The Leaves in Winter
Page 52
2050
The leaf is jealous of the tree
whose life extends beyond the cycle of seasons.
In turn the tree is jealous of the forest
whose life extends beyond that of a single tree.
But it’s the forest that’s jealous of the ephemeral leaf
whose life never need buttress
against the sting of the Age of endless winter.
For some the way will be made straight.
For most there’s no escape from fate.
Some dare not see the forest for the trees.
Some would rather burn than freeze.
The coming storm shows no compassion.
What once was green soon turns ashen.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
But even more,
She abhors the unnatural.
What have we become?
How long do we have?
Who will ever know
if all of us go?
The 21st Century as Thriller Novel
Reprinted from M.C. Miller’s blog, Prefetching Self.
One word sums up both the promise and predicament of humanity in the 21st century – that word is sustainability. What started as a buzzword for the enlightened sourcing and handling of food ingredients is rapidly expanding to become the critical barometer of overall survival regarding everything from food to fuel, pollution to population, animal and ocean habitat to entitlement cultures depending on debt-based banking systems for financial stability.
As farm soils erode, ocean life plummets, fresh water grows scarce, energy demands skyrocket, and the tides of restless, burgeoning populations seek equity in a global standard of living, a creeping sense of unsustainability haunts the future.
The prospect that advancing science will rescue us with wondrous new technologies yet undreamt is tempting but illusory. Most projections of current trends foresee a convergence of a perfect storm by mid-century. For a world that hasn’t been able or willing to even find and implement a suitable replacement for the internal combustion engine based on fossil fuels – after 150 years, chances are science alone will not save us in time.
It’s never been just about the science. The worn-out cry, “If we could put a man of the moon, then why can’t we…{fill in the blank}” has long since been repudiated. The moon shot was a technical problem. Humanity’s issues back on Earth are so much more complicated by social, political, religious, and ideological morasses.
Before the Titanic struck the iceberg, social conventions and civility prevailed. After the strike, denial and distress by necessity quickly switched to expedient actions aimed at certain survival. Left with only so many options at a time of crisis, it’s all too easy for the veil of civil morality and accepted convention to give way during the icy scramble on tilting decks.
It makes one wonder, when the time draw nears for humanity’s own perfect storm, what will the captains of industry, power, and political position decide to do? Surely in their elite certainty of knowing better than the rest of us, they will not hesitate to act. Given a choice between the certain collapse of civilization headed for extinction…or a severe but structured social reorganization that produces a manageable and properly governed social order…what will they choose?
After a quick Internet browse, one can find real world quotes like the following.
They’re not from a doomsday thriller novel.
They only sound like it.
Real World Quotes
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner
CNN founder, UN donor, Member Club of Rome
Interview with Audubon Magazine
“World population needs to be decreased by 50%.”
Henry Kissinger
Former National Security Advisor, Former Secretary of State
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Member Club of Rome
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip
Duke of Edinburgh, Member Club of Rome,
Quoted in Are You Ready For Our New Age Future?
Insiders Report, American Policy Center, December 1995
“The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man.”
Merton Lambert
Former spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation
Harpeth Journal, December 18, 1962
“There are many ways to make the death rate increase.”
Robert McNamara
Former Secretary of Defense
From New Solidarity, March 30, 1981
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller
Club of Rome Executive Manager
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
Club of Rome
From Goals for Mankind
“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
Christopher Manes
Earth First!
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Maurice King
Professor at Makerere College and Leeds University
“We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people.”
Nina Fedoroff
Penn State Professor, Bush appointee to National Science Board, adviser to Hilary Clinton
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Daniel Botkin
Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology,
University of California
“The Technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by elite, unrestrained by traditional values.”
Zbigniew Brezhinsky
Advisor to 5 U.S. Presidents
From Between Two Ages
“Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.”
Michael Fox
Vice President of The Humane Society
“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis
Editor of Earth First! Journal
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton
First Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson
Co-founder of Greenpeace
“…Advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”
Rebuilding America’s Defenses
The Project for a New American Century
“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Margaret Sanger
Planned Parenthood Founder
“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”
United Nations
Global Biodiversity Assessment
“We put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year. Over 26 billion tons. For each American it’s about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it’s less than 1 ton. It’s about an average of 5 tons for everyone on the planet. And somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero. It’s been constantly going up; it’s o
nly various economic changes that have even flattened it at all. So we have to go from rapidly rising to falling, and falling all the way to zero. [ CO2 = P x S x E x C ] This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication, so you’ve got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero – and that’s going to be based on the number of people, the services each per person is using on average, the energy on average for each service, and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy. So let’s look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero. Probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero. Now that’s a fact from high school algebra, but let’s take a look. First we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do a really good job on new vaccines, healthcare, reproductive services, we could perhaps lower that by 10 to 15 percent. But there we see an increase of about 1.3.”
Bill Gates
Founder of Microsoft and The Gates Foundation, TED Lecture
“The United Nation's goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day.”
Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier, Nov. 1991
French naval officer and explorer, member Club of Rome
“We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
Mikhail Gorbachev
Former President of the Soviet Union, member Club of Rome
“The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.”
Initiative for Eco-92 Earth Charter
“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill ... All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider
Founder and Secretary, respectively, of the Club of Rome
The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105
“The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman-and each nation --must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
Former U.S. Vice President and President
“The first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size.”
Paul Ehrlich
Professor of Population Studies, from The Population Bomb, p.135
“The state of Colorado could seize antibiotics, cremate disease-ridden corpses and, under extreme circumstances, dig mass graves under executive orders...Infected corpses might have to be isolated at temporary morgues to prevent the spread of disease, Estock said. In certain situations, mass cremations or burials might be required. 'I don't want to come across as saying the state's going to make this decision to do mass cremations and ruin the lives of families. That's certainly not the intent,' Estock said. 'But it (the executive order) just gives us maximum flexibility.' “
Rocky Mountain News
“State prepares for bioterrorism / Executive orders give governor additional powers”, February 8, 2003
“At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?”
Bertrand Russell
Author and Philosopher
From The Impact of Science On Society (1953)
“Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”
Bertrand Russell
From The Impact of Science on Society (1953)
“…while great wars cannot be avoided until there is a World Government, a World Government cannot be stable until every important country has nearly stationary population.”
Bertram Russell
“Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly...Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”
Margaret Sanger
Founder of Planned Parenthood
Quoted by Elsah Droghin in The Pivot of Civilization
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced - a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
UN Agenda 21
“In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.”
Dr. Robert Muller
UN Assistant Secretary General
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today's problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
Club of Rome
The First Global Revolution
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider
Stanford Professor of Climatology, Lead author of many IPCC reports
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”
Sir James Lovelock
From Healing Gaia
“Public health measures for child survival don’t necessarily have to be put into practice, merely because they are possible.”
Professor Maurice King
Compiled and edit
ed the bible of the primary health care movement, Medical Care in Developing Countries From 1990 article in the Lancet
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart
Fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment
“We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth
President of the UN Foundation
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong
Founder of the UN Environment Program
“If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in the next one or two decades, then nature will do it for us in the most brutal way, whether we like it or not.”
Henry W. Kendall
Nobel Prize recipient, a founding member of the Union of Concerned Scientists
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”