Famine and Pestilence
M Alan Roberts

Home heating and transportation costs are bankrupting our people.

Prices for converted fossil fuels are outrageous, and show no signs of dropping. The war wages onward in the Middle East - a US attempt to gain control of global oil reserves. The giant, China, as well as India are increasing their demands for fossil fuels energy sources at staggering rates. Add to that the fact that many societies that have traditionally relied upon plant-based diets are now turning into meat eaters, and you have a recipe for a highly toxic, war-torn future for our beloved planet.

Factories and power plants burn coal, oil and natural gases for production purposes while hundreds of millions of vehicles continuously emit millions of tons of water, air and land pollutants. Greenhouse gases trap in atmospheric heat and raise the temperatures of the oceans causing unnatural disasters that kill aquatic life and destroy communities. Every manufacturer under the Sun claims to embrace solar power and other green production standards. Yet, there is no lessening of the overall levels of poisonous byproducts produced - or their hefty profit margins.

Scientists and economist are paid to advise political committees on how to reduce the effects of fossil fuel emissions, and unfailingly, their advice is minimized or overlooked completely. While the US obviously needs to initiate a bold action plan to help create a planetary shift in consciousness towards the green side, instead it continues to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into its war efforts. In the event that the US does gain control over the oil supply, that will simply mean that the oil will be made to remain "necessary" for decades to come. Otherwise, this fine investment strategy would be a failure.

So, the US government will continue to wage war; create global enemies who will never back down; bankrupt its people; encourage us to consume animal muscle, organs and skin; deny us health care; destroy forested lands; glorify Hollywood celebrities and sports stars; subsidize poultry, beef, pork and seafood markets while offering nothing to the fruit and vegetable markets; hide real truths through syndicated news sources that lack the freedom to report it; imprison a quarter of the population and call itself the "greatest nation on the planet."

I think that it is an obscenely sick joke. I know that it is. But, they will continue to get away with it because the people are too afraid to stand. Or maybe they are too busy buying into the lies that are fed to them about how righteous America is and how we are trying to liberate the rest of the world for its own good.

The energy from sunlight striking the surface of the Earth for just 40 minutes yields enough power to fuel the entire globe's energy needs for an entire year. In the Southwestern US alone, there are over 250,000 square miles of land that are optimally suited to harness photovoltaic energy through the construction of solar energy power plants. Alone, that land receives over 4500 quadrillion Btu's of solar radiation every year. It would take less than 3% of that solar energy to be converted in order to meet the whole nation's energy consumption for a year. Still, we "invest" hundreds of billions of dollars to gain control of the ability to continue to produce dirty electricity through fossil fuel conversion.

Maybe it's time to develop backbones and let our elected "leaders" know that we demand the allocation of massive funds for the research and development of alternative energy provision like bio-fuels, solar, wind and hydro energy - not for war and destruction.