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What gets talked about, gets done!
Since the launching of the SOS Memos in April of 2019, my primary objective has been to promote a loud, widespread global "conversation" regarding the most important topic in the history of humanity -- our survival as a species.
Another way I promote that "conversation" is in public presentations, whether on Zoom or in person. With several talks coming up this month, I decided to use this SOS Memo to introduce a few examples of what my future speaking events might include. Click this image to view links to all 108 of my SOS Memos:
Wanting my talks to be up-to-date with what's happening in the world, I decided to leverage the content of some recent SOS Memos. Particularly in the last five weeks, I have been "telling a story." That story began with a "situation assessment" in the first SOS Memo listed below, posted on April 27.
Since then, as you can see in the next four memos, I have been developing the "story" of what we can do about that situation. It's a simple, yet very compelling story -- and it's going to take a much louder global "conversation" on this topic before any significant progress will be made.
In last week's SOS Memo, I reviewed the To-Do List of tasks that I sincerely believe must be accomplished in order for us to maximize our chances for survival.
For the remainder of this memo, I will review a few of the PPT slides that will be included in my presentations.
Action Item #1. As for replacing animal-based foods, it was a curiosity about the optimal diet for humans (in 2002) that led me to begin researching that topic. That curiosity has literally changed my life, and has redefined what I believe to be my major definite purpose in life.
Since 2002, I have written four books (three of which were published), posted 737 consecutive daily blogs, created the 4Leaf Survey, launched my BSB's (bite-size blogs) in 2016 and in April of 2019, changed the name of those blogs to SOS Memos to better reflect the urgency of the situation in which we find ourselves.
But alas, there has been zero net progress with regard to Step #1 of totally replacing the global industry that produces animal-based foods. The primary obstacle holding us back is what I refer to as the protein myth, a handicap that paralyzes most of the world's humans.
Action Item #2 on my list earned a complete chapter in OUTCRY. To be sure, I am no economic guru -- and I don't need to be -- in order to know for certain that we cannot have eternal population growth, coupled with more consumption per capita -- in a world of finite resources. That's not advanced economics, that's basic arithmetic.
Clearly, we must have a totally new system of "keeping score" on this planet -- a system rewards all individuals, countries and businesses who work to actually improve the biosphere and penalizes those who don't.
The above slide shows how we're trying to turn our natural resources into money. The chapter about Earthonomics in OUTCRY ends with this appropriate Cree Indian proverb:
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
The primary reason for that whopping 87% number as compared to the 14% that was computed by the U.N. -- is the fact that the U.N. failed to account for the lost opportunity cost of hundreds of millions of acres of "CO2 absorbing" forests that were destroyed in places like Brazil to graze farm animals or to grow their food.
For the record, re-wilding doesn't mean planting billions of trees willy-nilly around the world. It means returning at least half of the Earth back to nature and let her reclaim what is rightfully hers. She will know what do.
Action Item #4. I concluded long ago, for a host of reasons, that we cannot depend on the well-intentioned acts of individual citizens to someday lead us to a sustainable way of life for humans on this planet. Rather, we must design and build entirely new "systems" of living -- comfortable, futuristic environments where only green lifestyle options will exist.
The above premise, along with an envisioned living "system," was featured throughout our book OUTCRY, published on Earth Day in April of 2020. And it's all there simply to help "spark" a much needed global conversation on this most crucial topic.
Action Item #5. The world's human population hit the one billion mark around 1800. Now, in just over two hundred years, we are closing in on eight billion. And, while the birth "rate" itself has slowed down, we're still adding a net six million every month.
Mother Nature is sounding the alarm every day that we already have far too many people on this planet. At some point, we must determine what that optimal number of humans truly is.
But we can't figure that out until we know how we will be eating and how we will be living when it comes to the consumption of the Earth's natural resources.
Let's say we conclude for example, that based on how we will be living in the future, the maximum number of humans that Mother Earth could sustain indefinitely is four billion -- or about half of what we have today.
The problem is that it will take a very long time to make that giant reduction humanely. I did the math. If we were able to quickly lower the average daily births from 380,000 to just 100,000, it would take us five or six generations, or roughly 160 years, to hit the four billion mark.
Action Item #6. The problem with trying to lower the world population is that we're an innately dysfunctional species and simply do not have the wherewithal to get it done -- as I explained in last week's SOS Memo.
That's why I have concluded that it's time for us to unleash the power of artificial intelligence with regards to solving some of our thorniest issues -- many of which are driven by our tribal bias.
In last week's SOS Memo, I posed the "big picture" question that the best of artificial intelligence (AI) can help us answer quickly:
How do we synthesize all of the knowledge in the world into a coherent action plan for a way of living that has the greatest likelihood of ensuring our long-term survival as a species?
That is the "big picture" question of the ages for our species. And in my opinion, finding the answer to that question is worth the risks associated with leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to help minimize the impact of our inherent dysfunction as defined here by Dr. E.O. Wilson.
Wilson is featured in many of my SOS Memos and dozens of times in OUTCRY. I feel like I know him -- after listening to Chapter 15 of the above book at least twenty times.
The Bottom Line. In order to maximize our chances for survival as a species, I sincerely believe that we must address every single item on the above To-Do List in this SOS Memo.
And to do that, we must somehow promote the global conversation on this most crucial of all topics. Time is running out as my friend James Cameron points out on the cover of our book pictured here:
Today, I will close this SOS Memo with the last two slides of my public presentations:
What can you do? If you have read our 2020 book, OUTCRY, the six steps to human survival mentioned earlier will be somewhat familiar to you. Maybe you will do the world a favor and refer that book to others.
I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested OUTCRY, that there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place, a conversation about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances for survival.
To be sure, we've got to do a lot more than change what we eat and OUTCRY helps explain the "why" and the"how" of that proposition.
To our knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.
Want to send a link of this memo to a friend? It is #108 on this list of SOS Memos. Finally, contact me directly at the email address below with any questions you may have.
PS: Free Zoom Conferences. In the interest of jump-starting the urgently-needed global "conversation" about the dilemma we are in, I am now offering to conduct private Zoom conferences free of charge to groups of almost any size. I look forward to ZOOM-ing with you and your group sometime soon.
In preparation for those Zoom visits, I have developed a one-hour format consisting of an opening statement followed by a 20-minute slide show and then ending with a discussion and Q&A with the attendees. The sessions you organize will be far more interesting and productive if attendees have read OUTCRY in advance.
Our book, for a host of environmental reasons, is only available as an e-book on Amazon. As such, it contains hyperlinks to hundreds of references and videos, is less expensive, does not kill any trees and does not have to be manufactured and delivered.
Here are a few of them where you can see how my vision has evolved since that first "creative idea" on 9-21-18:
As always, I am just trying to spark a global conversation about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, better and bolder.
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What else can you do to help? Two things:
1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of "big picture" solutions that are crucially necessary for saving our civilization.
2. Share this BSB and my "Mama Ain't Happy" BSB with prominent journalists, thought leaders and/or elected officials whom you respect. They need to learn a lot more about the many reasons why Mama ain't happy.
Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth
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