A new study sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilization could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution (Daily Kos, March 16, 2014).
Welcome aboard, NASA scientists. I've been saying the same thing for a long time now. Unfortunately, here in the U.S. you and I also have a common enemy standing in the way of a solution to this urgent issue: the conservatives. Led by a band of extremists who are beholden to a small coterie of billionaires, they are hellbent on killing the “goose that lays the golden eggs.” They insist on being on the wrong side of history with respect to every piece of legislation designed to revamp our transportation system, upgrade and expand access to our medical care delivery system, accelerate development of renewable energy sources, expand economic growth, protect women's rights, grant equal civil liberties to everyone, and make higher education available to more of our youth. As a result we have lost our leadership position among nations in all these areas.
Meanwhile we now rank #1 in the world in illegal drug usage, in imprisonment rates, suicides, mental health issues, teen pregnancies, illiteracy rates, obesity rates, social immobility, and in street violence. These outcomes are all the result of the widest gap in wealth inequality ever seen among our citizens in our entire history (see Atkinson & Pickett, the Spirit Level, with more than 500 source citations).
As bad as the current situation is, at current growth rates U.S. inequality will be 32 times greater in the next 50 years. A collapse of unprecedented proportions will come long before we reach such extreme levels.
Hearts of Gold
Synopsis
by
Frank P. Whyte
Portland, Oregon is known as the City of Roses. Of course that’s an odd name for a city whose mere mention conjures images of driving winds and torrential ra
Hearts of Gold
Synopsis
by
Frank P. Whyte
Portland, Oregon is known as the City of Roses. Of course that’s an odd name for a city whose mere mention conjures images of driving winds and torrential ra
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