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A LETTER TO EVERYONE

From the day we're born, all of us are inspired by our natural instinct to grow
our physical abilities and knowledge, our family relationships, our talents,
our friends, and our growing skills to work and earn a good living so we can
grow our bank accounts and enjoy "the good life", and then advance our good
reputation as successful men and women in a prosperous economy for a nation
of growing influence around the World ---- which becomes a problem if other
people in other nations push forward with their own agenda = World Wars One
and Two, and the recently ended "Cold War" with the former Soviet Union.
But even if all the people of the World learn to live together peacefully for
growing trade and expanding global cooperation, it can't go on forever.

Why? Because the Earth, the planet we live on, is not growing. In fact,
with each volcano and earthquake, it is slowly cooling and shrinking, as it has
from its beginning with the Sun as an enormous cloud of hot, swirling gases
slowly cooling and forming the planets Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars
Earth, Venus and Mercury.

Yet, it's hard to find scientists, economists or anyone to admit that, because
almost everyone assumes we must go right on growing our families and expanding
our careers and business investments forever; and millions see their own children
as a financial investment to make the family rich, so the more the better!

Why not?! It's certainly good for business to promote a growing population of
ambitious consumers who always buy more products every year. A favorite slogan
is "A growing economy is a healthy economy." If only we could somehow make
our planet grow right along with us, there would always be more of everything
for everyone, right?

So the astronomers and astro-physicists are busy searching the night sky for other
life-supporting planets orbiting other stars like our Sun, if only we could travel
millions of miles into outer space. Problem solved! We'll send high tech robots that
don't need food, water, air or sunlight, produce no sewage or garbage and require
only a little oil, recharge and a replacement part once in awhile. Later we'll invent
a safe method of suspended animation, like Sigourney Weaver had in those three
sci-fi "Alien" films, so living astronauts can sleep through the exciting adventure
of space travel (!)

But there is another problem.

While scientists and businessmen are busy planning to conquer the universe,
our human population keeps on growing, now 7 billion and counting. So, we face
a very difficult question: How many people can the Earth support? We must find
an answer now because, not only is it slowly shrinking, as a living system, it is
struggling to neutralize the ever-growing mass of our trash, junk and sewage with
more violent storms and floods, huge tornados, droughts and raging wildfires, all
happening now around the World because every day growing tons of garbage and
sludge are dumped in the ocean, lakes and rivers, while big cities like Los Angeles
are surrounding themselves with growing mountains of "landfill", while growing
thousands of coal-fired power plants and growing thousands of jet planes are
spewing out growing tons of toxic smoke and exhaust fumes, and occasionally an
oil well is operated below safety standards and suddenly spills tons of crude oil
onto land and into the sea. But how much can the Earth absorb?

Each one of us is born with an "auto-immune system", so if germs make you sick
with the "common cold", without you having to think about it, your body will
automatically raise your temperature, make you sneeze and cough up phlegm, blow
out nasal fluid, need more water and fruit juice and more sleep, during which time
the white cells in your blood stream will surround and kill the virus invaders.
But if you've been drinking coffee, alcoholic beverages, smoking cigarettes and
staying up late, you immune system could be so weak your cold may turn into a
fatal case of pneumonia.

Likewise with planet Earth. It has its own auto-immune system that constantly
absorbs and recycles everything in rainstorms and flooding rivers, hurricanes and
tornados, hot summer and cold winter seasons. Everything is always moving and
changing, because the Earth is a "biosphere", not cold and dead like Mars, or
broiling hot like Venus, but a living, breathing weather system of four seasons
we all depend on to grow and store our food and water and to breathe fresh air
from the photosynthesis of natural forests and the phytoplankton in the ocean
that together convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into the oxygen we must inhale
to stay alive. If that systen collapses from the growing mass of our pollution,
every living thing on Earth will die.

