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Disaster Must Be Catalyst for Change, Says Jean-Michel Cousteau
Jean-Michel Cousteau, one of the world's leading ocean explorers, has spoken of his "frustration at the human species" over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and called for it to become a catalyst for political, industrial and environmental change.
Describing the slick as "the worst oil accident anywhere on the planet", the 72-year-old son of Jacques Cousteau, the pioneering underwater ecologist, said that the consequences for Man and nature would be monumental. "The sad side of the human species is that we talk a lot and take very little action until we have a catastrophe on our hands," he told The Times.
"I don't want to call this doomsday. I want to believe we can sit down with decision-makers and industry and government and convince them that there's a better way to manage our life support system. We can do the good thing or we can keep destroying it."
He added: "I hope that this is the kick in the butt that's going to make our decision-makers change the way they operate.
"It's also a kick in the butt for those industries that are making a huge amount of money to invest that money, not just talk about it as they all do, in renewable energy."
Mr Cousteau's father, who died in 1997, was a marine conservation trailblazer who raised awareness of the fragility of the planet and its oceans and the devastating effects of pollution, via 120 documentaries and more than 40 books. Jean-Michel Cousteau continues his father's work through his California-based Ocean Futures Society, whose mission is to explore the seas and fight for their protection.
After witnessing the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster 21 years ago, in which 11 million gallons of oil leaked into the sea off Alaska, he had hoped for change. But a lack of regulation and oversight of the oil and chemical industry meant that a new disaster had been waiting to happen, he said.
Remnants of the slick could ultimately reach Europe by travelling in the Gulf Stream, he believes. "So BP, your oil is coming home," said Mr Cousteau, who visited Louisiana last week.
Dismissing remarks from BP executives that the scale of the spill was tiny compared with the size of the sea and that the Gulf of Mexico would be cleaned up and "fully recover", Mr Cousteau said: "To make such a statement is totally unacceptable. We have to see behind the dying bird, we have to understand the consequences of this that we can't see. Nature is more complex than we can imagine. I know the ocean well enough to know that I don't know it at all."
His father once described the sea as a "universal sewer" and Man's "global garbage can".
"Towards the end of my father's life he was telling me that we really need to be punished, we really need an emergency, if we are to get something done," said his son. "What would my father say now? I think he would say, ‘I told you so'."
70 Comments so far
Show AllRenewable energy takes no more material to create than does extractive industries.
There are dozens of different sources of renewable energy.
Everything from GMO Photovoltaic Tobacco Leaves to Ambient Sound Generators, to Tropical Seawater Temperature Differentional Turbines to Tesla's Bladeless Wind Turbine ( named Fuller Turbine)
Only ignorance and greed has blocked a total renewable energy world.
"Only ignorance and greed has blocked a total renewable energy world."
Sorry to disagree, but the word "only" just doesn't fit. The other thing that's blocked renewable energy is the complacency of the people. Anyone driving a car or using oil products has to share the blame for this disaster.
And there were millions who watched to news last night or read about it and and shook their heads and said what a mess before they jummped into their cars and burned oil to get to a softball game or the movies or whatever else where they could consume more oil products.
We are all creating the demand. BP is supplying us with our oil drug.
This catastrophe is not going to be the kick in the butt needed to get us off oil. There'll be a big push for while and tax breaks and all sorts of lipservice to renewables. And people will keep on driving and drilling will continue. And we'll continue to choke on our waste and things will get way worse. And little will change until it all comes crashing down and then there will be a real catastrophe. And it will be very ugly.
If the government and corporations promoted the most Reasonable course people would choose it over fossil fuels.
The Power in this nation are the corps and gov not the people who should be the power.
Power rules and Power Chooses!
Do you think most people would choose these wars without being manipulated.
You cannot blame the detainee for going insane nor can you blame the citizenry for being without much viable choice.
In fact most people I know go along with the wars. They think it's national security. They "support our troops".
Very few actually think for themselves.
And governments do not promote reason. They promote the self-interest of the constituents. And the constituent talking with the most money gets listened to the most. And the ones with the most money are the ones with the largest profits. That would be the oil companies. We the people consume the oil.
