Sunday, December 21, 2008

great article / great book

Well, the the Venerable Friendly One just finished Thomas L. Friedman's  Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Read it.  Now.  No excuses.  Yes, you are very busy. It is the holidays and all.  You've got a lot on your plate.  Read the book.  Please!

You will find it alternately incredibly optimistic and downright depressing.  It stitches together threads from many sources and gives you a very good... no, an excellent, base from which to think about what we're facing and how things are likely to play out.

While I'm on this subject, Tex Bravado, recently sent the Amigo a link to an article from the Stanford University News Service.  This article puts the scope of the work we could/should see happening into perspective.  Compare the number of wind turbines we need to begin addressing the current crisis with the number of airplanes we needed to face the crisis of WW II.  It is within our power, our capabilities to do this.  If we do not, it is clear that we have lost our way. 

The article takes but 5 minutes to read.  Can you spare that much time for such an important topic?  One hopes so.  Note the links to other, refereed articles in respected journals.  This is not "fringe thinking" in any sense.

We can do this, but it is difficult to ignore the fact that Americans "didn't want to get involved" in WW II either -- until an attack forced us into action.  We could have been similarly galvanized by the 9/11 attack, but our so-called leaders had other agenda.  Can we motivate ourselves at this juncture?

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