Engineering our sustainable future. instead of hoping for it.

 

"The biggest threats to humanity stem from the global community’s inability to deal with them effectively" Laszlo Szombatfalvy (1927-2022), founder The Global Challenges Foundation.

Humanity has a plan and we are failing it.  The UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the only comprehensive, holistic, affordable, measurable, and achievable plan I am aware of .

Any legitimate engineer knows that a plan without resources is just a slogan. A good idea is worthless without a budget and the will to execute it. That’s true whether you’re running a military operation or building human infrastructure. Given our life support system is our fundamental survival infrastructure, the SDGs matter most. But so does the follow through.   Our failure is not a lack of resources.  It is a lack of Political Will because collectively we lack the wisdom to grasp the insanity of our selfish actions.

"Let us determine that we shall not allow the state to be our master, but that we shall be the masters of the state. The long road of history is lined with the ruins of those states which bought the souls and the wills of their peoples by the lure of a granted security, and then led them to ruin by the same mirage.  The world does not need one more such ruin.  It needs a people who will be really secure and enduring, as far as mortal life is possible -- secure and enduring because each member or society is a person who accepts his and her responsibilities as duties, and asks only that the state act to keep the avenues of freedom open."

This 1980 quote from Russell J. Clinchy, characterizes both the average US citizen actions but also his own lack of understanding of the real world humankind inhabits.  One nation state cannot keep its freedom and security if it lacks the virtue to ensure the sustainably of our earth's life support system - as well as the freedom and security of all nation states.  Our reality is that everything is connected, interdependent, and every biological and government system on earth vulnerable when the golden rule is ignored. 

The legacy we are leaving our children is shameful. Project250@earthlink.net  is at least a plan to unite the progressive movements to make what's possible happen.  Unless you have a better idea that just praying and hoping. 

"The longer I live, the more convinced I am that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum."  George Bernard Shaw   (one of my favorite philosophers)