How many people voluntarily give up the cheapest way to do something so they can do it more expensively and at greater effort? Not many. Everyone just wants to go about their business and have cars with air conditioning and nice stereo system and a nice shine on the outside. No one wants to have to think about charging the car or is it gonna be cloudy and windless tomorrow and are my batteries charged up.
Believe me, I wish this would all change. But I waited in gas lines in the 70s and heard all the talk about getting away from oil. It didn't happen. (just me and a few other psychos with solar panels and wind turbines) And it's not gonna happen until it has to happen.
Here at my workplace there's already talk of the long weekend and going "camping". Friday there will be a steady stream of large pickups with 4 wheelers on the back heading for the woods on the interstate. And the lakes will fill up with boats. And people will sit around campfires or on the docks or in the bars talking about what a tragedy that gulf thing is. And they'll drink and bitch about the government and BP and then get up the next day and tear up the woods and the water and leave oil residue everywhere they go.
Call me a cynic.
glb: You are a cynic.
BUT you are right on target...in my opinion.
"And governments do not promote reason."
So you are admitting that it is not really the peoples fault, because if we had the converse here, that is, a situation where the government DOES promote reason, then it follows from your logic that the people WOULD get it as well.
Trust me, "they" know what they're doing here. This addiction is manufactured! They DO NOT WANT critical thinking by the citizens.
Not sure I follow your logic statement but I agree that the addiction is manufactured. Just like alcohol, tobacco, coffee, heroin, pot, crank, etc., etc. And there is no lack of addicts. There definitely is, however, a great lack of critical thinking citizens.
Please, keep in mind that this disaster is the product of Obamageddon's failure to regulate the drilling for oil in the oceans.
This shill, Obama, has taken more money from the oil industry than any other candidate in the last few years.
What would policies be if Nader was elected. You can bet that the exploration of oil would have been closely regulated. But, the people, in their wisdom, believed that Nader could never be elected, and that a vote for him would have been wasted.
Well, we got wasted anyhow.
I look forward to more people learning about alternatives to the carbon-fuel-based economy. We can have an abundance of low-cost, pollution free energy that's not controlled by the military-industrial complex. Solutions have existed (and have been suppressed) for over a hundred years.
As we learn to focus on the possibilities instead of the disasters... the changes that we are all asking for will occur. You can find more info here:
http://www.theorionproject.org/en/index.html
http://changingpower.net/articles/free-energy-documentary-producer-pitches-tv-series/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgQXYBRYwbg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh_-DUKQ4Uw&feature=related
I suggest that we call this disaster 4/20.
4/20 is taken, of course!
FastEddie75 May 25th, 2010 9:52 am
4/20 is taken, of course!
as it should be, and regularly, I suggest...
from the article:
"I don't want to call this doomsday. I want to believe we can sit down with decision-makers and industry and government and convince them that there's a better way to manage our life support system. We can do the good thing or we can keep destroying it."
I believe, rather than convince anyone of anything, we simply need to remove their ability to influence, which, to me, means claiming the land beneath my feet...
his statement illustrates our current quandry well: he begins by implying only changing the practices of decision-makers, etc., will answer, yet follows with the 'we' mcoyote was touching upon the other day, implying 'we' are responsible by not making 'them' change, or by not changing ourselves...
what no one discusses is why things are the way they are: the theft of the land and the reselling of it at price, price only attained via industrial production and related services, which translates into planetary destruction...
we must make a strong stand, and take back the land...
September 22, 2012? let's get those gardens growing!
peace, FastEddie75...
Peace to you, too. I've been on a long walk in the woods since last posting. Had a little epiphany: If the conversion of the landscape to property has despoiled the land (and the waters), what has the conversion of the mindscape to intellectual property done? Despoiled the mind! We must also take back our minds. Wall Street could hardly (dys)function as it does without Madison Avenue.
yes, that is right, too...
I am currently, among other things, re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Mr. Robert M. Pirsig...
many philosophical fabrics share common threads...as you imply, our natural thought processes have been stolen and manipulated just as the land has...electricity proving mighty helpful in that regard...
free, viable land is, um, grounding...those without are vulnerable on many fronts...
we are handed so much upon arrival...this needs to be reviewed...each generation must decide, anew, what is right or isn't, and what should be passed or not...
to steal the baseball analogy from another article today, our generation is now at the plate...we must make some heavy, and rapid, decisions...
