Entirely New Vision of Earth Stewardship
where the penalty for failure is extinction
SOS #122 J. Morris Hicks (9-7-21)
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This SOS is dedicated to my only daughter, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, forty-two years ago yesterday -- during a rare total eclipse of the full moon.
Choosing her name was a no-brainer. Obviously, it had to be Diana -- inspired by the Roman Goddess of the Moon.
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Nowadays, when I see a full moon, I think of Diana, her two young daughters (Violet and Evvy) and her beloved Georgia Bulldogs who made the birthday girl happy over the weekend by defeating the Clemson Tigers on national television.
Now back to the topic of the day. Taking care of the planet that provides life for all of the innocent children in the world.
But, alas, we are not remotely close to even talking about the planet stewardship topic of the day -- much less taking any urgent actions necessary to correct the many harms we have inflicted on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive.
As for the "goats" in the title, this recent quote from Dr. James Lovelock says it all:
We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.
I begin today's stewardship discussion with a reader's comment on a column by Paul Krugman in the NYTimes last week.
The piece was all about the huge corporations who are fighting Biden's multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan. They are trying to block the largest effort to curb climate-change in our nation's history -- because their own taxes might increase a bit.
The first reader comment that I saw expresses my sentiments succinctly:
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From William in Minnesota
Often overlooked as a contributing culprit to climate change are the practices used in agriculture and in raising commercial animals.
This common oversight renders most climate discussions half-hearted and insufficient.
Hooray for William! Sadly, but not surprisingly, out of nearly 800 comments, there were probably not more than 2 or 3 others that even mentioned the oversight regarding the single largest driver of climate change.
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To this practical engineer, the first step for humans when it comes to planet stewardship -- is to turn off the "killing machine" -- a term that Dr. Sailesh Rao uses to describe animal agriculture.
It appears many times in our recent position paper that was published in July of this year.
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How the "killing machine" works. We KILL our forests to clear land to grow food for the billions of animals that we then KILL for our dinner.
Here's the deal. If we cannot completely eliminate that Killing Machine in the very near future -- we will have ZERO chance of becoming the so-called "stewards" of our planet. Right now, we have no clue what that even means.
In last week's SOS Memo, I featured the wise, 102-year-old scientist, Dr. James Lovelock -- and his terrifying prediction of our demise as a species.
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But this week, I return to a discussion of what we must do if we expect our species to reside on this planet for another few millennia -- or longer. Dr. Lovelock has a few novel ideas on that topic as well.
I quote again from his latest book, We Belong to GAIA -- and the final chapter where he talked about various technical fixes that might buy us some time to get our act together and start living in such a manner that Earth actually improves because of our presence.
But there's a catch. He continues to warn us that various technological “fixes” may not work out too well for us longterm. Again, in his own words, from the final chapter of this new book.
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The more we meddle with the Earth’s composition and try to fix its climate, the more we take on the responsibility for keeping the Earth a fit place for life, until eventually our whole lives may be spent in drudgery doing the tasks that previously Gaia had freely done for over three billion years.
This would be the worst of fates for us and reduce us to a truly miserable state, where we were forever wondering whether anyone, any nation or any international body could be trusted to regulate the climate and the atmospheric composition.
The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever.
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So, considering the mess that we have made here on Earth, how can we learn to be true stewards?
Lovelock weighs in again: Our religions have not yet given us the rules and guidance for our relationship with Gaia.
The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris.
We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.
The root of our problems with the environment comes from a lack of constraint on the growth of population. There is no single right number of people that we can have as a goal: the number varies with our way of life on the planet and the state of its health.
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It has varied naturally from a few million when we were hunters and gatherers to a fraction of a billion as simple farmers; but now it has grown to over seven billion, which is wholly unsustainable in the present state of Gaia, even if we had the will and the ability to cut back. |
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Over the years, since learning about the unsustainable manner in which we were living, I always felt that our rapidly increasing population was the "elephant in the room" when it comes to our ability to survive long-term as a species.
