Our world is changing faster than ever before in human history. We are experiencing the dawn of a revolutionary transformation. All around us we can see it happening. We live in an age of endless knowledge at the touch of a button. Just imagine, the entire world of wisdom small enough to hold in your hand. We live in an age with machines that can explore the deepest ocean trenches and rockets that can free themselves from earths gravitational pull. We live in an age where men have crossed the once thought to be limitless void of space and walked on the moon. This feat once thought to by mere science fiction is almost trivial to us today. Will future generations see the moon launch as a high point in our civilization or is it just the beginning of what we can accomplish? From the accumulation of knowledge of centuries of innovation we are able to get to the point we are at now. It is a hopeful reminder that of the limitless capacity of mankind. This society like the rocket was forged in the furnaces of our species ingenuity and the cumulative technological advancements that we have amassed over centuries. The rocket that propelled us to the moon is really symbolic of the future of our species. Will we someday reach this golden age of human society free from war, poverty and ignorance? Or will the very fuel that moves us be the explosive force that destroys from within?
Today we face countless threats to the future of our country and the future of our world. The invesments we make now need to be focused on tomorrows generation and not on the greed of men today. We need to find sustainable methods of powering the cities of tomorrow and we need to educate our future generations so they can make the critical decisions that the generation before us failed to. The train is already moving its up to us to choose which tracks we take. “When a chrysalis turns into a butterfly, the caterpillar’s immune system attacks the very first of the butterfly’s cells as invaders. The pushback will be equally fierce, casting shadows of widespread destruction and violence, mass migrations, virulent ideologies and ethnic strife. Yet in the end, the big, hairy caterpillar audaciously becomes a beautiful butterfly (Kenny Ausubel.)”
The Need For Sustainable Energy
A British economist by the name of Lionel Robbins once defined economics as, “a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and a scarce means which have alternative uses (Robbins.)” In class we discussed many problems with our country today. We see the rich getting even richer and a total loss of the middle class. We are losing jobs left and right to counties on the other side of the world. We erect massive military bases in deserts of far off lands to “protect our freedom” or to fight the “terrorists.” In a time of scarcity of resources we see a total state of apathy by our people. We look to our government for help and realize that the man behind the curtain is really the one pulling the levers. We begin to see that our pious and noble politicians are only puppets serving the agenda of big business.
We have reached the paradigm of capitalism, which is the need for infinite growth colliding with limited resources. Could this spell the beginning to the end of the second greatest republic in human history only rivaled by Rome? Karl Mark once said, “History repeats itself, first in its tragedy, second in its farce.” We have the advantage of looking back on our ancestors and ask ourselves, where did they go wrong? We have the ability to look deeply into past to help guide our species to a better future. This will take a siezmic shift in our society and our culture but we have the power to chart a more sustainable. Throughout the age of man we have seen great civilizations grow so powerful that they collapse under their own weight. Today archeologists excavate the remains of the powerful Roman cities. Their colossal feats of engineering