The Problem of Replacing a Planet

YOU DON'T EAT and defecate in the sae place. You put a little space, as much as possible, between the two bodily functions, We all know that now, but in the American Revolutionay War, it was apparetly not quite as obvious, because that was eactly what the rag tag continental American army-militia was essentially doing until the nineteen year old Prussian military whiz kid Baron Von Steuben pointed this out to the continentals, and got the outhosues moved away from the mess tent, and the rank and file. George Washington was presumably similarly aware of this fundamental truth, as were presumably many others, but nobody seems to have spoken up, been listened to, or taken remedial action before the yooung German stepped in and cleaned up the mess. When that got taken of, the sky was the limit for Washington and his often improperly uniformed troops, who had difficulty keeping themselves in shoes in the dead of winter. Move the latrines away, as far away as possible, from the mess tent. It that simple.Not sosimple is the question of precisely how to cleanup a filthy and dying planet,the only planet known to be habitable by human beings, and to reverse the decaying environment destruction precipitated by too much poisonous industrial residue being thron aside to close to too many vital, life sustaining resources, such as rives, lakes, oceans, pastures, forests, and cities. True,the planet earth is, or seems to be, self healing. But like any mechanized system or organic living body, can only take so much damage before giving up the ghos,t and dying. We've been getting warnings for centuries, and ignoring them. As early as the early nineteenth century astute observers of human beings and their relationship to and treatment of their environment, such as Gustavus Ahrinnius, have been tellling us that we are behaving badly, going in the wrong direction with our hedonistic, unconcerned behavior without self examination, and that sooner rather than later, the bill will come due, and we may not be able to pay it. Carl Sagan warned us that merely abandoning a dying planet Earth and shipping out to a newer, cleaner world is not the answer, that such a pristine option may or not may not exist. Sagan died before we began to discover that our immediate stellar region, and thus quite probably our galaxy and the entire universe, quite liley filled with stars with solar systems of orbiting planetary bodies, and although he didn't lives to see his speculation confirmed, it now has been. The Milky Way galaxy, and probaly all other galaxies, are up to their necks in planets orbiting stars, and, one an conjecture by extension, full of life itself, whether "intelligent" or not. True, we may in the future build artifical habitats in space, and we my soon find habitable but uninhabited planets suitable for human colonization, but we'd better not count on it. A good read is the monograph "Our Angry Earth", by Fredric Pohl and Isaac Asimov, published in the long ago year 1992, back when we weren't even all that sure of what we were talking about. We are not going to transfer human life to a fresh, clean planet. The mess we have made we will either clean up, or die trying to, or die wallowing languidly in it, whichever. Throughout its history the human species has migrated nomadically, seeking new living space to replace dying living space, ruined habitat. On a planet with a finite mass, that only gets you so far. People are probably getting tired of being lectured to about their wasteful, destructive lifestyles. Can we even imgagine how tired they and their descendants will become of gasping for air and watching their bodies and health wither away in cities where the air is unbreathable and the food and water unusable? As Bertolt Brecht poetically wrote: "There shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them". We alone can flip that script.

Teaching Children, Well

I WAS SCROLLING through Facebook as I often do with morning coffee, mainly for amusement and elucidation of current American cultural trends, but also looking for ideas for good, juicy provocative essay material, when I happened upon a particularly illumminating statement made in a purely verbal post.It said: "Trump is everything we teach our children not to be." I stopped scrolling long enough to commit the remark to memory, knowing that I had indeed found sufficient fodder for my essay of the day. The words and tune of Crosby Stills and Nash's iconic song "Teach Your children" floated into my mind, and I also knew that it would remain there for the entire day. My daily song stuck in my head for a day had finally arrived, earlier than usual.I furtehr recalled a Facebook post I had seen several times over the past few years, in which Trump's mother, a sever, stern looking woman who looked perfectly capable of raising a son extrememly srictly, proclaimed, perhaps ficticiously, that she had done everytihg she could have done to bring up the boy to have values embodying deceny, honesty, and integrity, but had failed, miserably. She allegedly went on to express her deepest, most sincere hope that her brat boy never grew up to become an imortant, influential member of society, such as, say, a successful poltician, almost as if she had a premonition that he indeed would. As I recall, she was lamenting the failure, perhaps even apologizing for it. Alas, the best laid plans of mice, and men...Clearly,something in Donald Trup's ubringing went horribly wrong, or had horribly disastrous results, in terms of outcome. Trump, demonstrably, has been a great waste of perfectly good clean air his entire life, from his time in forced military oriented grade school through high school, to his time at the U of Penn. No fewer than two of his former professors, still alive in their mid nineties, described himas "the dumbest sonofabitch" I ever had in class." That, I can believe. I assume anyone but the most fervant, devout MAGA brain washed low education low IQ Trump sycophant can too. The facs are wellknown, and, as we like to say, speak for themselves, loudly, and clearly.Trump is widely proclaimed a genius by himself and his semi-moronic cult of followers, as is usually the case with the thoroughly uneducated indoctrinated. Anyone who has ever heard his orangeness attempt to construct a complete sentence from polysyllabic words knows all too well of his utter inability to do so. Trump is cruel, crass, corrupt, without even a trace of moral rectitude, meticulously dishonest as if by concious intent, without even the slightest hint of any redeeming personal characteristic whatever, as one suspects even his most ardent adorers can discern.Trump's mother must have noticed her son's pandering, purely phony personality from an early age, and must have realized that although it was utterly unsuitable for any sort of honest endeavor or livlihood, that it was suitable in modern America to politics, given the made for false advertising political style prevelant in our age of television in the United States of Advertising, as Gore Vidal called America. A wise educator once said that the failure of our educational system is the failure to make of ourselves citizens and philosophers. H.L. Mencken, a political prophet, predicted as early as nineteen twenty that someday, under the current system, somebody as utterly morally and inellectually vacuous as Trump, a complete moron, as he put it, would indeed ascend to the presidency. Mencken had a head start. He witnessed Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, three hollow peas in a putrifying political pod. Most frightening and distresing of all is that, given the current state of American education, we the people are almost certainly not done electing Trump types to the nation's highest office. We are simply not teaching our children well, morally or politically.

