This is NOT another
“Energy Crisis”. It’s another NFL*
crisis. (Nobody freaking listens...!)
Long-term
solution: Divest from fossil fuels ASAP.
Short-term
solution: Put a bounty on Putin.
*NFL: Nobody Freaking Listened.... or learned, from
the last energy crisis or world hunger warnings during the Jimmy Carter Presidential
Administration.
Our nation’s
addiction to Middle East oil and other carbon-based fuels had the benefit of accelerating
our economic progress and use/abuse of other resources. The ‘progress’ however forward an unbalanced,
unjust, and inherently unsustainable global civilization. It was
predictable. And had been predicted for
decades.
Our nation’s Middle
East foreign policy was focused on US national security’s need for oil. Specifically, cheap gas prices for protecting
our freedom to do whatever we liked with our polluting energy. This short-term thinking fueled and funded
terrorism while accelerating the damage to humanity's life support
infrastructure- the environment. We
knew it then and ignored it. We know it
now and we are still resisting necessary change.
The term “energy
independence” should be barred from our language. First, it’s not about energy. There is no shortage of energy and never will
be. E=MC2. There’s just a shortage of wisdom. Our desire
for ‘cheap’ energy hooked us on fossil fuels absent of any serious
consideration of the associated economic, health, environmental, and national
security consequences. Each with astounding economic costs and consequences
that future generations would be burdened by.
If it were possible
to tally up the real costs in blood and treasure of the Global War on Terror
(which is still climbing) and the environmental costs associated with
disastrous extreme weather events, the health costs of air pollution, mining,
microplastics, lead poisoning, and other toxic elements associated with
converting oil into multiple uses -- it
would far surpass the costs of keeping the solar panels on the White House and successfully
weaning ourselves from fossil fuels since being removed in the mid-1970s.
Thus, the word
“independence” is an invented concept that has created a cutlural mental illusion. It exists nowhere in the known universe. Even if the US required no other outside
source of fossil fuel and relied only on nuclear, solar, wind, waves, and geothermal... the rest
of the world would still rely on fossil fuel and the US would still suffer from
most of the downsides of its global use.
Just not as fast.
It’s insane that our
nation still has non-energy efficient homes and offices That’s unconscionable. That nearly 40 percent
of Americans are obese from overeating and not eating healthy while probably
more who are unwilling to walk or ride a bike a short distance - is even more costly
and shortsighted. If you don’t understand
the connection between obesity and our addiction to fossil fuels you simply don’t
know how much oil is needed to produce the unhealthy food we eat or the additional
fossil fuel energy needed to carry you around in a 3000 lb vehicle or used in
the food processing and supply chain that gets it to the store you will shop
in.
So, the price of gas
is now higher than it has been since 1980.
Boohoo! Back then, over 40,000
innocent children under the age of five were dying each DAY from easily
prevented malnutrition and hunger-related infectious diseases. Today, innocent people are dying in a war that
might lead to thousands of more deaths from hunger and disease globally. And that war could come to an earlier conclusion
if Americans were willing to sacrifice just a little in paying more at the
gasoline pump.
Those now demanding that
we pump more oil out of the ground here now to stabilize gas prices or lower
them to hurt Putin are selfish fools. This
reaction is not going to help Ukrainians or hit Putin in the pocket for at least a
year. By then many other global consequences will be
set into motion.
Our societal addiction
to profits, comforts, feeling good, and looking good has sidelined most of our
fundamentally human aspirations of doing good and being good. In a nutshell, our society is selfish and
sick. It has yielded multiple
unsustainable trends, like debt, war, global warming, corruption, more terrorism,
more Covid19 variants, and global chaos will only worsen even without the war.
The US and NATO
should spare no time in putting an end to this war. Establishing a ‘no-fly zone’ may not seem
worth the risk but Putin will not stop until he owns Ukraine. And the human and economic cost to Ukraine, Mother
Russia, and much of the rest of the world will be unbearable. As the UN Secretary-General said today. The world is facing a “hunger hurricane”. And it will have multiple global consequences.
Hopefully, sooner
than later the Russian people will wake from Putin’s lies and his reign of
Kleptocracy and insanity will end - without risking WW III.
Putin’s invasion is inevitably
his own death wish. Humanity cannot take
the chance that he is bluffing in his willingness to use his hypersonic nuclear
weapons if anyone interferes with his fantasy of recreating the Soviet
Union. The civilized world should immediately
offer a bounty of $100 billion on his head, dead or alive. It will save trillions of dollars and
potentially millions of innocent lives in the long run.
Any guard, soldier,
hooker, oligarch, chambermaid, cook, diplomat, doctor, or wife that takes him out
would instantly become wealthy and humanity's greatest hero. The taker might not survive doing so, but they
would be credited with saving civilization.
For now. What a great legacy!
Because if someone
doesn’t there is better than a 50/50 chance they are going to die anyway. If Putin
pushes the MAD button or starves half the world nearly everyone globally will
pay a price.
We still have superpowers
today and superpower wannabes. But now
with advances in multiuse technologies, we also have superpowered individuals. People or a very small group with access to
any number of weapons, poisons, or infectious agents could put an end to one
life. Who wouldn’t make such a choice with
the intention of saving tens of millions? Sometimes the end can clearly justify the
means.
And, If you believe
the warning of the ‘Hunger Hurricane’ is overblown please read the summary
quotes below. They are from a 1980 bipartisan
Presidential Commission on World Hunger.
If your mind has not been changed
you will qualify for the 2022 Cognitive Dissonance Darwin Award.
In
1980 a bipartisan Presidential Commission concluded “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens
of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on
overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or
unfamiliar. Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the
major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management,
or emergency financing... The hour is late. Age-old forces of poverty, disease,
inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world. Our humanity demands that
we act upon these challenges now...” Presidential Commission on World Hunger,
1980.
Its
commissioners specifically warned ...“The most potentially explosive force in
the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent
standard of living. The anger, despair, and often hatred that result represent
real and persistent threats to international order… Neither the cost to
national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived
by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any
precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the
chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin
to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical
global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now
threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing
armies or nuclear arsenals.”
They
also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming
hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security
than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear
weapons, most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with
the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this
prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely
the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless
in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international
progress toward social justice can bring.”
Today’s
world is experiencing the consequences ignoring this commission. It
specifically warned about about increases in “diseases”, “international
terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human rights problems”
(refugees, genocide, human trafficking…). Inevitable and predictable threats to
our lives, our freedoms, and our prosperity. Combined, these global
pressures fueled the anti-democratic populist movements thriving today. Largely
due to independent governments interests being more important than humanities
potential to thrive and survive in the face of these current trends.
Time
is not on our side. The evolution of pathogens, weapons, and war is outpacing
our will to voluntarily change our governing systems. This is
literally…globally unsustainable.
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