Dr. Lovelock strongly validates my conclusion, having this to say on that topic in his new book:
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Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of about half to one billion, and then we would be free to live in many different ways without harming Gaia. At first this may seem a difficult, unpalatable, even hopeless task, but events during the last century suggest that it might be easier than we think.
If we could go back to, for example, 1840 and start again, we might be able to reach a stable population of six billion if we were guided from the beginning by a proper understanding of the Earth.
In the end, as always, Gaia will do the culling and eliminate those (species) that break her rules. We have the choice to accept this fate or plan our own destiny within Gaia. Whatever we choose to do, we have always to ask, what are the consequences?
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Right now, we seem to be running out of options that have any chance whatsoever of keeping most of us alive for much longer. And NOW... |
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We are running out of time!
Desperate times call for desperate measures!
And willy-nilly, uncoordinated infrastructure bills around the world have ZERO chance of slowing climate change enough to keep us alive.
It's time to do something radical and...
I have an IDEA!
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The Bottom Line. For this SOS Memo, I close with a sort of a "Hail Mary" action (a fantasy of sorts) that theoretically might work -- but has a near zero chance of happening -- without some unconscionable disaster in the next three years.
Earlier this year, one of my SOS Memos touched on a similar idea. But, after giving it more thought, I realized that the earlier idea was flawed because the process I was advocating was to take place in broad daylight for everyone to see, applaud, criticize and undermine.
I have now concluded that the kind of project I am advocating might best be done in stealth mode -- maybe a bit like the Manhattan Project in the early forties.
That infamous project took the term "TOP SECRET" to a whole new level.
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Here's how our "stealth" project could begin.
President Biden summons Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, into his office for a one-on-one conversation.
When the two are alone in the room, the aging president bares his soul with the much younger man. He talks about having read a few recent books by Dr. James Lovelock and Dr. E.O. Wilson along with The China Study by Cornell nutritional scientist, T. Colin Campbell.
In those books, Biden's eyes were opened by the realization of just how close we are to extinction. As such, he now fears for the future of our nation, most of our citizens and even our species.
He has learned that a huge part of our problem is what we are eating. Yet the world is not heeding the alarm. Maybe this new celebrity documentary airing in theaters now will help. We have tickets to see it in Mystic, CT, on Thursday night.
Its backers and producers include Sir Richard Branson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and many others. Here's what Leonardo had to say:
This is the film that future generations will be wishing EVERYONE had watched TODAY!
(Click image below for trailer)
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Soon, this timely film will be available on various digital streaming platforms like Netflix.
Back to the Biden/Buttigieg meeting. The president solemnly tells Buttigieg that he is not worried about being re-elected in 2024. Then he adds that he is gravely concerned that if we humans don't take some HUGE steps toward sustainable living in the next three years -- that it won't really matter who gets elected.
That's because it will soon be too late to save the biosphere that sustains us -- no matter who is president of Earth's most powerful nation.
Pete, the future of humankind
may be riding on your shoulders.
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He then calmly tells Secretary Pete that he is being assigned a new full-time role in the administration -- a role that he solemnly believes is the most crucial ever -- in the history of humanity. In it, Pete will retain his current title, for stealth reasons, but his current #2 at the DOT will become the acting secretary in that department. |
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Biden explains the new role. Pete, you are by far the smartest, most eloquent and most capable person I have ever known. You also have an exceptionally rare combination of analytical and leadership qualities that makes you the ideal person for your new role.
You and Chasten recently announced the arrival of those adorable twins who are depending on you for their survival. I am certain that you will do all that you can to ensure a safe, meaningful and pleasant life for them and for all of the innocent children of the world.
What I will describe now in just a few minutes will be your full-time mission for the rest of my first term and beyond -- if we are fortunate enough to win re-election in 2024.
You won't need a title but will have the full support of my office behind you. Here are a dozen bullet points that outline what I want you to do:
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Start studying everything you can find about the primary drivers of climate change -- particularly those drivers that can be reduced quickly. You will start with this recent 87% paper by Dr. Sailesh Rao, a PhD from Stanford University. In a July 2021 paper, he describes a comprehensively brilliant solution.
