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Greetings,
The phrase above comes from my youth in the deep south states of Mississippi and Tennessee - and I use it now to describe how Mother Nature is feeling these days. And it ain't good.
While supporting 7.7 billion people, "Mama" watches in despair as we pat ourselves on the back for recycling newspapers,
driving electric cars and using solar panels - oblivious to exploding population, a highly destructive global economy and our grossly unsustainable
typical Western diet
.
"Mama" knows we're not doing nearly enough, fast enough to ever come remotely close to living in harmony with nature.
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And that's why Mama ain't happy!
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How can we make Mama happy?
Let's turn to the great
W. Edwards Deming
, who pioneered the idea of optimizing complete systems instead of trying to fix random problems associated with flawed systems. Among his many quotes on this topic:
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
If he were alive today, Dr. Deming would be promoting a complete re-invention of the way we live; emphasizing that random, uncoordinated improvements and trillion dollar band-aids will never lead to the harmony with nature that is essential to our longterm survival.
He would say that we must develop a global human living model that would make it
easy for us to resolve ALL of the failing grades on our report card from Mother Nature:
His advice would most likely be aimed at developing complete "systems" (like GRATOLA?)
, offering ONLY green, sustainable choices; thereby eliminating our harmful and wasteful habits that are
undermining
our ability to survive long-term on this planet.
Having studied the works of Dr. Deming since 1987, and visiting with him in person in 1992, I am quite sure that, if alive today, he would be calling for world leaders to get real serious about "optimizing" the way we interact with nature.
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| W. Edwards Deming, 1900-1993. |
He would demand that we develop
totally new
systems
that would address and resolve these five massive failures listed on our report card:
1. Overpopulation. At best, the Earth can support four billion humans indefinitely. To get to that number from nearly eight billion we have today, we must drastically lower the birthrate. But even if that rate dropped suddenly from 380,000 to 100,000 births per day, it would still take 160 years to reach the 4 billion number.
Yet we continue to add a net 230,000 new souls to our population every day.
2. Unsustainable Global Economy. World leaders must come together to re-design, launch and enforce a totally green economy that
rewards people for living green and having less stuff. The era of maximizing the consumption of STUFF in a world of finite resources must end.
3. Massively Unsustainable Feeding Model
. All we have to do here is outlaw the production of animal-based foods, including fish. This step alone is crucial to returning most of the world's land and all of the oceans back to nature. Just consider the massive impact of eating animals:
On a per calorie basis, animal-based foods require
over ten times as much land, water and energy as do plant-based foods.
Moving to plant-based eating is also the only major step that can be taken quickly. With just a little leadership, we could completely eliminate the grossly unsustainable animal agriculture madness in less than ten years.
4. Fossil Fuel Consumption. Future energy systems must be based 100% on renewables. In the meantime, we should impose HUGE taxes on the harmful fossil fuels - and then use that revenue to build the
totally green systems we must have to sustain us. As with eating animals, by taking bold steps now, we can be totally out of the fossil fuel business in less than a decade.
5. Too Much CO2 in the Atmosphere. We not only must sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must also begin removing massive amounts of CO2 that is already in the atmosphere. And, to play it safe, we should strive to remove far more than the experts feel is absolutely necessary.
The Bottom Line.
The sooner we have a visible model for the world to replicate, the sooner the world's humans can reach a level of sustainability that will be acceptable to Mother Nature.
All we need to do is start using our rare attributes that Dr. E.O. Wilson says differentiate us from every creature who has ever lived on this planet:
intelligence, goodwill, generosity and enterprise.
By leveraging those rare qualities, we have it within our power to create a comfortable, meaningful way of life that will give us the best possible chance of surviving indefinitely as a species.
What can you do? Three things:
1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of the "big picture" solutions that are ultimately necessary to save our civilization.
2. Give greenly for the holidays. Instead of buying new STUFF for your loved ones, think about giving them something handmade or a personal item that you already own. Or how about telling everyone that you're out of the "stuff giving" business forever and will instead be donating to a worthy green non-profit like Wikipedia?
One more very important topic: The candidacy of Dr. T. Colin Campbell for the Nobel Prize for his half century of work aimed at preventing, slowing, stopping or reversing our most feared disease: cancer. Why has the cancer industry completely ignored him for over fifty years? I explained it in this short 2016 BSB -
T. Colin Campbell & the Nobel Prize. Maybe you can help stir up more interest in his candidacy.
Until next time, just remember...
Humanity is on a collision course with Nature.
A damaged Nature will survive. We may not.
We must change course to avert an ecological disaster.
Finally, for
your convenience, here are links to a few related BSBs from the past few weeks:
Be well,
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
CEO, 4Leaf Global, LLC
Looking for Opportunities to Speak.
Since 2016, my research, writing and speaking has been focused on the sustainability of our ecosystem and our future as a species. With a primary emphasis on food choices, I call it the "most important topic in the history of humanity."
After all, what could possibly be more important to humans than the survival of our species?
(now contains 5-minute video of me speaking in Tucson)
To schedule a presentation at a venue near you, please contact me at
[email protected]
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