As you know, I have been writing for six months about an envisioned plan that I dubbed "GRATOLA" - an acronym for the first segment of a set of totally new, ultra-green, inter-connected living corridors across the USA:
Green Region Atlanta to Los Angeles.
Speaking in Buffalo and Scranton next week
The above vision is one I love talking about in my public speaking engagements, two of which are next week; in Buffalo on April 3 and in Scranton on April 4 .
Email me directly
if you're interested in attending one of them and I will send you the details.
Ultimately, as reported in
an earlier BSB,
I believe that it is possible that we could envision, design and build "green" living corridors in the USA that could provide a superior lifestyle for up to 300 million Americans, while occupying a fairly small area of land.
Per my vision, we could sustain ourselves in an area equal to the combined total acreage in Oregon, Kansas and South Dakota. And the remaining 45 states' total acreage of land in the lower 48 could be returned to nature.
Sound far-fetched? People ridicule my plan all the time and call me naive for continuing to write about it. But those folks never seem to have a "plan" of their own - much less, a better one.
I also tell those critics that even though my GRATOLA vision may never be executed, it could possibly, in some way, help to ignite an unprecedented wave of urgent, "big picture" thinking by the world's brightest scientists, futurists, and environmentalists.
Our children inherit the mess. Disgusted with the adults of the world who have abdicated responsibility for protecting the fragile ecosystem that gives us life, the world's youth are taking to the streets by the millions. We can only hope that they won't give up.
Amazingly, the global youth movement was triggered by the lone actions of a 15-year old girl in Sweden last August. Take a look at this 4-minute video as she speaks truth to power at the United Nations' COP 24 Climate Conference in late 2018. Listen as she tells this powerful group of world leaders the unvarnished truth about their shameful failures.
"You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children."
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| You Are Stealing Our Future: Greta Thunberg, 15, Condemns the World's Inaction on Climate Change |
It's now over three months later and, ha
rkening back to the wisdom of W. Edwards Deming, time is running out for us to begin living in harmony with the rest of nature soon enough to make a difference.
Earth as a System. Deming would've clearly understood that in order for us to survive as a species, that the entire planet Earth "SYSTEM" must be optimized. And what exactly does that mean? Let's keep it simple...
Since the nine to nineteen-year-olds of the world seem to be the only generation who is truly committed to saving our planet,
I will use a simple definition to which they can easily relate:
As humans, our primary role in optimizing the Earth System is for us to give Mother Nature a lot
more space and then just leave her alone.
We must devise a living arrangement for ourselves on this planet that inflicts little to no harm on the natural environment. And that means that almost everything we are doing now must be totally re-designed.
Back to old drawing board. And we need to hurry as we move perilously close to the era of...
David Wallace-Wells opened his recently published
The Uninhabitable Earth, with this line.
It is worse, much worse, than you think. Later in the book, he describes what reinventing ourselves means:
"It means nothing short of a complete overhaul of the world's energy systems, transportation, infrastructure, industry and agriculture."
Indeed, some of the world's best thinkers are finally talking about the need to overhaul our global economy that currently depends on perpetual growth in a world of finite resources. They're finally beginning to see parts of the bigger picture, of which I have been speaking.
But what's missing? Two hugely important issues:
- There is zero talk about the urgency of curbing our exploding population as we're still adding almost a net million people every four days.
- There is also no talk about a global vision for what a sustainable economy and overall living arrangement for eight or ten billion people might look like.
That second one is the long-overdue discussion that I am trying to promote.
Where are the futuristic thinkers and "architects" who must catch the vision and convert all of this vision into a set of blueprints along with a realistic budget and action plan that could lead to an urgent implementation schedule?
And how many of those "experts" are even aware that actually living in harmony with nature is not even remotely possible without abolishing our grossly unsustainable habit of eating animals?