I suggest we go out and buy solar panels and a wind turbine and an electric car.
I suggest we stop driving and flying, and turn our heat way down and turn OFF the air conditioner, and stop buying new crap we don't need, and stop building new buildings, and start eating locally grown food, and practice birth control, and get on our bikes, and do work that helps the environment instead of damaging it by using energy that we have to drill in deep water to get.
We CANNOT buy our way out of this problem. The VERY first thing we need to do is reconfigure our lives and our communities to use about 80% LESS energy. Buying solar panels is not going to save the world.
glb - You are tipping at windmills (pardon the pun).
The sad fact is that likely less than 1.0 % of your fellow americans believe as you do. MOST live in a fantasy "Walley World" where America is GREAT and everything will always turn out well - 'cause HeySus is watchin' over us. The "God with US" mentality is at least two centuries deep. Therefore "GOD" will take the BP OIL SPILL and simply dump it on the Europeans via the Gulf Stream... case closed.
Americans are likely the most delusional people this Earth has ever produced. As only one of a myriad of examples, witness the cable A&E show "Hoarders".
Not only are our permanent "Unter-Classes" completely fucked up... but, even the well educated (psychologists, veterinarians etc) fall victim to the relentless American religion of "Mass Consumption".. where, once sane individuals, fall prey to an insanity of consumer culture - where they can no longer even live in their own homes due to mountains of amassed worthless consumer SHIT!!!
I've just recently become aware (via local TV news) of a case in my own town where a "NORMAL" person in a neighborhood was found to be harboring up to 500 white rats - which eventually ate her two pet dogs for lack of food.
If this (USA) is NOT the MOST FUCKED UP country on the planet... please, someone... somewhere, inform me of another place in contention for the award.
for which they give us corexit 9600 (or whatever that number is!)
except the regular usage of 420 increases the neuron activity in the area of the brain that houses EMPATHY.....
something these fascist bastards in washington and the white house along with all the corporate leaders know NOTHING about......
his father wasn't listened to, so i don't suppose jean-michel's words will have much impact either..............
isn't that right, left guard?.............
In the spirit of the great Captain--I cry his tears--remembering how smart,how brave, and how dedicated to the sea this great man was--his son tries to continue in his father's footsteps--tough job in the polluted political waters of our today's world.
I can still see that amazing prototype air foil ship he designed sailing along in the breeze--oh how I envied his saltiness. Too bad we don't have his type leading us today.
New vocabulary: Oilbammed (adj)- Oil covered water. Example- the oilbammed Gulf of Mexico.
Measurement: 1 Oilbamma = 200 square miles of oil covered water.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
So since Reagan set Amurka on the path to deregulation I guess 1 Ronoiled = 4000 square miles of oil covered water.
I never voted for Obama, deplore his policy, and care less
if he just a one term president, however
progressives blaming this oil gusher on him is as rediculous
as blaming a hurricane on Bush.
Amen!
One thing which seems to be overlooked is that the "Obama" admin. is simply a PR firm for the OIL giants, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and the like.
The ENTIRE US Govt is just a SHILL for the corporate interests which continue to eat this country from within - like a metastatic CANCER.
By the time most Americans wake up to the fact that their country is but a media induced illusion, their fate will have been sealed.
You are witnessing the last gasps of "Global Capitalism" ae it's very worst before the patient expires!
"The King is DEAD!... Long Live the King!!!"
But if it makes you "feel good" you have your right.
It is progressives that put him in office,
it is progressives that knew durn well he was going
to level Afghanistan and destabilize Pakistan that put him
in office,
Is it your conscience talking back at you ?
There weren't, and aren't, enough 'progressives' to elect anybody. Why is this place awash in blame and guilt? Positive emotions are helpful, negative ones not so much.
Well said. There weren't, and aren't... And until we extricate our head out from our collective asses and start convincing people there never will be. That's how politics works.
I remember during the Iran hostage crisis watching Walter Cronkite give the count of days in his sign off. It kept it fresh in our mind and had the effect of putting pressure on the Carter administration. We need to start thinking like that before we succumb to the numbing effect of 'just another crisis'.
