Letters to the Editor
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Doomsday, part II
I think we have this same discussion every day!
Sometimes the person crying 'wolf' is right. Sometimes the guy on the bridge of the Titanic crying "iceberg" is right. Sometimes the guy that just ran back from Thermopolae is right. There is no intellectual barrior to 'certain' doomsday's actually being true.
I think peak oil is already here, unlike what Klare says (he's using government figures, I think). The effects of global warming in the global 'south' are certainly already here - desertification, deforestation, disease through bad water, and increased starvation. Food prices are going up because we have an oil-based agriculture system, the so-called "green revolution," that is non-sustainable. Not to mention the effects ethanol and meat-eating are taking on food supply.
For example, the ocean Coho Salmon season has been canceled yesterday due to lack of ... fish, caused by ocean warming.
What I think the U.S. Right is banking on is that they hope this all 'happens' to someone else. Your country may go underwater, we'll build a dike. You may starve, we won't. You may run out of water, we won't. You may bicycle, we won't.
Well, as Iraq shows, 4,6000 soliders and contractors dead, tens of thousands injured, billions spent, our international reputation in shambles, enemies multiplying, it will come back to haunt us. Georgia and the southern U.S. have been in a drought for years now. The Ogalla aquifer below much of the western U.S. is being rapidly depleted, and not renewed. Drought and rural decimation in Mexico brought by NAFTA have lead to an immigration wave into the U.S. And on and on, i.e. all the Republicans and conservative Democrats who think they can live in some walled compound are kidding themselves.
What to do? Become real 'conservatives' - of the whole planet, including us humans. This is the 'moral' equivalent of war, (conservatives like THAT phrase!) and the whole country will have to get prepared. But without a government and economic system that can respond, odds are not good. Individuals, organization and comunities can only do so much alone ... they are light years ahead of our government, yet without a national and internation focus, they cannot respond in the degree necessary.
I turned down my thermostat all winter. 53 degrees at night, 63 degrees when I was there. And it is ... a bit chilly.