the pandemic. And nearly
as many Americans died in 2020 from smoking as from Covid19.
Add to these factors the human mind’s creative capacity to
believe ANYTHING. Then kill or die for defending
an erroneous belief.
To best prepare for increasing global chaos absent any rare
threats it would be best investing urgently in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). These SDGs are a comprehensive
global approach to preventing most of today’s crisis. Achieving them would be a wise insurance policy to enable humanity to recover from any disaster as well
for preparing every nation for unlikely threats the future will bring.
As Hazel Henderson keeps warning humanity, the SDGs are infinitely
more useful as a score card for measuring human progress - and our species capacity
to thrive. The SDGs need to replace the GDP as our measure of real progress.
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