The growth maniacs tell that we must "grow or die" You are suggesting that we will likely both grow and die, so great is our dependence on oil.
arthur -----Original Message----- From: Karen Watters Cole [mailto:klwatters52@;attbi.com] Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 9:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Brad McCormick, Ed.D.; Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Subject: RE: addendum Re: whose ghetto ? (Opportunities lost and found) That opportunity, as Arthur suggests circa 1989, is "gone" because the Old Guard thinking that was then and is again in place revolves around BIG OIL. Until this nation's government, my country specifically, moves in concert with other industrialized and emerging nations to become self-sustaining in energy consumption and conservation, then we only contribute to the ongoing battle for resources we saw in salt, the silk and spices trade, steel and rubber, et al. Increasingly, energy and the environment are the future of global politics. Karen Watters Cole East of Portland, West of Mt Hood Outgoing Mail Scanned by NAV 2002 Brad wrote: That someday was yesterday. And, as you say -- and as the NYT says in a Week in Review piece about Al Qaeda today: That opportunity is gone. Osama bin Laden opened Pandora's Box: a grass-roots level world-wide distributed terror network which seems to be something new in history -- a BRILLIANT IDEA which, like repurposing jumbo jets as precision incendiary V-bombs, might otherwise have remained UNDISCOVERED and never have come into the world. It is apparently not too difficult for someone to do something which triggers somebody else having an idea which, for the first party, was (and even remains...) "unimaginable". Arthur wrote: I think that in 1989 or so, when "the wall" came down, the world missed an opportunity to actually move toward world peace. Actually it was the US that missed the opportunity. In the face of the collapse of the USSR the US could have started a move to global disaramament. Wow. I am not saying it could have been done in the next year or even the next decade but some far seeing president could have given a speech that went something like " We are embarked on a long term mission. It may take 50 years but that we know was the length of the cold war. We can easily allocate the next 50 years to wind down the threat of WMD, including nuclear. Starting today we are putting our armament programs on hold, we are moving away from Star Wars....." Add to this buying up Russian nukes, employing Russian scientists on a range of peaceful taks,.... Well you can see where this speech might have gone. It didn't. And that is the point. The US could have initiated a true movement if not to world peace, at least away from imminent annihilation. It didn't. Wonder why. Rather historians in 50 or 100 years (if there is a history to write) will wonder why.