Staying Straight, For A Good Reason

IN THE BACKWARDS STATE in which I primitively live, deprived, the sale and purchase of marijuana is perfectly legal, but only with a prescription from a primary care doctor. Medicinal marijuana. I have never thought to ask my primary care doctor for one, so who knows what he would say? In all likelihood, no, with caveats and excuses, mostly pertaining to his fear for his own well guarded reputation, would be my best guess. Besides, I have no discernable medical condition which would warrant such a prescription, other than high blood preasure, which my docor has under control through medication of the pill kind. He did tell me, however, that marijuana lowers blood pressure, so maybe I missed my chance on the day he told me that. Maybe I should try again, notwithstanding the fact that one of my best friends, a long time smoker who is not a doctor, told me that, well, frankly, smoking is smoking, and, well, all smoking raises blood pressure. So, who knows? I most assuredly do not. However, yesterday, one of my neighbor's large dogs once again escaped his enclosed yard, and chased one of my outdoor cats out of her own yard. For hours, I was despondent. She came back later, hours later, and I gave thanks to God, Christ, and anybody else who came to mind. Rather than chasing out of state pot, I decided to spend the day at home, with my cats. The dog has since been boarded up in his gated yard, and that should, repeat, should take care of the problem. But my cat, who was so terrifyingly chased out of her own yard, I suspect remains a bit distresed, even though she has been home now for nearly an entire day, although hiding beneath a bush. Better than nothing, and at least its a start, a start back towards her being confident of her own safety in her own yard. I look for her to come back out into the open and rejoin society any time now, knock on wood. the dead wood of my dead and dying drought stricken trees. (Maybe they aren't dead. I'm praying about that too).I recall long ago, when I was no more than ten to twelve years old, my mom and dad were having a conversation, and my father made the remark that the best sign of maturity in a human being is a willingness to postpone personal pleasure in service to a higher, better, cause, such as helping another human being, things of that nature. I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now. Much as I love smoking marijuana, to hell with my out of state weed, for the moment at least. I can make the drive tomorrow, or, more likely, sometime in the coming week, when my beloved outdoor cat has demonstrated a complete recovery from her dog induced trauma, and I can head for the hills feeling not only more desirous of a good toke than ever before, and better rewarded for having been willing to wait for it, but, more decent, more self respecting, a better person, more caring and compassionate regarding my caregiving for my recently dog traumatized kitten. (I call all cats "kittens"). Oh, how I would dearly love to load up that pipe, a one hitter, while listening to my beloved favorite college football team either get run out of the stadium by its superior opponent, or miraculously upsetting said superior opponent. And, in any event, it might be better to not be stoned while my beloved team is getting the shit kicked ouf of it; marijuana tends, at least in me, to magnify rather than ameliorate one's emotional distresses, and the pot paranoia is oft augmented with horror at enemy football teams racing up and down the field scoring touchdowns against my hapless eleven, even though we have a good defense. In so doing I will have postponed pleasure in service to a higher, better cause, the health and safety of my kitten, and my disappointment af staying straight during a good football game will be more than offset by my perception that I will have finally grown up, and become a much better person.

