A Prayer For China

Today I am offering up a special prayer for the people in central China.  The “Three Gorges Dam” is one of the largest dams in the world.  It spans the Yangtze River.  It is at flood stage and has been going through emergency release procedures for a number of days as the area has experienced torrential rains.  Thousands are currently being evacuated for reasons of safety and have already been flooded from their homes.  If the dam should collapse, the effects will be devastating for tens of millions with the potential to reach 100 million.
For any readers who might say: “What’s China got to do with me?”  You should be aware that the central region of China is one of the main manufacturing centers in the world and they produce a significant portion of the personal protective equipment (PPE) – masks and gowns, worn by the medical staff and first responders around the world.  Even if the worst (dam collapse) is avoided, there is still a high probability of shortages and delays in the manufacture and delivery of PPE for the next few months.
Climate change, pandemics, global trade…  We really are ONE world and I encourage everyone to think positive thoughts / offer prayers for the people of China.
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Still More Hope Than Fact

Our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure and the most important task it faces, preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet.  But if we’re willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war shouldn’t we also been willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war.  Shouldn’t we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental restructuring of economic political social and religious institutions.  We’ve reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases, nuclear arms threaten every person on the Earth.  Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labelled impractical or contrary to human nature, as if nuclear war were practical or as if there’s only one human nature.  But fundamental changes can clearly be made, we’re surrounded by them.  In the last two centuries abject slavery which was with us for thousands of years has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution.  Women, systematically mistreated for millennia are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them and some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations.  The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.  A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.  We are one planet.  One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.
—  Carl Sagan
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We Have A Window

In order to slow down climate change, we must solve four seemingly unsolvable problems.  We must eliminate poverty.  We must change the unsustainable lifestyles of so many of us.  We must abolish corruption.  And we must think about our growing human population.  There are 7.7 billion of us today, and by 2050, the UN predicts there will be 9.7 billion.  It is no wonder people have despaired.  But I believe we have a window of time to have an impact.
—  Jane Goodall
From her opinion / article: “The devastation of climate change is real.  But there are reasons to be hopeful“
The article appears in: “Time Magazine“,  dtd:  September 23, 2019
The article is online at:  https://time.com/5669043/jane-goodall-climate-change/
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The Butterflies Are In Trouble

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
—  Carl Sagan
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Change Is Here…

The following image is from the United Nations Development Program, who’s task it is to gather and provide information related to helping people build a better life for themselves.
2016 Climate Related Population Disruption / Displacement
Relative to the complete human species (roughly 7 billion people), a figure of 15 million people being displaced due to climate related issues in a single year (2016) may not seem like a large number.  What needs to be understood is this is just the canary – coughing and wheezing –  in the coal mine, or (probably) a better image might be the first trickle of water from the smallest of cracks in a gigantic dam.  And this is just the wet weather data…  It does not show displacement due to drought and water shortage (increased fires) or winter storms and tornado damage.
New Orleans (LA), Seaside (NJ), Houston (TX) and Puerto Rico are just the beginning…   And, yet, we (the United States) are withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords…  We need to wake up and smell the coffee.  Climate change is already here, not coming in the future.  The question is:  What are we going to do to mitigate its effect on our country and our civilization?  This is a national security issue, not some pie in the sky hoax started by environmentalists.  The longer we wait, the more difficult (and expensive) our response will be.  …And the more catastrophic the period between now and whatever becomes “the new normal”.
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Seeking Needs

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
—  John Muir
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Quiet, Please!

A loss of silence is as serious as a loss of memory and just as disorienting.  Silence is, after all, the natural context from which we listen.  Silence is also the natural context from which we speak.
—  Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
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We Are Approaching Default

The world is not given to you by your parents.  It is loaned to you by your children.
—  Kenyan proverb
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Or A Small Blue Planet

The most amazing thing about trees is it doesn’t actually matter how rich you are.  You can never buy a really old, beautiful tree.
—  Steve Jobs
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So We Agree, #45 Is Dumb – Too

I was in business for 30 years, and my experience is that the best way to operate is to work fairly and closely with partners over a long period of time.  The most expensive way to do business is to do it deal by deal, each of which is highly contentious.  If deal by deal is the model, where instead of partners or allies we have counterparts and competitors, that is very expensive, difficult, and dangerous.  OK, so look at the Paris agreement: It’s going to force the developed world to change its energy sources.  That means the US could be the leader in developing renewable technology for more than a billion people — a huge incoming market — who don’t have electricity at all.
The Paris agreement was a great achievement of American leadership.  So the idea that we’re going to walk away and give up leadership of 194 countries, and walk away from our position as a leader in the world for the past 100 years, will be an incredibly expensive and dumb thing to do.
—  Tom Steyer
From the article: “The Billionaire on a Mission to Save the Planet From Trump“
Article written by: Nick Stockton
Article appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: April 2017
Link to article: http://www.wired.com/2017/03/tom-steyer-interview/
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Mr. President, About Global Warming

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
―  Aldous Huxley
From:  Complete Essays 2, 1926-29
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A Bad Sale

The future we have been sold doesn’t work.  Applying the principles of the factory floor to the natural world just doesn’t work.  Farming is more than a business.  Food is more than a commodity.  Land is more than a mineral resource.
—  James Rebanks
(An English farmer’s account of the changes he is seeing)
as quoted by:    Andrew Sullivan
From Sullivan’s opinion piece / article:  “Our President’s Emotional Bait and Switch“
Which I found on www.msn.com at:  http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/our-president%e2%80%99s-emotional-bait-and-switch/ar-AAnKTg4
That, in turn referenced the New York Times at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/an-english-sheep-farmers-view-of-rural-america.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Sullivan’s article originally appearing in: “Daily Intelligencer“
Which is a section under New York Magazine
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We Cannot Afford Enemies

We cannot afford enemies any more …  Within a generation or two human society will be in total destructive disarray.  Heaven knows how bad it will be.  The most optimistic view I can take is this:  Things will get so bad within a dozen years that it will become obvious … that we must, whether were like each other or not, work together.  We have no choice in the matter.  … Technologically, we can stop overpopulation, but we have to persuade people to accept the technology.  … Babies are the enemies of the human race …  Let’s consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold.  If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution by, say, 2010 A.D., distributed among twice the population?  We’ll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate.
—  Isaac Asimov
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Wavelengths Of The Earth

Only when there is a wilderness can man harmonize his inner being with the wavelengths of the earth.  When the earth, its products, its creatures, become his concern, man is caught up in a cause greater than his own life and more meaningful.  Only when man loses himself in an endeavor of that magnitude does he walk and live with humanity and reverence.
—  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
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More Likely

Perhaps man, having remade his environment, will turn around at last and begin to remake himself.
—  Will Durant
[More likely, having destroyed the environment, man will be replaced by a new “dominant” species on Earth.  —  KMAB]
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