Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Best way to end war is to avoid it's causes.


In the long run, it is always better to have been able to avoid wars than to have won them. Yet, it would seem that this lesson is one we are loathe to study.

We are beginning to see the inevitable effects of climate change. Entire island nations will disappear and their populations will have to go elsewhere. Will they keep their identities or be absorbed into another culture? Are their places willing to provide either the physical space for that to happen?

We are beginning to see climate refugees in Africa. Here again, the same questions arise. What nations are going to be willing to accept the responsibility for such refugees? Where will they be allowed to go and what will happen to their identities as a people?

I greatly feat that these dislocation will lead to hundreds of millions of dispossessed, disaffected peoples, a breeding ground for rage and violence.

We have it now within our power to slow down the rate at which our climate is changing. No one country has been more responsible for our current state of the world than the United States. We have legislators who are willing to discuss the matter, seemingly forever. Whether we have a government that is willing to act is another question.

Failing actions that consider the results until the 7th generation, the only choice for some will be violence, terrorism and war. The way of peace is to fix these problems before it is too late.

During the 2004 campaign for President of the United States. We heard a lot about the courage of John Kerry in Vietnam. Now, I think about the Mekong Delta, where so many lost their lives in a war that did not have to happen. This is what the Mekong Delta might look like by the end of the century if we can limit sea level rise to only 1 or 2 meters. The Mekong Delta has a population of ~20 million and is Vietnam's largest rice growing region. Sen. Kerry is now leading an effort in the U. S. Senate to craft a comprehensive climate change bill. Will he have the courage to do what really needs to be done to stop global warming, or will this turn into yet another salvo in the ware against the people of Vietnam?

Sen. Kerry, it is up to you. Have you reported for duty yet?



1 comment:

Unknown said...

The climate change issue, and most any other issue you can name, shows how important it is to get corporate money out of politics. Both the Democrats and Republicans seem to make all their decisions under a cloud of deadly fear that anything they do that isn't aimed at maximizing short-term corporate profits will cause the other party to rise on a tsunami of corporate money. Makes me fear that Kurt Vonnegut may have been prophetic when he said, "We could have saved the planet, but we were too damned cheap."