TODAY IS, FOR ME, NOT A DAY for my familiar research into the issues of greatest concern to me. It is a moment for introspection, a kind of summing up of what I see as central realities. I chose today and, very likely, next week to share some very subjective observations, conclusions and feelings.
I have been privileged to spend a great deal of my life in a significant range of roles that involved working with and relating to young people — to youth and to children. Whether in the conventional classroom, with inner-city children in their neighborhood, at a camp I created or with the children of abusive men in a domestic violence shelter, among others, without question those roles have provided the most significant opportunities in my life to attempt to live my values. (I emphasize “attempt” because effort has no guarantees, and I am surely not without flaws and limitations.) That this has included the companionship and engagement of a number of simpatico men, women and youth has enriched my existence immeasurably. For this and for them I am deeply grateful.
Now this is all memory — rich, but without the participation, the actuality. What I do have is the opportunity every day, as Barbara and I go walking downtown, at the waterfront or in one of the parks, to participate by observation. Nothing so engages me as those young mothers and fathers playing with their children, or simply walking their child or children, packets of pure energy, sometimes dashing ahead and back, testing, testing, pushing their own capacities. There is a marvelous beauty in the children, in their energy and their reach.
Every such encounter I have is one more opportunity to appreciate that vitality, that promise; to simply enjoy such moments, including the pride and the love expressed by parents in their various ways. To witness a young mother at the waterfront park, thoroughly engaged in enjoyment of her boy, age about 4, as they play a game with a large ball, a game whose rules defy easy classification; to share vicariously their delight is a gift.
I hasten to assure: I am not unacquainted with those other, often exhausting, debilitating experiences of parenting. The long nights with colic, with earache, the arguments about food or bedtime, the fears with illness. Or being swamped with diapers! With children of my own, I have some sense of the territory. And, it must be noted, healthy, lively children can occasionally be brats!
I do not mean to sentimentalize beyond reality. But for most, I surely hope and believe, love is the dominating and rewarding force.
All of which is to introduce and connect to the crucial question: What does the future hold for those children, and for theirs after them?
And here, for the conscious, we come upon another kind of reality — that we are busily engaged in sacrificing the future of those children for profitable enterprise today. The reality is that accepting the need to confront the dangers of our present course appears beyond our capacity — or our interest.
A huge body now of scientific research has accumulated — and grows daily — documenting the dangers of our dependence on fossil fuels. Is it possible that all that research and its frightening conclusions are in error? One could argue for that exceedingly dubious possibility, and tragically many do. But given the appalling efforts of a number of those who would sacrifice the future for profit, the chances of such error grow steadily more remote. Each day, with each scientific study and report, the odds of future calamitous impacts mount. The sheer insanity of betting on that ever-fainter possibility; of frantically building a mountain of skepticism upon a rare scientific report of alternate possibility; of ignoring the dangers; of rejecting as some nefarious liberal scam this ominous scenario — this is truly a remarkable phenomenon.
Man has surely wreaked havoc on a number of incredibly rich and beautiful environments. But that we would be willing, in fealty to the momentum of corporate financial imperatives and the inconvenience of devising alternatives, to take a risk of this magnitude against such odds is remarkable, tragic — and incredibly, unbelievably stupid! And it is the last that boggles the imagination, that man has reached this shining moment when risking the human future is no more than another great financial opportunity for many and a matter of indifference to millions.
We will have inherited a virtual wonderland, an environment in which mankind, with allowance for the countless sad and often painful fruits of aggressive and acquisitive impulses, has at least had the opportunity, not always realized, to flourish. Yet with no more thought, much less compunction, than a decision to place a longshot wager on the Irish Sweepstakes, we have tens of millions of so-called “conservatives” willing to bet that environment and future on the compelling opportunity for profit and convenience today. What in the name of whatever god is packaged with those lives is “conservative” about that?
That the natural wonderland which we have inherited is in increasing danger and will very likely be handed off damaged beyond repair to those children and to theirs is quite clearly not a matter of great concern to the hard-headed businessman of our day. Not when measured against the Dow — or the 10-year profit projections of fossil fuels.
