Something went funky about twelve years ago. It seems like we entered an era where the American people were confronted with the need to educate themselves about something new every few years. In 1998, we all had to learn about the history and use of impeachment, including its use by the British government in colonial times. Then, in 2000, we had to learn all about the intricacies of the Electoral College and our state-by-state voting laws. In 2001, we had to learn all about Islam. In 2002, we all got to know a lot (much of it wrong) about Iraq. In 2005, we learned all about the New Orleans levee system and the diversion of the Mississippi River. Since 2008, we’ve been forced to study the intricacies of the financial system. And, now, in 2010, we’re learning about deep water drilling and our government’s regulation of the energy industry. It’s like we entered an era of crisis, where our own ignorance began coming back to bite us, and bite us again, and again, and again. What’s the next thing that will crop up? What are we ignoring that we ought to be studying?
I am going to take a guess. I think it’s something agricultural. Lord, I hope it’s not the Korean Peninsula.
Generations of turning a blind eye, assuming that North America was an invincible continent, that we could sever the tops of her mountains to gleen coal, drain her resources of water & minerals, all the while assuming she would not only forgive us but continue to give back abundantly are proving to be nothing more than our arrogance.
We are a country that has been running on ignorant arrogance. The BP blowout is such a black and white example. The technology is sorely lacking to be there in the first place and the fact that we tag our situation in the terms of ‘response’ rather than ‘control’ points to our inadequacies.
we’re also going to have to learn more about volcanos, I guess.
Wait what? How does the mountaintop removal fit with the rest? Yeah it’s horrible, but it doesn’t match Booman’s list.
I wouldn’t have a problem with empire if the people who ran weren’t Grade A idiots.
I get what you are saying:
but you make a leap of faith:
More and more of Americans tuned into Rush and Glenn Beck instead.
Food Systems will be the next crisis. We should be reestablishing bioregional food systems, but that’s barely even on the radar.
Instead, too many folks are focusing on branded organics from big agribiz players and food manufacturers.
We’re entering an era where resource constraints are going to push us to make more unforced errors, which will expose the weaknesses of many of the institutions we’ve come to think of as being reliable.
I meant to add this in, but forgot. In 2008, we had to learn all about superdelegates and the intricacies of the nominating process.
And now I am reminded that in 2009, we had to learn all about the Budget Reconciliation process in Congress.
Roughly one-third of what we eat depends on honeybees for pollination. As bees collect pollen for food, they spread it from one flower to another, which helps plants reproduce.
Recently, honeybees have received considerable attention because of a mysterious affliction known as “colony collapse disorder,” in which much of a colony suddenly disappears, leaving the queen behind. So far, scientists have not been able to determine the cause–or come up with a solution.
Last year, 2.5 million bee colonies produced 144 million pounds of honey. That’s down from 3.3 million colonies that produced 169 million pounds 20 years ago, according to figures from the U.S. Agriculture Department. It is estimated that 33% of all the colonies in the U.S. died last winter.
yeah, honeybees are a major concern. Just anecdotally, I see many fewer of them around the house or on the lawn in recent years.
we’re going to learn about famine and martial law.
that’s my bet.
I figure you’ll enjoy the newest thread.
I hope people understand the result of these crisis’ The result is more power accrued to the Federal Government
First, we may have been confronted but we didn’t learn a damn thing. We never do. Or from a slightly different angle, we learn the way little kids do: not to quit stealing from mommy’s purse, but how to do it better so we can avoid paying the price. I can’t agree with the premise though. In Lincoln’s time we had to rethink the right of some people owning others. During the Depression/WWII we had to briefly consider the implications of American capitalism and American empire. We had to consider those same things again in the Vietnam era. History just keeps repeating, mostly to no avail.
As to the next Big Topic, the obvious specific answer is food and water. But limiting our efforts to those onrushing disasters will merely delay the next apocalyptic disasters unless radical changes are made to our core assumptions about distribution of the national wealth, the electoral process, population, international conflict, and the shibboleth of economic growth, just as examples. Each of those in turn spawns long lists of specific categories such as taxes, transportation, the “rights” and responsibilities of corporations, the definition of crime, the existence of the the Electoral College and the Senate, and on and on: each subhead constitutes a barrier to doing anything about the larger crisis.
It’s like the current oil blowout: will we finally start to figure out that the carbon economy is killing us, or will we just learn how to make better valves? I know what I believe, and it ain’t the same as what I wish I believed.
we will get to stop learning about rigs and riser pipes and mud and blowout preventers, and we’ll get to learn how much oil we use, how much we have in domestic reserves, where it’s located, and the real risks involved in drilling in those locations.
And if that happens, I’ll start thinking of Obama as a damn genius.
for starters. Not to mention peak phosphorus and nitrogen.
Right now we need to learn more about coastal ecosystems and the recovery thereof when confronted with oil.
The vast majority of these are man-made crises. Thus, they are not inevitable.