The Future

So how do we save this beautiful blue planet?

Kurt Vonnegut on Nature's surrender terms:

"Now that we can discuss the mess we are in with some precision, I hope you have stopped choosing abysmally ignorant optimists for positions of leadership. They were useful only so long as nobody had a clue as to what was really going on--during the past seven million years or so. In my time they have been catastrophic as heads of sophisticated institutions with real work to do.

"The sort of leaders we need now are not those who promise ultimate victory over Nature through perseverance in living as we do right now, but those with the courage and intelligence to present to the world what appears to be Nature's stern but reasonable surrender terms:

1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems
4.Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you're at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else.

"Am I too pessimistic about life a hundred years from now? Maybe I have spent too much time with scientists and not enough time with speechwriters for politicians. For all I know, even bag ladies or bag gentlemen will have their own personal helicopters or rocket belts in A.D. 2088...."

(From Kurt Vonnegut - Fates Worse Than Death, )

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E.O. Wilson -- "On behalf of my constituencies..." (TED video)

 

David Keith on geo-engineering (TED video)

 

Paul Stamets on how mushrooms can save the earth (TED video)

 

You Tube video on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion

 

It's also going to take bright, committed young people with a sense of humor, and apparently, there are a few out there...