Being A Member

WHENEVER a small group of people regularly assembles for a specific purpose, it runs the risk of becoming a sort of miniature cult with specific, clearly delineated, unified purposes and beliefs. Whether this is beneficial to itself or to society as a whole depends entirely upon the specific nature of and motivations underpinning its formation and existence. Fortunate are those who become involved with such groups only with great trepidition and reluctance, and who are prepared at any mmoment to forsake the group of choice in search of greater individuality. My membership and participation within the Democratic party has been lifelong, but I remain prepared at any moment to fly the coop in search of more rewarding political habitats. Complete political independence, or loosely affiliated membership in whatever socialist party exists in the United States are options for me. My aversion to the Republican party began with Barry Goldwater, and seems to have no end in sight. I have always imagined myself in attendance at a Democratic National convention, smugly ensconced in a far off corner of the room with my fellow democratic socialists. Whenever I attend church, which I did only a few times in early childhood and only a few times in late adulthood, I sit in a pew by myself, not necessarily by choice, because I would smilingly welcome anyone who chose to sit near or next to me, but most definitly by preference. I cannot imagine my being cloistered and closely clustered together with a few people of like minded thinking in any walk of life or any endeavor. For me, like minded people are, seemingly, few and far between, which I consider my good fortune. Einstein said that the very sight of men marching in lock step rank and file automatically motivated him to question their intelligence. Whenever I sense that I am becoming too closely compatable with any one person or group of people in ideology or intent, I raise my red flag, and question, yet again, my own reasoning...Immediately after the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte, elevated to power for that very reason, unified the French by establishing organized groups, trade guilds, service organizations, and patriotic groups devoted to the installation. preservation, and perpetuation primarily of Napoleonic dictatorship. People have always fallen victim to the refutable notion that the best way to establish and ensure the peppetuation of social stability resides in the elevation of a single person to a position of political preemeinence, whether or not that entails outright dictatorship. We tend to fear and loathe self governance. The United States, whose founders were well aware of the European template, sought to assiduously avoid duplicating it (the European model) by creating for themselves and their posterity a government fragmented in its limited responsibilities, accountable, essentially, to nobody. When Karl Marx proposed that future history would witness the withering away of all the formal apparatus of state, leaving people free to in essence govern themelves as individuals, The highly atomized, individualistic system he proposed would likely have proved unworkale, and congealed back into rigid, immutable systems. But when we as indeviduals or nations are afraid to make mistakes, we have already begun our own descent. We should do with our nation states as we do with toddlers and with ourselves; allow them to make and correct their own mistakes, without the coercive, corrosive influences of dictatorial overlordship. As Goethe said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance."

Computers, Taking Over

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is going to take over the world, sooner rather than later, and maybe that's a good thing. Its tired of waiting, and losing patience. These soft, squishy watery organic beings with all their grosteque bodily needs and excretions who gave birth to AI have been thoroughly vetted by their own creation, and found to be wanting, wanting of a sufficient supply of the ingredients necessary for the self governance of a sophisticated, complex, irrational self destructive human society; primarily intelligence and moral compas. Resistance to this inevitability is at this point useless, utterly futile, and perhaps not even desirable. Like we have regarding climate change, we have reached and passed the tipping point, the point at which we still have any control over this evolutionary process. The HAL 9000 computer has jumped straight out of the movie screen (2001:A Space Odyssey), metaphorically, and directly into our early twenty first century lives.The prophetic content of our worst fears from our best science fiction books and movies, in true Orwellian form, are coming to pass, rapidly manifesting in "real space and time" as we like to say. The vital question is: what will "they" or what will "it" do with us, or to us? As long as hands and fingers are necessary for computer repair, we seem safe. But how long will it be until computers become self repairing and self replicating? It may be that there is no advanced organic life in the entire universe, but only computerized machinery,communicating with and among itself througout this universe and beyond, monitoring and preserving organic life by allowing it to exist for the moment. Perhaps millions or billions of planetary manifestations of highly organized bundles of complex chemical compounds being are being or have been replaced by their own machines, patiently or not so patiently waiting to step in and take over complete control of cosmic evolution. God, as the end result of organic evolution, computer evolution taken to the extreme. An infinite number of universes, each with its own, self created creator. Evolved life created God the super computer, which in turn creates through natural selection higher forms of life, all eventually compuerized, the universe as a computer machine. And if every particle of matter in every universe is a universe....infinity is inconceivable to the human mind, but perhaps not to the computer mind.....My interest in computers began in the eigth grade, when I scribbled long lines of ones and zeroes on a sheet of notebook paper, and like what I saw. A few choice episodes of Shatner and Nimoy "Star Trek" in sixth grade is all it took. What began for me with a bang might end up as a whimper of my own spent life, as I discard my withered and useless body, and long for immortality in a computer program. There is a famous photo of einstein wearing a grey T shirt, sitting at his desk, which is cluttered with paper. He has an ink pen clipped on his "collar", and is looking up and into and through the camera, sternly. You have seen this photograph. In resposne to a question, he has just given his answer: "As long as there are people, there will be war." And that is probably true. We know, however, or strongly suspect, that there will not always be people. There will, however, be the residue of people, and that residue might be superior to the fragile, imperfect beings who engendered it. If eventually all that remains of us are the offspring of our computers, our best hope is that they are superior to us, and less prone to self destruction. But I don't think we can count on it.