Gov't and industry leaders might "sit down" with Cousteau, in respect for his prominence in his field and the fact he's the son of the great Jacques, and they might even politely listen to him for 20 minutes. But they aren't going to be moved to action by anything he has to say. They are immune to all pleas and warnings to save any part of the environment, which is their sworn enemy. All they give a shit about is how to extract the maximum amount of resources from a planet already in agony from a hundred years of their plunder, and how to turn those resources into the largest possible profits. How much power or influence does the Ocean Futures Society have in a roomful of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil executives and high government officials? Jean-Michel will be a curious diversion for them, if he ever gets the chance to sit down with them, and 10 minutes later they won't remember a thing he said.
The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is God's punishment for voting Republican ☺☺☺
or for voting for the demonrats!
another side of the same fascist coin.....
you know the loaded gambling coin that NEVER pays off for WE THE PEOPLE
Here’s my comment (#388) to NYT regarding their front page article: “Oil Hits Home, Spreading Arc of Frustration”
Let’s hope that what ‘hits home’ to average Americans in their growing ‘arc of frustration’ is not oil, but a ‘key lesson’ hitting home ---- that we are facing a Global criminal Empire, which is attacking us (US) on the multiple fronts of environmental warfare and financial warfare.
Your Submitted Comments
Display Name
Alan MacDonald
Location
Sanford, Maine
Comment:
The most revealing correlation between this supposedly "unpredictable" oil explosion crisis and the supposedly "unpredictable" financial explosion crisis of 2007/8/9/10 is that the supposed government has to depend on the expertise of those who caused the crises to 'dictate' how the government MUST solve the crisis.
Substitute the name Hank Paulson (ex Goldman Sachs CEO) for the name BP, in terms of dictating the way in which the government MUST follow our expert financial or technical advice in solving these twin crises and average Americans can learn the key lesson of our times; namely that --- an unelected ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist Empire has 'captured' control of our democracy such that it both causes all our problems by 'gaming' the system for their greed and power, and then has the utter contempt to dictate to government how to supposedly solve the disaster it caused (and solve it in a way that the Empire continues to profit, and we continue to suffer).
In this global ecological and existential environmental crime against our planet, as well as the global financial nuclear WMD (mortgage derivative) attack that we are still reeling from, it is the Global Empire which is the both the attacker and the controller of 'our' supposed government.
That is the real reason that an "arc of frustration" is spreading among the people and citizens not only of America but the world --- who are beginning to correctly sense that we are all under the deadly thumb of Global Empire.
There will be no regulation of the Global Empire --- financial, ecological, social, military, legal or otherwise.
The Global corporate/financial/militarist Empire that controls 'our' former democratic Republic does not want, and will not suffer, regulation of any kind to get in its way!
Best luck fighting against this Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Here’s my comment (#388) to NYT regarding their front page article: “Oil Hits Home, Spreading Arc of Frustration”
Let’s hope that what ‘hits home’ to average Americans in their growing ‘arc of frustration’ is not oil, but a ‘key lesson’ hitting home ---- that we are facing a Global criminal Empire, which is attacking us (US) on the multiple fronts of environmental warfare, financial warfare, and just plain warfare.
Your Submitted Comments
Display Name
Alan MacDonald
Location
Sanford, Maine
Comment:
The most revealing correlation between this supposedly "unpredictable" oil explosion crisis and the supposedly "unpredictable" financial explosion crisis of 2007/8/9/10 is that the supposed government has to depend on the expertise of those who caused the crises to 'dictate' how the government MUST solve the crisis.
Substitute the name Hank Paulson (ex Goldman Sachs CEO) for the name BP, in terms of dictating the way in which the government MUST follow our expert financial or technical advice in solving these twin crises and average Americans can learn the key lesson of our times; namely that --- an unelected ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist Empire has 'captured' control of our democracy such that it both causes all our problems by 'gaming' the system for their greed and power, and then has the utter contempt to dictate to government how to supposedly solve the disaster it caused (and solve it in a way that the Empire continues to profit, and we continue to suffer).
In this global ecological and existential environmental crime against our planet, as well as the global financial nuclear WMD (mortgage derivative) attack that we are still reeling from, it is the Global Empire which is the both the attacker and the controller of 'our' supposed government.