For many, possibly for most in their early or middle years, consideration of the environment of 50, 70 or 90 years from now is not yet a primary or even pressing concern. Thanks to the well-funded and cultivated confusions of the huge energy conglomerates and some of today’s most vocal conservatives, that future environment has for those very busy citizens little shape, form, substance or significance. It is just the distant future, with no greater hold on our attention than the weekend weather.
I note that these citizens are also the very caring, responsible parents who, across the nation as in Benicia, feel and express each day in manifold ways their love for their infant children and their hopes for their future.
Will those hopes bridge to those realities in time?
Jerome Page is a Benicia resident.
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From the above article:
“All of which is to introduce and connect to the crucial question: What does the future hold for those children, and for theirs after them?
And here, for the conscious, we come upon another kind of reality — that we are busily engaged in sacrificing the future of those children for profitable enterprise today. The reality is that accepting the need to confront the dangers of our present course appears beyond our capacity — or our interest.
A huge body now of scientific research has accumulated — and grows daily — documenting the dangers of our dependence on fossil fuels. Is it possible that all that research and its frightening conclusions are in error? One could argue for that exceedingly dubious possibility, and tragically many do. But given the appalling efforts of a number of those who would sacrifice the future for profit, the chances of such error grow steadily more remote. Each day, with each scientific study and report, the odds of future calamitous impacts mount. The sheer insanity of betting on that ever-fainter possibility; of frantically building a mountain of skepticism upon a rare scientific report of alternate possibility; of ignoring the dangers; of rejecting as some nefarious liberal scam this ominous scenario — this is truly a remarkable phenomenon. ”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-presumed-innocence-of-capitalism-and-lac-megantic/5344965
An excerpt from the article below for Mr. Page and the community to contemplate…
Lying and cheating are built into a legal regulatory framework that pretends that it merely has to address the problems of productive activities engaged in by virtuous actors for virtuous reason. The frailty of this assumption is further demonstrated by the fact that regulatory theory ignores evidence all around us: in their drive to accumulate, capitalists will produce literally anything that sells, from food, to medicine, to tobacco, to alcohol, to guns, to body parts, to anything at all. The obvious fact that capitalism and capitalists do not care a whit about the public welfare, should put some doubt in regulators’ minds about the virtue of ‘entrepreneurs.’ Yet, it does not. The ugly drive to make everything saleable has no logical limits in capitalism, corroding our values and cultures. Capitalists are self-interested, uncaring, anti-social actors, not worthy of presumptions in their favour.
Capitalism and capitalists are not virtuous. The system is criminogenic.
So, while it is true that all productive activities entail risks, they are not the same risks for the same people or locales if the aim of production is not set by the competitive model to maximize profits by reducing costs. If people’s needs were the object of production, the safety of the workers doing the producing, that of the consumers and users of the goods and services produced, the maintenance of a healthy environment would be front and centre in what is now called business planning. More, it would make perfect sense to have all these people whose needs were most likely to affected, participate directly in the planning and in the decision-making about what risks to accept and about what needs they wanted to satisfy, rather than have them participate by bleeding and dying. Productive activities would still entail risks, but risks more democratically accepted and acceptable.
Until we make the points about the toxic and fraught nature of our regulatory framework and the radical changes this demands, the bleeding, the dying, the illnesses, the degraded environment will continue, and likely get worse.
I kept thinking about Mr. Page’s most recent article…from his article.
“All of which is to introduce and connect to the crucial question: What does the future hold for those children, and for theirs after them? ”
“Man has surely wreaked havoc on a number of incredibly rich and beautiful environments. But that we would be willing, in fealty to the momentum of corporate financial imperatives and the inconvenience of devising alternatives, to take a risk of this magnitude against such odds is remarkable, tragic — and incredibly, unbelievably stupid! And it is the last that boggles the imagination, that man has reached this shining moment when risking the human future is no more than another great financial opportunity for many and a matter of indifference to millions.”
