I often rail against greed and the formidable role it plays in causing human suffering. Wealth and income inequalities are two examples of greed at work. They create most of the tentacles of poverty including hunger, illiteracy, and crime rates; as well as many physical, mental, and emotional health issues. They are also the fundamental cause of government budget deficits which further threaten immensely good human programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and education assistance. Climate change deniers are the undeniable force that impedes solar and wind development on a scale that could lift us all out of the muck and begin to clean up our environment for a healthier planet. More and more nuclear weapons in the hands of ignoramuses not only threaten our existence, their use by one nation virtually assures their use by others which could extinguish humanity or set us back perhaps 200,000 years so that the small number of survivors might once again need to bash each other’s heads with clubs in their fight for food.

And then along comes science to show us a way out of our  arrogance. Today we are making good progress in fusion technology. It offers a quantum leap in meeting our energy needs with a clean new energy source. But first, consider this observation about science in general:  At a time like this we would all do well to contemplate the words of Galileo, a religious man, but one of the world’s best scientists who said: “I cannot believe that the same God who gave us intellect and reason also intended us to forego their use.” What a profound and powerful statement! It is as if every time we pray for miracles, this answer comes back to us with the power of heaven behind it: “I gave you a brain. Use it.”

Today important gains are being made in fusion technology. This energy source offers the prospect of extracting more energy from a gallon of sea water than can be generated by 300 gallons of gasoline. In units of work one project portends 10 billion joules out for every 3 thousand joules in. That is an energy increase of 3,333,333 times. You get the idea. And it is clean energy, with no pollution, and no chance of a nuclear explosion.

Scientists in half a dozen locations around the world are at work using their brainpower in efforts to build the first fusion generator. That event could happen in 12 to 15 years. It could also make coal, oil, wood and all polluting fuels obsolete. In combination with wind and solar, we could be out of the caves and the clutches of narrow minds and their greedy motives. Moreover, such a new state of energy production could send tidal waves of new activity through the economies and the stock markets around the world with avalanches of new wealth cascading out and into the hands of the real producers of wealth to the far corners of a corner-less world.

Thank God for science and for scientists. They could be our salvation.