That is the real reason that an "arc of frustration" is spreading among the people and citizens not only of America but the world --- who are beginning to correctly sense that we are all under the deadly thumb of Global Empire.
There will be no regulation of the Global Empire --- financial, ecological, social, military, legal or otherwise.
The Global corporate/financial/militarist Empire that controls 'our' former democratic Republic does not want, and will not suffer, regulation of any kind to get in its way!
Best luck fighting against this Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
during ww2 mussolini the leader of italy coined the modern day usage of the word FASCISM as the merger of corporate interests with governmental powers....
as reported on democracy now!: the federal inspector of the blown oil rig was negotiating his post governmental contract with BP at the VERY SAME MEETING as he was conducting the safety test!
does that meet the merger of governmental and corporate interests to you?
and consider: we get the health insurance industry writing the health care bill, corporations "inspecting themselves for safety violations", the clean air act allowing MORE pollution. the banskters paying themselves off with hundreds of billions- while the innocent victims WE THE PEOPLE pay the price, and the endless revolving door between corporations and the government....
sounds a lot like FASCISM to me....
VOTE GREEN PARTY!
Ho, Hum - this idea of regulators feathering their nests at our expense is old news - just the names and faces change. Doing nothing more than reporting more instances of this sort of thing is only numbing us.
When DN starts featuring the folks, the indies, that are running to really change things, then I'll be impressed. It has the exposure to potentially make a real difference, a counter to the MSM. That it doesn't use it to advance these causes has been a continual source of frustration to me - they will go just so far ....
Are we going to sit around uselessly hand-wringing, opinion-making and judging--or take responsibility for doing what we can for solutions?
If this frightening oil catastrophe isn't a problem you or I can actually do something about (although I CAN make better, more responsible choices; I CAN contact my members of Congress), then we can pick another way to demonstrate real caring and help relieve some suffering. Our precious opinions aren't helping anyone.
Come on, folks. If you or I have our human needs met, we're better off than countless people without jobs, or families and children without enough food to eat. So could we please get off 'the victim' bus, count ourselves in, take responsibility, put compassion and all our massive intelligence, talent and ability to work, take steps toward doing something useful and constructive. Make a contribution.
Defeatism is NOT a solution. It's an excuse. All the more reason to work together--to keep discouragement at bay. We can support each other through the rough, scary patches. You might have strength where I have weakness and vice versa. There are endless advantages to working together, pooling experience, creativity, skills. Unity is power.
Whether a person is flying first class or in the economy seats, we're all on the same plane. Like it or not, we don't get out of here alive. That's the mortal deal--whether a human being is a Senator or a carpet installer. There'll be plenty of time to be dead. So, as Stevie Wynwood sang it, live while we can. At the end of the trail: NO REGRETS. Life isn't a dress rehearsal. This is it.
"You gotta have heaarrrt, miles and miles and miles of hearrrrt...."
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The current obsolete 19th century political spectrum from communism to fascism has failed to honestly or comprehensively address the two greatest problems of our age: Global environmental degradation and human over-populations' acceleration of the degradation of the biosphere due to the resource demands placed on the planet by our sheer numbers and the inefficiency of prevailing resource distribution, energy systems, waste disposal and recycling systems around the world. I no longer believe that economists and politicians are either fit or capable of constructively influencing governance or governing. Their ideologies are too personal, too self-interested, too capitalist, and especially, too SUBJECTIVE. Wantonly so now on a globalist scale that is operating out of control at the peril of humanity and too many other living species.
A new Third Way is called for and I believe that way must be an attempt to create a global system of environmentally sustainable resource management and humane human population reductions that harmonizes human population groups and their activities to the specific ecological and resource limits of the regional habitats they inhabit on a long-term sustainable basis. To achieve this would require a global participatory economic (parecon) democratic body of scientists employing a scientifically OBJECTIVE decision making process based on regional optimized habitat/population plans generated by the most advanced computerized biospheric and resource information gathering system ever attempted. One that combines real time biosphere data gathering with verifiable geographic annual resource extraction & utilization data into one system. Such a system should be able to develop "down-growths" plans for populations and economies.
