Life on Earth - What is the Future?

While visiting at my mother’s home over the Thanksgiving holiday, I ran across one of my old social sciences textbooks from Henry Ford Community College: The Mermaid’s Head & The Dragon’s Tail (Kendal/Hunt Publishing Co. – Third Edition – 1977).

An essay by David R. Brower entitled The Last Days of Earth caught my attention. The perspective Brower shares is eye-opening. Following is a brief excerpt:

“Let’s compress time even more, and squeeze the earth’s four billion years to the six days of the week of creation. This makes available a startling instant replay.

Creation began … at midnight on Sunday. Until noon on Tuesday it was all a construction job. There was too poisonous an atmosphere when we finally got one, ant there were too many toxic metals – such as mercury, lead, and cadmium – for life. The had to be locked out of the system, except for a few essential traces here and there, before life could take hold.

At noon on Tuesday the miracle happened: there was a cell, there was a chromosome in the cell and genes in the chromosome. The gene said “Let’s split,” We’ve had life on the planet ever since.

Life continued to expand through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and into Saturday morning. It increased in abundance, diversification, stability, and beauty. Life produced the environmental capital of the earth, the “Biomass,” which is now so important to us. On Saturday morning, at about five o’clock, the oil that we’re now using up so rapidly began to be laid down. … At four in the afternoon, the dinosaurs and other big reptiles came onstage; at nine they were off. …

All of this was the prelude to The Great Event. Three minutes before midnight, something like man arrived. What we readily recognize as man waited until eleven second before midnight. This was Neanderthal man, and with him came the beginning of our political process. Next, at one and one-half seconds before midnight, we had in Southeast Asia the first agriculture. Half a second later, agriculture had already destroyed most of the forests ringing the Mediterranean, such as the Cedars of Lebanon. Then, one-quarter of a second before midnight, Christianity arrived.

We create this perspective for one main purpose: it was not until one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the last day in the week of creation, that the Industrial Revolution began. Out of the marriage of coal and iron, we developed the capacity to destroy the environmental capital of the earth. We came to like tat so much that in the last 1/500th of a second before Sunday we became possessed by an idea that we appear to accept as natural law: the only way we can make the whole thing work is to continue to grow, and to grow faster. …

Growth leads to problems of doubling that we could once forger, but now cannot. Two percent growth per year (the rate our population was growing until recently) will produce a doubling in thirty-five years. Seven percent growth (the rate of our growing demand for electricity) will produce a doubling in ten years. Zero growth (which is all the planet can grow) produces no doubling ever, and there’s the problem. Either rethink growth or expand the planet. You can’t have one without the other, but you can borrow for a while and fool yourself into thinking you got away with it.”

At a time when American political leaders are debating drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness, Chinese and Indian demand for energy is accelerating, and wars are being waged in no small measure to help secure strategic oil reserves, it is imperative that people begin to ask tough questions about the future of the human race.

How can we continue to meet insatiable demand with limited resources?

Who will step up to the plate and develop large scale alternative sources of power?

How will we feed, clothe, and shelter an ever-increasing global population?

Why are so few American politicians speaking about these issues in our time of need?

QuestionItNow Blogs

THE WORLD

This world is so very large
and yet so very small.

Filled with contradictions,
there is no crystal ball.

All distorted pictures,
nothing black and white.

This planet is a mixture
of wrong and right.

R.E.B.

QuestionItNow Blogs

National Center for Higher Education Warns of Coming Declines in American Global Competitiveness

Following is an email alert I received from the National Center for Higher Education (link to full study via title):

Today the National Center released its latest Policy Alert, "As America Becomes More Diverse: The Impact of State Higher Education Inequality," http://www.highereducation.org/reports/pa_decline.

This Policy Alert concludes that if current trends continue, the proportion of the U.S. workers with high school diplomas and college degrees will decrease and the personal income of Americans will decline over the next 15 years. States must increase their efforts to address the decline in the educational success for all students, but particularly for the growing populations of young Latinos/Hispanics and African-Americans, or the nation will suffer a decline in its ability to compete in the global market place and the income of all citizens will be affected.

Ten state specific supplements are also available at http://www.highereducation.org/reports/pa_decline/decline-inserts.shtml.

Once again QuestionItNow attests America must Use Every Brain to Win in the World!

QuestionItNow Blogs

A Hidden Cost of Higher Education - "Borrowers Who Drop Out"

I ran across a very interesting study from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education at www.highereducation.org while researching trends in US education and global competitiveness. A link to "Borrowers Who Drop Out - A Neglected Aspect of the College Student Loan Trend" by: Lawrence Gladieux and Laura Perna is provided in the title to this blog. Following is a brief excerpt from the introduction:

"Both individuals and society reap significant economic and other benefits from investing in higher education, and loans have become a pervasive means of financing student costs and consequently realizing these benefits.

However, there are serious negative consequences of the loan trend. For example, half of entering freshmen borrow, and one-fifth of borrowers drop out. In 2001, this meant that there were more than 350,000 ex-students who had begun college six years earlier, but had no certificate or degree, and a debt to repay.

For students who began at four-year institutions and expected to attain a bachelor's degree, borrowers who dropped out were twice as likely to be unemployed as borrowers who received a degree, and more than ten times as likely to default on their loan."

Based upon the current political and economic situation, this issue is likely to become a greater problem. A government over-extended in supporting foreign wars and tax cuts to the rich is not providing new funding for education. To make matters worse, the President's Tax Advisory Panel is now recommending eliminating tax deductions for investments in education. Does this reflect the value America places on the education of future generations?

QuestionItNow Blogs