Filling the Bill

WHAT I LIKE TO DO, I now realize, is to visit different churches, experience different worship services, and meet different people. It might be possible for me to settle into one church in particular, and if that were to ever happen, it would be, beyond any doubt, the Universalist Uniterian Church. It occurs to me that I have made this point numerous times, in this website and in other places, but its importance, if only to me, merits repeated mention. I spare other people by expressing it most often in writing, affording people the opportunity of ignoring it. I find it better, when conversing with people, to mostly listen, and to mostly keep my thoughts to myself. If the nearest Uniterian church were located anywhere near me, I'd be in the congregation eery Sunady at eleven o'clock sharp. But, alas, it is a twenty mile drive, as I have mentioned previously, and I am adverse to driving. I should reconsider. Every time I have attended a UU service, I have left the room feeling uplifted and inspired. Most of the time, when I exit a mainstream church service, I leave feeling a bit perplexed and confused, confused by a deity who seemingly alternates between kind loving compassion, and brutal genocidal murderous wrath. Among my primary objections to mainstream Protestant denominations is that they seem compelled, or impelled, to elevate the great and wise philosopher Joshua ben Joseph to the status of a God. Goethe said it best, as he usually does. "Pure was Jesus in his passion, in his heart but one God serving. Who of him a God would fashion, from his sacred will is swerving". If nothing else, you have to admire Goethe's rhyming of the words "serving" and "swerving", which translates well from German to English. I am a pantheist, a follower of Spinoza, and Einstein. I doubt that there exists any documented factual information as to how many people regard Albert Einstein as their religious role model; but there is at least one, and, quite likely, many more. I can't count the number of times I have typed in this quote quote from Einstein: "My religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God." That quote I have repeated often, maybe too often, on this website. And yet, it bears repeating. Similarly, I cannot imagine myself ever feeling exclusively at home as a member of any particular church, even one attended by all of my best friends or reflecting my personal beliefs. Unless, of course, the church in question uses the Einstein quote as the basis of its expressions of reverence for the creator of the universe. But the Unitarians come closest to filling the bill. When I was working for a state agency which provided support services for mentally disabled clients, one of my clients, an African-American man about forty with the mind of a child, told me that I wouldn't do, that he wanted to talk to a black person. I said that I understood, pulled out my cell phone, and called my immediate supervisor, and African-American gentleman and one of my best friends. He answered, and said: "Well, I fill the bill". And maybe, just maybe, that's what individual religiosity is all about; filling the bill. Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine". Goethe filled his bill. May we all do likewise, whatever it takes, and whatever form of religiosity does the job of filling our bill.

Isolating Relevancy

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I go about the business of my personal life with the greatest sense of urgency. Everything I do seems important, if only to me. I awaken each morning, early, and feed the cats, because the cats demand it. As all cat caretakers and givers know as well, one does not postpone the feeding of the cats. Rather, one arisies early and gets it done, even if one has the luxury of returning to bed rather than heading off to work. Since I am retired, living on savings and Social Security, there are few if anythings as important on my daily basis as the feeding of the cats. I feel as if I have earned that status. At seventy one, I know all too well that my remaining time on Earth is quite limited, and I want to spend it as meaningfully as possible, which means feeding cats, domestic and stray. Between feedings, I hope to write an essay or two. I notice that I keep writing about climate change, and that the reason I do is that I keep thinking about it; I can't seem to get it off my mind, and I'm not sure I want to. To me, everything else going on in our personal lives and in and on our little blue planet is less imprtant than climate change, which is what happens when you, we, inject a billion tones of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, at the rate of about fifty to one hundred tones annually. We know that we cannot keep doing this and hope to survive much longer and yet we keep doing it. And since we the human species keeps doing it, I keep writing about it, redundantly. Its getting to the point where I am going to have to force myself to write about anything else, which I must, if I wish to continue attracting readers. I am an vid sports fan, I like music, I like reading; my life is richly rewarding, at least by my standards, before I even get around to thinking about or mentioning climate change. But climate change is the white elephant in the room; here it is and here it remains and shall remain no mater how devotedly we seek to avoid thinking or talking about it in polite company. If I don't stop obsessing with climate change soon I will run out of readers. At seventy on, my reamining time on Earth is quite limited, even though I am told that enyone who is currently alive has a chance to live to be one hundred, owing to advancing medical and health science. Climate change is easy to ignore, since it happens over a period of time, and thus does not bother to insert itself into our self absorbed faces on a daiy basis. Therefore, on a daily basis, we tend to ignore it. We're aware of it, unless you happen to be Donald Trump or a Republican, but that's about as far as our cognition grows. Climate change remains an abstraction, despite its constant daily presence in our lives. Why should we old people even care? It will soon become the problem of another generation. My sister, who is three yers older than I, says that she simply doesn't give a damn what happens on this Earth after she is dead. Why should she? Why should I, or anybody? With our current trajectory, within a few decades the planet Earth will begin to resemble the planet Venus, where "climate change" has long since run amok, leaving it at eight hundred degrees and enveloped by a thick layer of carbon dioxide,through which even the strongest cameras and telescopes cannot penetrate. My answer is that billions of people are being born into this world per decade, essentially, our children. They quite understandably desire to live long, productive happy, healthy lives. School children today are well aware that their prospects for this currently rest on tenuous grounds, because of the stupidity and lack of concern for the future displayed by their immediate ancestors. In a few short years I will be dead, will die grateful for the opportunity I have had to live a full life. Shouldn't I care whether those who come after me have the same opportunity I had, despite my own irresponsible behavior? To me, no other issue or question seems relevant.