- Simultaneously, I want you to learn all that you can about artificial intelligence and how we can leverage that kind of incomparable power to accomplish what just a few years ago would have been impossible. On this topic, I want you to read one of James Lovelock's latest books,"Novacene," during the next week.
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I also want you to read a new book, Food IS Climate by Glen Merzer. It contains a truckload of powerful info about sustainability that we never hear from the money-motivated environmental NGO's.
- You have an unlimited budget and are empowered to build your new team with the best and brightest that the world has to offer. But don't start hiring too many people until you and I have agreed upon a realistic game-plan.
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Within three months, I want you to come up with some "working ideas" for how we might systematically replace our entire civilization in the USA -- with one that is five to ten times "greener" than what we have now. Why only three months? It's because I have found that work tends to expand to fill the time allowed for its completion. And we don't have time for a two-year study.
- In so doing, I want you to come up with a practical "vision" for how we Homo sapiens can avoid the near-term extinction of our species.
- If we can successfully launch a project like that in this country, the rest of the world will follow and we may be able to spark a global movement that will pave the way to a sustainable future for all the children of the world.
- In the near term, stay away from the environmental NGO's who have all failed to even report the primary driver of climate change to the world. At some point, they should be held legally accountable for that crime against humanity.
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Above all else, keep an open mind and challenge everything about the status quo of how we live in the industrialized world.
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On that note, one of my teen-age granddaughters recently gave me a copy of an obscure little e-book (Outcry) that has been read by less than one hundredth of one percent of Earth's eight billion people and read by NONE of the world's leaders.
- Read it today and consider bringing in the author for a consultation later this week. You may even want to invite his buddy James Cameron, who wrote the blurb on the cover -- to attend that meeting as well.
- It's time for us to think totally outside the box and this little book may help jolt lots of people into thinking differently about our role in saving the biosphere that keeps all of us, including your infant twins, alive.
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Ending on a good note. There is a brand new idea in the news right now: a planned, super-green city, starting from scratch. A few people told me in the past few days that this new project sounds a lot like the Great Big Northern (GBN) described in this SOS Memo two years ago.
This new super-city also has a very cool sounding name: City of Telosa. Meet the man behind the vision: Marc Lore
I am very encouraged to see this kind of outside-the-box thinking. The "conversation" about totally re-inventing our way of life has finally begun. From an article about that project last week in GreenMatters, this wording is truly a long-awaited breath of fresh air:
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If you live a zero-waste or sustainable lifestyle, you’ve probably thought about how nice it would be to live in a low-impact bubble — a city where everyone composts, drives electric cars, eats plant-based, and wears thrifted clothing.
- As it turns out, a billionaire is in the process of building one such community.
You can learn all about the vision at cityoftelosa.com. Also, from the Robb Report last week, a more comprehensive description of this exciting new project. Click on the title below and begin raising the volume of this long-awaited "conversation."
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What can you do? You, your family, your friends and your co-workers can join this all-important conversation.
Let this kind of crucially serious talk replace the incessant trivial topics that a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.
And I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your friends via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation with your group, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic. Here's an advance link to my 62 slides.
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The image above is a clue regarding the essence of my "family game plan" that is revealed only in my talks. I do not put that in writing.
Finally, please do everything you can to help spark the global "conversation" about our need to urgently transform our way of living into one that has a much better chance of keeping us alive indefinitely.
The billions of innocent children
of the world deserve no less!
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 about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances of survival as a species.
To be sure, we must do a lot more than change what we eat -- and OUTCRY helps explain the "why" and the "how" of that proposition.
To my 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.
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: Regarding the free Zoom conferences with your group, Send me an email and let's get started.
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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.
The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018.
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As always, I am just trying to help spark the all-important "conversation" about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, faster, better and bolder.
You will find that there aren't many books that cover both the health of your body and the health of your planet. This is one of them. It was published in 2011.
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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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