Under such a system capitalism could only be allowed to remain under heavily regulated and enforced conditions with the profit incentive confined by scientifically imposed limits that absolutely prevent capitalism from continuing to undermine the biosphere.
For more information at how I arrived at these ideas see the summary of Jacques Cousteau's Bill of Rights for Future Generations posted above.
metal - copyright 2010
I was thinking the same thing when I posted above. This should also apply to our national government. There should be a body of scientific experts that is a permanent part of the House and the Senate - no more *advice* and policy making by industry lobbyists.
Great post Metal.
Post script:
I stopped and tried to imagine a president of the US giving a speech and advocating the ideas you have presented. I couldnt. Such straight talk seems to be totally beyond political possibility in this dumbed-down country that worships *business* and getting rich. It seems that no man or woman sane enough to present such ideas would ever be allowed to get near the presidency - the corporate plutocracy would fight tooth and nail to stop it. And a lot of dumbed-down amurikens would start screaming "elitism". The adolescent human ego is going to destroy this planet.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
That purely subjective, arbitrary & capricious egotism and selfish elitism is what contaminates the decision making process of economists and politicians. The present deteriorating condition of the biosphere renders that level of subjectivity with respect to life or death decision making about the difficult problem of creating environmentally sustainable human populations & resource allocation systems not just dangerously obsolete, but biologically suicidal in terms of being a driver towards the extinction of most of humanity and too many other species besides. We simply can no longer afford as a species to allow the subjective whims of plutocrats and their economic and political hirelings to spin our biosphere like their unlimited resource roulette wheel.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Ironically, the model for having my international scientific system trump U.S. (and other nationalistic) sovereignty over the global economic system would be the global "free trade" regime's World Trade Organization, which uses its own global body of adjudicators (in secret tribunals) to exert oversight & enforcement of various provisions of the "free trade" treaties with respect to various cases forwarded to it by corporations and governments. Prior to the "free trade" regime, State and national legislatures in the U.S. and EU used to exert direct oversight on trade treaty provisions, trade treaty enforcement, etc., by the duly elected representatives of the people who were accountable to the public. My system would use the established precedent of the "free trade" regime with respect to sovereignty regarding capitalist trade to gut the laissez-faire core of that regime like a fish and subject it to my scientifically transparent, objective, open and public decision making process. My system can afford to be truly transparent, unlike "free trade," because it's decision making process relies on science and not the secret ulterior motives of selfish plutocrats and economists and politicians whose careers are dependent upon that hierarchy of bloated parasites.
Hmmm, sounds like Big Brother to me. The plague of the WTO should give pause to anyone contemplating another org. of this ilk. And which "scientists" would you put on this panel? Guys like Craig Ventor, an inventer of artificial life? Seems to me scientists are more useful as researchers and consultants, or, when need be, as activists, not social policy makers - after all scientists were given free rein in the Nazi death camps and look what they produced, using the "science" of eugenics. The idea that scientists are totally objective went out with the hoola hoop.
Using computer models to set up social policy scares the bejeebers out of me - after all it was a mark to model (computer) concept Wall St. used in bringing us down financially.
If you really want to populate our governing structures with a certain class of people, you might want to try philosophers first .....
Sioux Rose
METAL: Your idea has merit, however, why limit this to scientists, many of whom have a very mechanical (and cold) view of how life/the universe works? Why not also invite some Indigenous shaman and tribal Grandmothers to the table? Science gets some things right, but it's also had a LOT to do with many of the things that are bringing the world to extinction. Without ethicists, or spiritual leaders, I would not have faith in, or respect, for such a body. It is too limited in its scope. Perhaps your vision would be enhanced by having some historians, religious authorities from ALL religious disciplines, natural energy medicine experts, and at least a FEW radical, unconventional thinkers. The answers to life are not just found in a test tube.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Ethno-botanists and other environmental scientists have worked with indigenous shaman to better understand complex habitats like rain-forests and the bewildering variety of highly evolved plant and animal bio-chemicals and genes at work there. There is definitely a place for indigenous shamans and male & female elders as advisors on how to live in harmony with nature and with respect toward considering the ecological impacts of human induced changes on the environment for multiple generations out, as many North American tribes did (typically considering the potential impacts on 7 generations after their own). These indigenous inputs would be vital to preserving the somatic evolutionary wilderness area bio-reserves which I included in my proposed system, and could also help preserve mixed wildlife/selective harvest agricultural buffer zones around the bio-reserves and keep them free from toxic pesticides, weed killers, genetically modified crops and other corporate agri-business contaminants.