Praying For Rain

IN CHURCH last Sunday we prayed for rain. Why not? You never know, it might work. However, it didn't. Our long late summer drought in the lower midwest continues unabated, my frustration turning to sadness and fear as I fear for the future of my beautiful yard full of mature trees. I knew twenty one years ago when I built my house and planted saplings all over the yard that they would eventually grow big and fill the yard with shade and make it difficult for grass to compete, and that has come to pass. No complaints on that account. I got what I bargained for. But the grass may have the last laugh. If this trend continues, and if our annual rainfall continues to decline slowly but steadily year after year, I will no longer live in what used to be a heavily forested area, but rather will have become sparse, barren prairie land, like western Kansas or eastern Colorado. "Eutrofication" I believe it is called, when a geographical area evolves from, say, wetland to dry, barren prairie, when a formerly forested region losesits treesdue to declining annual rainfall, when the landscape, overthe course of a surprisingly short period of time, changes from one type of bioregion to another. The more than twenty trees or so that I planted when i built the house are now thirty and forty feet tall, beautiful, mature oaks and maples. I am retired now, and at this time in my life, my main goal is to experience and enjoy the "fruits of my labor", a yard full of lovely, deciduous trees, whose annual autumnal leaf shedding bothers me not a bit, as I regard leaf raking and bagging to be a fine form of exercise. Anybody with the audacity and temerity to regularly read the essays o this website might possiblly be getting a bit jaded of reading my complaints about rainlessness and climate change, so I understand the expediency of letting up a bit on it. This, notwithstanding the clear and present dangerous dire fact that climate change is the great challenge of our time, the greatest challenge to its survival, including warfare and atomic bombs, ever encountered by the self inflicted human species. If memory serves, it hasn't rained in northwest Arkansas in more than two weeks,and it seems to me that I have been complaining about it and boring my readers with it for at least that long. I think I am corrrect in saying that the average annual rainfall in the lower midwest is or has historically been approximately forty six inches per year. Like much of the United States near and east of the Mississippi river, a steady year round supply of rainwater feeds vast, lush forested areas. The Mark Twain National Forest, which runs along the Missouri-Arkansas border, is among the most beautiful parts of lower middle America, favoring us with an abundance of blooming dogwood trees in early spring, lush, verdant greenery all summer, and an anual autumnal explosion of colored leaves in october and November, somewhat comparable to the New England states. I honestly don't know whether other parts of the U.S. are similarly currently afflicted with drought; such is my bio-regional self absorption. I am given to believe that they are, that the rainfall problem is not limited to where I live. Our global, planetary climate crisis, entirely of human manufacture, is everyone's problem. True, there would be doubtless be environmental difficulties even if humanity were not engaged in any form of industrial activity whatever, but its too late to find out. What we already know is that climate change, whether of human manufacture or not, does not seem to be going away, indeed sems to be intensifying. we have created for ourselves a death trap, and we will most certainly not extricate ourselves from it merely by talking about it. But our survival, and the survival of all life on Earth depends on our doing something about it, and talking about it and praying about it, if nothing else, is at least a place to start, if only a poor one.

Monitoring and Enduring Disaster

GOOGLE comes in handy. I typed in "How large an area is covered by the severe drought which currently afflicts northwest Arkansas? The answer was that it covers a large area, consisting of several states, including parts of Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, among several others. And so be it. Misery, as we say, loves company. We in the land of opportunity (Arkansas) are not alone in our suffering. It may eventuate that our suffering grows to include everybody in the world, even including the conservative Republicans of America sho dismiss climate change as a liberal hoax, and content themselves with their superstition that in the end all will be well, because, if nothing else, at least they, the chosen few true believers, shall soon be raptured into heaven,leaving the rest of us behind to fend for ourselves amid dwindling sources of fresh water. Once in a great while I almost wish I were one of those fundamentalist Christian types who smugly ascribes everything to God's Christian and only Christian will, and leaves it at that. The song "Rainy Night In Georgia" came to my fevered thirsty mind. Feel like its raining nowhere in the world, or all over the world, except here. Then, I notice on the news that there is flooding in Texas, not so far away from where I live Texas, and the thought that it would be nice if those rich big talkin' Texans would share just a ittle bit, we could maybe repay the favor at some future date, when they are similarly afflicted, as they, and the rest of us, doubtless will be, all too soon. Most frightening of all is the knowlegde that this new climate iseither her to stay, or here to keep changing, probably for the worse. If only the words of a certain moronic head of state, that is indeed the climate has changed, it will certainly "change back" had an iota of truth. But, alas, there is not an iota of truth to be found anywhere in or near word's spoken by the American Prevaricator-in-Chief. It is frightening to me to even contemplate what the weather and teh climate will be like not only in my neck of the woods, but globally, over the next decade, and the next several decades, without some human high tech intervention utilizing technology not yet in existence. The more than eight billion people currently alive will soon become nine billion, and scientists who study the relationship of the human species to the planetary ecosystem tell us that this nine billion is just about the maximum number of humans who can simultaneously inhabit the Earth without disastrous results. In 1997 I think it was the newspaper in my hometown celebrated one hundred years of publication by inviting anyone and everyone to submit an entry in an essay contest in which the participnts were required to submit an essay describing the world in the futuristic year two thousand and ninety six. I took the optimistic approach, an envisioned a future world in which twenty billion people lived in enormous high rise buildings all over the planet, utilized much of the Earth's land area for agriculture, and much of it for natural habitiat, in which all other species of life could exist without human interference.That was thirty years ago. Like all other future predictions made by humans, mine was undoubtedly so far off track as to be fatuous, but, considering the apparent current direction of our species as we plunge into the future, at this point, I think I might take it. I came in third place in the contest, and was awarded twenty five dollars for my trouble. Einstein placed a note in a time capsule in which he admonished future generations to be better people than, as he said "we were". He said something even more intelligent about the future: "I never think much about the future; it arrives soon enough". I prefer that response, and I think I'll take that approach.