Therefore, our lifetime job should be to protect that biosphere so our children
will have a safe and healthy place to live and grow. We should give that to them
as their birthright with food, clothing, shelter, love, friendship and education,
which can only exist on a life-supporting planet. To do this successfully, two
things must be accomplished as soon as possible:

1. Safely recycle 100% of all garbage and waste materials, or close down their
source. For example, there is no such thing as "clean coal technology" because
even if all the smoke from coal-fired power plants could somehow be "scrubbed",
there would soon be a gigantic tonnage of carbon waste and no safe place for it.
Some say bury it, but it would eventually mix with ever-seeping ground water and
leach into streams and lakes. But the coal seams in their original underground
locations were harming no one, because over eons of time by slow geologic
permutations, the Earth isolates its many toxic elements, including coal, oil and
uranium, so life can evolve. The only reason we need coal, oil and uranium
is to supply our massively growing population.

2. Peacefully establish family planning clinics in every neighborhood in every
village, town and city where each woman is given the legally protected right to
freely decide if and when to birth her children. Very few women want 6, 7, 8 kids.
More want none at all, but the vast majority want no more than 1, 2 or 3. Abortion
is rarely necessary because thousands of childless couples are waiting to adopt.

In this way, the human race can live in a natural balance with a healthy biosphere
that provides everything we need because, with less people, work is more valuable
with plenty of resources for everyone, and thus no possibility of obsessively
growing super corporations or massive federal bureacracies, no overcrowded cities
infested with crime and crooked politics, no thousands of air-polluting coal-fired
power plants, no thousands of oil wells spilling from unsafe rigs and platforms.
Modern technology has already developed cleaner sources of electricity, like solar,
wind, geo-thermal, tidal and battery-powered vehicles, which are perfect for a
smaller and more sensitive human population working as a friendly network of
locally sovereign towns and villages who trade freely for everyone's mutual benefit.

We have the scientific ability to create a virtual paradise on Earth for everyone
and everyone's children for a million years and beyond, or we can let our predatory
instincts grow and drive us blindly and stupidly into ecocide and self-extinction.


>>>>right click the above to highlight it, left click, right click "copy", then go to your file and right click, then right click "print", the right click "selection", and OK to print. Print enough copies for bulletin boards nearby. Use the left click and "paste", right click, for emailing to all your friends.

So, how many people can learn about this dilemma now, today, tomorrow, next
week, next month and throughout this year and next? Is there still enough time
to change, and will enough people think about it and make a rational choice?
If you pass this letter on to some one you know, that might help.
Spreading this around the world WILL help, DO IT!!!

I think condensing your "How to Save the Earth" essay would be more effective. There were complaints on the Letter's length. From "your "How to Save the Earth";
people don't enjoy living like bees or ants! Today we
are seeing road-rage, air-rage and school-rage. Imagine
how much worse we would behave all jammed inside
enormous ghettos! Then again, if we assume rich and poor
would still be living in different neighborhoods, the most
wealthy would probably have far more plush and spacious
accommodations, away from the sweltering mobs of hoi polloi,
like it is today, but involving billions more suffering people.

There are several ways to prevent the above scenario from
becoming a daily fact of life:

1. Global pandemic disease and die-off,

2. Environmental collapse and mass starvation,

3. Revolution, dictatorship & genocide,

4. World War Three,

5. Peaceful family planning to reduce the human population
and 100% recycling of all waste and garbage would return
the Earth to its natural balance.

Choose thoughtfully, but know that time is running out.

It feels wondeful that at least one person is actually reading and thinking about my online writings. Thankyou so much! But I am also advocating, by example, the old fashioned practice of taking an hour from a busy day to read something important, not a capsule version of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", but the whole book; and the full length of my essays, poems, calendars and short novel. Part of our modern dilemma is the commercial drive for quick responses to ads and quick sales and quick thinking in general, which is part of the reason why people can ignore the obvious decline of the natural environment. To survive, people need to stop and take the time to think about what they're doing to themselves and their still-living planet.

The meteoric dust that settles makes up for any shrinkage, and the Earth is at a stable size. Perhaps in billions of years it will be a few miles less in diameter as the moon is just a small dot because it is more distant. No more tides of much consequence, and the sun hotter.
Will humans make it to the sun's red giant phase, then move to other planets? Or will they have blown it and ruined their biosphere from fossil fuel burning and overpopulation????
After the human debacle, will there ever be intelligent life on Earth again?? Perhaps an intelligent cockroach dressed like Mr. Peanut??