I like your ideas but here's a helper to add. End the drug wars especially the ban on cannabis/hemp, one of Mother Nature's best gifts sadly excluded as "quackery" just like alternative medicine, and drop all permit rules on growing the crop. Put those seeds to grow and watch the vested business interests be put out of business. The same goes for homeopathy and all alternative natural cures being dismissed as "quackery" when they deserve to be part of science while the real quackeries such as GMO, synthetic garbage from oil, and nanotechnologies (except for making thin affordable solar panels to capture more sunlight) do not deserve to be dominant in science.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The system I'm talking about would be for handling the big life & death decisions that affect human and other species & habitat sustainability versus drastic deterioration and extinction. While it would definitely affect national and global economies, the degree of specificity to which you allude is not really what it would be designed to look at UNLESS one of the species being discussed were either an endangered species or a keystone species upon which many other species were dependent to survive, or, in the case of plant species, it's legalization and widespread cultivation and sales could replace (or greatly diminish the prevalence of) toxic artificial industrial products that now dominate the national or global marketplace.
The green textile-related uses of low THC industrial hemp would be something my system would examine because legalizing the growth and sales of this variety could substantially replace artificial textiles that are toxic petroleum-based. The medicinal uses of higher THC cannabis, while many of them laudatory, are more of a cultural choice which, either way, does not significantly impact the global environment. How illegal drugs are addressed in each country around the world is also more of an individual cultural choice because of varying related cultural, green economic, moral and religious customs associated with various drugs in different countries. The same goes for homeopathy and alternative natural cures. Genetically modified crops and organisms under my system would be entirely banned until very long-term (25 or more years) comprehensive laboratory tests had been run on all of them to determine which ones could present a threat to existing evolved symbiotic relationships of ancient pre-existing species of plants and animals. As a general rule I am against tinkering with genetics at all except for strictly medical purposes and even then the laboratory tests should be long-term.
The Monsanto concept of addicting farmers around the world to their manufactured sterile seed crops is homicidal agri-business fascism as far as I'm concerned and could subject any 3rd World population dependent on the purchase of those seeds for food production of its own country's or region's food to mass starvation with the first prolonged economic downturn that renders farmers (or their governments) unable to afford to purchase those sterile crop seeds. The distribution of these seeds should have been blocked from ever taking place as a matter of common sense. Corporations who attempt to engage in such blatantly immoral and exploitative practices under my system would have their business operating licenses revoked and be stripped of all their safe patents which would then be put up for public auction. All their toxic patents would be destroyed.
Ah, thanks metal. By the way, silly me, I forgot to mention why else I mentioned hemp. I was amazed a few years ago when I found out that it can help repair the soil from industrial damage of all things and prevent future erosion. Hemp has a extraordinarily long root which pulverizes and aerates the farmland making soil conditions optimal for farming. It also acts as a natural method of holding the land firmly in tact thus preventing erosion. Hemp goes to maturity in about 90 days unlike other sources of biomass. Hemp also requires ZERO fertilizers and can thrive in even the worst of conditions naturally. That's what's making me an addict to hemp. The DEA must be abolished. In other nations where it is allowed, it doesn't get heard a lot. I was especially surprised when I was in Japan about younger people having little to no knowledge of the plant and that nation's historical usage but Japan relies heavily on oil too for its economy. I wonder if it could used for road building too or maybe algal oil to produce carbon neutral light sweet crude oil might be needed.
The BMW 320d ED gets over 70 MPG. A luxury car under $40,000 available in England and Europe. Why cannot an American buy one? Why don't Americans demand they be made available? "Unavailable in the United States" except for Bill Gates and Jimmy Buffet.
Check out http://jalopnik.com/5546598/bmw-gets-1013-miles-on-single-tank-of-diesel
And then look around on the automobile websites.
Enough hand-wringing. Let's do something to force change!
The oilification of the Gulf of Mexico is the last lie for profit that Americans can stand.