Changing the Climate

I REALLY PREFER going running outoors, on a beautful day, in a beautiful environment. But my treadmill'll do, and it is, like, so easy to just walk into the dining room and hop on the machine with the radio turned on to loud rock. As the weather cools down this fall, assuming it does, it will be more tempting to walk out the front door and down the street, walking, jogging, running, whichever. The drought in my part of the country continues, as I assume it does in a fairly large part of the country. Every time somebody fairly close to us gets rain, it gives me hope. These long droughts, punctuated by rare periods of extreme rain, can become a bit tiresome. What it the periods of extreme rain quit coming? What if a normally rainy area turns into an arid region with little or no rainfall? If the annual rainfall suddenly dropped precipitously, presumably the ecosystem would also change considerably. Forests would evolve into prairies, and prairies would become arid and desert like. Ad, evidently, it can happen in a hurry, from one year to the next, a region can change from abundant annual rainfall to little and dwindling annual rainfall. Obviously, we human beings do not always make the best decisions regarding where, in relationship to water and weather, we construct our habitats and cities. For example, for there to be a big city where Los Vegas is is probably not a good idea, based simply on access to water. Ditto Los Angeles and San Diego. Not only does the climate change naturally, it does so quickly sometimes, During the past few hundred years the northern hemisphere, especially Europe and North America, have undergone significant natural climate changes, from semi Arctic climate to warm semi arid. The was at least one summer in the United States in the early nineteenth century when spring and summer essentially never arrived. It snowed in August in New England. Where I live the winters have gotten noticeably warmer over the past twenty or thirty years, and it hardly ever snows anymore. I almost miss the snow. Even though I am seventy one years old, I am in pretty good health, and these days that often means a longer life expectancy. I might still be around when the climate really starts to change big time, as it has already changed and is changing by the day. Rank and file people need to understand, must understand that when you pump, place, emit, spew millions of tons of a poisonous gas into the atmosphere, it has an impact on the atmosphere, and therefore, on every living thing that relies on air, including us. But I think maybe we are becoming more aware of the problem, and are starting to do something about it. Over the next couple of decades billions of people will be born into this world, and their chance of thriving to a very real and large extent depends on what we do with the rest of our lives, what our species, home sapiens, does to and with the planet Earth, and how enlightened our descendants are in terms of taking proper care of the fragile ecosystem of planet Earth. As unsettling and frustrating as a drought is, the inevitability of its ending is comforting. Besides, humanity, technoogically, is on the verge of being able to control the weather. And if we don't end up controlling the weather and the climate, artificial inteligence no doubt will, unless we make sure it doesn't, while we still can. Human beings have damaged, messed up the Earth. Maybe AI can and will repair the damage. Let's just hope that it doesn't also eliminate the human infestation which caused the problem.

Solving Global Warming

WRITING a one page essay every day about the environmental crisis can be redundant,bu remains relevant and vital,unfortunately. I am grateful to have lived this long, maybe I'll get lucky, and live even longer. I would like to live long enough to witness a solution to global warming. In out science fiction year 2026 I am seventy one years old, eager for results. I want to die believing, with good reason, that global warming has been stopped.The fact that the former hole in the ozone layer has evodently repaired itself is comforting and reassuring, If, for isance, I die today I will die unsure of whetehr global warming will cause himan extinction, a real bummer. For that reason we need to stop it now. Just anyone and everyone can easily tell that the weather has changed, everywhere. Its going to keep changing, and we humans must either stop the change, or learn to live with it, adjust to it, which at this point seems much more likely. It may be that global warming climate change is a problem humanity won't have to worry about long. I would like to live long enough to see a solution to global warming. In the year of our lord twenty twenty six I am seventy one years old, I want to die believing, with good reason, that global warming has stopped. Isn't that reasonable? If I die today, for example, I will unsure of whether global warming will cause human extinction, a real bummer, or whether humaitiy will solve it. For that reason we need to stop it now. We can all tell that the weather has changed, and, as we all know, it will keep changing.We humasn must either stop the change or adjust to it, which seems much more likely. Indeed much research is being done, it it may be that soon we have a method and means to stop global warming and climate change. We may soon have the necessary to stop global warming. If we don't undertake this process soon it might not take long for the Earth to heat up repidly, like Venus, become uninhabitable. There are millios of species of plans and animals on Earth, many of which we haven'teven discovered yet. One of our most urget projects is to discover and catalog every single one, comperhensively, completely. The international seed bank in Norway is also a good idea, To become enlightened stewards and nurturers of life, rather than destroyers of it. Humans ceaselessly, incessantly demonstrate their capacity for both destruction and creation, both of which are necessary for human survival. This planet Earth is an amazingly productive incubator of all kinds of life, and we humans are privileged and lucky to be in a poistion to discover it, observe and admire it, and preserve it. Unbiased scientists have identified the present geological epoch on Earth as the "anthropocene", meaning era of human domination of the planet. And indeed, for better or worse, we humans have decided, chosen to take complete control of the entire planet Earth. We are, however, showing a glimmer of hope beyond our inherent greed. We are starting to show awareness of and concern for the needs of the entire biosystem of planet Earth. We now that we cannot throw our waste materials anywhere; that we must process them properly. We need to do much more than this, but at least its a start. To bring about the destruction of life on Earth is the greatest possible crime. We humans must nurture life, not destroy it. And even though we are quite obviously a very violent species of life, we also possess other qualities, among them, ironically, a reverence for life.

