But there have been a lot of bridges built since then, and a lot of water has flowed under them. Our past ten thousand years of tool making have given us the technology to defeat most of the problems that have plagued human existence. Now it is only social reorganization that stands between our current hell and something approaching heaven on Earth.
To the optimist this seems inevitable; its only a matter of time before we work out these differences and reorganize society for the benefit of humanity instead of the accumulation of dead capital. This reorganization will also save the planet by properly establishing humanity as the guardians of its health. While how this is done may be both important and traumatic to those who must live the changes, it matters little in the overall scheme of things, say from the point of view of humans a million years hence, whether this process takes a hundred years or a thousand years.
This scenario assumes there will be enough time for completion, which there should be given our Sun is expected to shine for at least another five billion years. Of course, there might always be the odd asteroid waiting to send us the way of the dinosaurs, but statistically we know the chances of that happening range between slim and none. Besides, our technology has already developed to the point where we can track Earth aimed objects, and soon we will actually be able to defend against most - the Galactic threshold of intelligent species maturity!
Excepting that extremely remote possibility, there is nothing to stand in the way of the ultimate triumph of humanity but people. There are two looming [hu]man made threats to human existence that must first be contained before we can have even another hundred years to deal with all the others. One is a quick death, the other is a slow death. Either could end not only humanity, but all life on Earth as we know it. They are nuclear war and global warming.
Nuclear war and global warming are generally seen as two quite separate topics with little in common, save this one important distinction: together they form an exclusive class of self-destructive human activities that threaten extinction. AFAIK, this class has only those two current members, and immediate threats.
What are we then to make of the fact that the current President of the United States has long made a rather warped connection between these dual threats in his own mind, and now that he has the power, appears bent on making both of them worst?
a prophetic warning?
He again made this curious connection as a presidential candidate, when he was interviewed by the Washington Post Editorial Board in March of last year. Note, he made the rather bizarre connection between global warming and nuclear war, not them. This is the section of the Washington Post interview of 21 March 2016 on global warming and nuclear weapons:
FRED HIATT, WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?He fastened on the same way in CNN’s town hall in Milwaukee, 30 March 2016:
DONALD TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.
STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?
DONALD TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.
Trump may not believe in climate change, but he certainly believes in nuclear weapons, the Trump presidency was barely a month old before he started talking about building more bombs:
Not only does he want the US to continue to have more nuclear weapons than anyone else, he wants more nuclear weapons in the world generally. The Washington Post reported:Trump: US must be 'top of the pack' in nuclear weapons capability
By Laura Smith-Spark
24 February 2017
(CNN) President Donald Trump has expressed concern that the United States has "fallen behind" in its nuclear weapons capacity and that he would like to restore its supremacy.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Trump said he would prefer a world free of nuclear weapons but otherwise the United States should be "at the top of the pack." More...
Donald Trump thinks more countries should have nuclear weapons.
By Gene Gerzhoy and Nick Miller
6 April 2016
According to Donald Trump, the United States should not try so hard to stop nuclear proliferation. On Sunday night, during a Republican town hall hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump declared that proliferation is “going to happen anyway.” And just a week earlier, Trump told the New York Times, “If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us.” Nor would it be so bad, he’s said, if South Korea and Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons, too.
We can break down Trump’s assertions into two ideas: Proliferation is inevitable, and it is good for the United States — at least when its allies are the ones going nuclear. More...
Yesterday he announced that the United States was leaving the Paris climate agreement, to become the third country to stand outside of this united effort to save the planet. Donald Trump's policies on both nuclear weapons and global warming are driven by a death wish, that is the bottom line for his brand of imperial nationalism in this age of global challenges to our continued existence on this planet.
This is the defining struggle of the 21st Century:
Trump & the Nationalists versus the World.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
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