The article below by Professor Michael Klare speaks to Mr. Page’s concerns.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/08-2
Interesting. Where is the money coming from. It can only come from fossil fuel. We need ports to export natural gas to China and India. So far only two are approved. Many more waiting for the approval process to get going. The President is on his way to making coal in the USA extinct. We need to open more ports to export natural gas to India and China. Start where the biggest polution occurs. At present America ia about to overtake Russia as the second biggest producer of fossil fuel right behind Saudai Arabia. These other nations that are mentioned do not come close to the big three. As the price of oil drops and it will the Canadian Tar Sand crude will just no longer be in the picture because of the cost. America which is the biggest user of energy will no longer need these foreign products. As the price drops you will see many issues develope in these countries that rely on the export of fossil fuel. You will see civil unrest, hunger, human destruction just for the right to survive. Who will step in and help these folks? Your guess and I think you will get it right. We must use America’s fossil fuel resources to get our country back on financial sustainability which will then make is much easier to put more resources into renewable energy. Tech and science are the answer, they must work hand and hand. We must move forward with fossil fuel in a clean, safe and healthy way. It can be done. We need action not articles of words.
Mr. Page stated: Is it possible that all that research and its frightening conclusions are in error?
Good question, one well worth examining further.
Mr. Page stated: Is it possible that all that research and its frightening conclusions are in error?
Good question, one well worth examining further.
Yes, DDL. Let us investigate this publication Energy And Environment to learn who/what funds them and what is the tenor of their views in general. I doubt we shall find them an objective source of information or freely derived opinion. They may be part of the petroleum interest-bubble like yourself.
Poor Robert, he falls into the same trap with virtually every post he directs at dissenters. He responds in such a typical, as well as easily predictable fashion, whenever his sacred leftist misinformation is challenged:
Ignore any evidence that contradicts the agenda
Attack the source
Cast aspersions of doubt
Attack the posters motivations, though he knows not what they are.
Someday Robert you may see beyond the bubble you live in and open your eyes to a reality beyond your cloistered existence. Content though you are in self claimed superiority you may one day recognize that so much of what you believe to be true lacks the foundation for it to be so.
Yes, Mr. Page, it is exceedingly strange that thousands of otherwise sensible people, people able to tie their shoes and pick up salad forks at table, so readily ignore data that seems to offer no immediate profit to them though it records cumulative drift toward irrecoverable descent into catastrophe.
Homo sapiens ignoramus?
Yes, it seems maybe humans peaked between 15 and 5 thousand years ago and are well along the path of devolution. Maximal use of senses and brain-power has declined as techno-culture has risen. We may end up like a monkey in the control-room of the CERN super-collider.
Make a comment and back it with an article and guess what? Yes you are right, you get personally attacked. I guess by now Robert Shelby you have investigated the publication and can now give us all the facts. Looking forward to your results and not just your thoughts.
STOP WHINING. It almost seems that without complaining about “personal attacks” you’d have nothing to say, Bob. Put on your big boy pants and stop the sniveling nonsense.
Sorry Simon or is it Simon Says. I an correct again and you just do not like it.
Simon Says? A personal attack! I feel a fainting spell coming on!
PS You are incorrect.
I would say Simon Says is a compliment just like Bob Says. Words to live by. Simon it is time to move on we are off topic. I did Enjoy it.
Study Finds 5 Ways Conservative Media Erode Trust In Scientists:
“The study suggests that watching and listening to outlets like Fox News and The Rush Limbaugh Show may be one reason that only 19 percent of Republicans agree that human activity is causing global warming, despite the consensus of 97 percent of climate scientists.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/05/study-finds-5-ways-conservative-media-erode-tru/195229
“We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit.”
– David Suzuki
Not when you are the correct driver. You do everything possible to avoid the brick wall. Just take it down with sound engineering, science and tech input. Very simple.
Wholeheartedly agree on advances in engineering, science and technology:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-could-make-solar-power-dirt-cheap/
Very good article. If we can do that we can make extracting, processing and use of fossil fuel just as safe, healthy and envro friendly. Thanjks for the info