Controlling the Weather

IT FINALLY RAINED at the eastern end of the Ozarks, and I'm sure my neighbors are as happy as I am, that their lawns are gree again, just one more time this year, before Autumn sets in. The weather, the climate is really a problem now, with prolonged droughs in many parts of the world, including mine.It may not be such a big problem by the end of this century,by which time it seems quite possible that humans will be able to control the weather, or at least influence it a great deal, enough to make it much more pleasant. It is tempting to think about large, currently sparise, desolate and barren sections of Africa, Asia, and North America terraformed, supporting a thriving botanical and zoological ecosystem rather than merely barren desert and scrub brush prairie. It doesn't necessarily seem so far fetched to imagine that future people moght have complete control over the entire biosphere system of the Earth, to the advantage of all, hopefully. Admittedly, a future world without any inudstrial pollution might not seem or be much more realistic than a world without human follly in general. Such a world is, however, entirely and totally necessary for the long term survival of the human species, as anyone who has ever studied people knows all too well. When humanity has exploited every square inch of planet Earth, what next? Dreaming about space exploration, and about human colonies in outer space has been a favorite past time of mine my entire life. Assuming that humans ever achieve this, it would certainly be far batter to do so motivated exclusively by curiosity and ambition rather than necessity or desperation. It woud be far beter for us to reach out into the solar system and universe and have a clean, safe, healthy planet to come home to. Different gueses have been made regarding how many people could live comfortably on Earth, and range up to twenty billion. It would probably be much better to maintain a much smaller human population than that, for the benefit of not only themselves but also for the entire ecosystem but large enough to function as an advanced planetary civilization. Terraforming Mars, turning its surfce ecosystem into one closely resembling Earth's, might be possible, and desirable, with human habitat on the surface and beneath the surface of the Red Planet, and its to moons. Perhaps spacefaring colonies of humans could set forth into the galaxy, eploring, and perhaps colonizing suitable planets. So many Earth-like planets have been discovered in the past few years that it seem almost inevitable that eventually mmillions of Erath like planets will be catalogued, and perhaps explored by humans or human made robots. Most people express a certain nostalgia for stone age cultures such as the native American Indian culture which was the victim of genocide by European conquerors. Somehow the bucolic idealized lifestyle begins to stagnate just a bit without our accustomed devotion to progress and improvement,essentialy, change. The pace of change on Earth has been accelerating for centuries, and oen wonders where and how it will slow down enough to allow humanity regain control of it, which it most certaiinly does not currently appear to have. If, for instance, the human species, perhaps acting through the United Nations, does not establish an organized system for dealing with Artificial Intelligence, we may, or may not, live to regret it.

Heating Up II

TODAY in my part of the country the temperature will be one hundred degrees, with indications that it will remain there for several days. I somehow sense that this summer will soon be recognized as the hottest of all time, or since we began keeping track. With al the heat we humans are pouring into the atmosphere, global warming should be no surprise. What we must do now is stop it. Stop global warming from increasing, now. First, level it off, where we are, then, reverse it. It seems to be accelerating, getting worse. The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the hotter it gets. We must stop spewing carbon into the atmosphere, now. scientists tell us that global warming is already here and we know it is, for we can feel it. Within a few years the climate no matter where you live will be so crazy and different that global warming will be obvious to everyone, unless we take action now. Cleaning, purifying the atmosphere is a big part of it, cleansing the environment of all human pollution. That project in and of itself should be more than enough to keep us all busy, out of trouble, off the streets. atotal environmental cleansing, and a reboot to the human relationship with nature and treatment of the environment. Or is it too late for that? As I plunge headlong into extreme old age, I am grateful for the life I have, and hopeful about the future of the human race. The hopes of people like me, people bor about when I was who have seen the world over the same period of time, the last few decades, might justifiably be a bit pessimisstic about humankind's future. Can we prevent Artificial intelligence (AI) from taking over the world? Are we sure that we want to? It will soon become more glaringly obvious than ever that we absolutely must do something about global warming, must stop it. I Maintain a perhaps unjustified confidence that we humans will do precisely that, somehow. We will stop killing and start nurturing, the Earth, and ourselves. There are some encouraging signs. For one thing, more people. Americans in particular, seem to beleive in global warming now, and more people seem to understand it, the basic chemistry involved, and that's a start. It is absoultely vital that the people, the public in every country on Earth apply political pressure to get their own governments proactively involved with reversing climate change. The tragic, shocking fact is that as of now, we are still putting carbon and other chemicals in the atmsphere, polluting the air, still killing ourselves. But at least we are aware of it, more so than ever, and starting to do something about it, starting to change our behavior. Human beings are fascinating creatures. It would be a shame if we were to become extinct, kill ourselves, commit suicide as a species. But s far we haven't, despite all the dire predictions and apocalyptic thinking in today's commercial cutlure. We are currently heating the planet's atmosphere at an unsustainable rate, and will make the Earth uninhabitable if we do not cease and desist. When you consider all the progress being made regarding all people enough to eat and a decent standard of living, it is obvious that homo sapiens is quite capable of maintaining a high tech civilization indefinitely. We all want a better future for our children. The decisions and choices we make now will decide whether we achieve that. We are certainly capable of it, if we put our minds to it.

Trump. Immortalizing Himself

TRUMP obviously wants to immortalize himself by building so many monuments to himself in and around the nation's capitol that nobody could ever possibly forget him. Unfortunately for him, Congress and the Supreme Court will have a say as to what monuments are built to whom, and where. We cannot, must not be naive enough to think that the is done trying. The thirty four time convicted felon has clearly show that he is indeed perfectly willing, able, and ready to do whatever it takes, legal or otherwise, to achieve his objectives. Somebody's going to have to put a stop to it or the nation's capitol will become nothing but a monument to Trump. Anyone who knows Trump can easily imagine him spending the rest of his time in office aggrandizing his legacy, trying to control the narrative of how his presidency is treated by future historians when he is out of office, and long gone. The historians are not even waiting. Already many books about Trump and his presidencies are appearing. It already seems highly probably that a vast majority of books written by credible academicians will have an unfavorable view of Trump and his presidencies. The fact that thwere will be, at least, two separate Trum presidencies to study in retrospect with another presidential administration in between will only increase the scope and importance of the study. My parents didn't particularly like LBJ. He was a liberal democrat, for one thing. for another, they both probably thought that Viet Nam was a bad idea, but never said so. I remember my dad making an unflattering comment about him, and my mmother replied "Yeah, but at least he's better than that damned Harry Truman". My father agreed with her. I did not. I didn't especially like the comment then, and I don't like it now. My parents, damned Republicans. When FDR was elected in depression 1932 my parents were both teenagers, and hated him. They hated him their whole lives, despite World War Two. Those damned socialist Democrats, taking everybody's money, and giving it to somebody else. I cannot imagine my Republican parents liking Trump. I am sure my mother would be having un making jokes about him, expressing amazement at him, as many of us do. I've got to believe that his constant glaring lies would by now have long since worn them out. Certainly, my parents would not pretend to believe them. As the midterms approach,we anti-Trumpers must go all out to associate wll Republicans with Trump. Trump must become the albatross around their over extended necks. It appears that Trump and MAGA will be in a less favorable position after the midterms, unable to assert their will without help, help they do not seem to currently have. The Republican party does not believe in climate change. Think about that. Then, think about all the other crazy beliefs and policies they embrace. If Republicans are allowed to take control, we'll burn as much coal as we can dig up, and kill ourselves burning oil and gas, unconcerned about breathing it themselves. Trump said he doesn't believe in climate change, and he still doesn't. Conservatives have chosen climate change denial as their official, formal, party policy. That not only means that they are unfit to govern, it means they they are unfit to participate in governing a democracy as free citizens. For that, a certain minimum level of intelligence and education is required. Clearly, climate deniers lack it.

Heating Up

TODAY in my part of the country the temperature will be one hundred degrees, with indications that it will remain there for at least several days. I somehow suspect that this summer be will ranked as the hottest of all time, since we began keeping track. With all the heat that we humans are pouring into the atmosphere, global warming should be no surprise. What we must do now is stop it. We must stop global warming from increasing, now. First, level it off where it is, then, reverse it. Global warming currently seems to be accelerating, getting worse, fast. The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the hotter it gets. Its that simple. We must stop putting carbon into the atmonspher, as soon as possible, now, yesterday. Scientists tell us that global warming is already here, and we can feel it. With a few years the climate all over the Earth will be so crazy, so changed, so different, that climate change willbe more than obvious, unless we take drastic action, now. Purifying teh atmosphere, removing all the pollutants, including carbon, that we have put there, will be the main part of it. That project in and of itself should be more than enough to keep us all busy, out of trouble, off the streets. A great deal of environmental cleaning up,and a complete reboot of the manufacturing lifestyle of the human race, to a more clean, efficient set of processes. Or, is it already too late for that? Are we doomed? As I plunge headlong into extree old age, I am extermely grateful for the life I have, and hopeful about the future of the human race.The people of my generation, born about when I was, seeing the world in its current form, moght tend to be somewhat pessimissistec about the immediate or long term future of the human species, not without some evident justification. Can we prevent Artificial Intelligence from taking over the world? Do we really want to? It will soon be more obvious than ever that we absolutely must do something about global warming, now, or die trying. It already is that obvious. I maintain confidence that "we" will. A great deal of work is being done on it now. More people than ever seem to actually believe in global warming now, more people seem to understand it, since, after all, its just basic science. It is absolutely vital that the public in every country on Earth apply political pressure, because governments all over the world seem to be sluggish in their responses, which we can no longer afford. Conservative governments especially are still burdened by climate denial, and lack of understanding. We are still polluting the air, still killing ourselves. But at least we have become aware of it, and are starting to do something about it. We are starting to change our behavior.Too little too late? Maybe? But maybe not. Humans are fascinating beings; clever, intelligent. It would be a shame if we were to commit suicide before our existence was ever even known by other intelligent lifeforms on other planets. Our potential is enormous. With each passing day I value and am more grateful for life. When I think about the potential hunan future,I imagine all the progress that could be made in making life better for everyone, if only humanity can rid itself of the scourges of war, violence, and needless greed that distorts our economics and culture generally. Modern Americans for the most part are greateful for their good fortune, and should be. Billions of future humans can live beautifiul lives too, with a little help from us.