A New Year's Wish for Citizens of the United States

The New Year provides all of us with a new beginning.  Many of us make resolutions to lose weight, earn a degree or find a better job.  Others vow to get rid of their current spouse! Give their kids to the Salvation Army! 

What about our country?  What resolutions would you make for America?  Let’s find out!

America faces daunting challenges in 2009 and beyond.  After eight years of treading water at the federal level with a totally inept president--we drown in debt, muddle through endless war, stagger under environmental calamities and find our economy punched in the nose with a sledge hammer.

We face millions of Baby Boomers retiring which means they tap into an already delicate Social Security system.  Our environment suffers under devastating onslaughts of air pollution suffocating our cities; 80,000 chemicals injected into the water, land and air daily; species extinction accelerating, climate change and dozens of other problems. 

We discover energy demand rising while availability descends.  We witness the housing bubble bursting while foreclosures explode by the millions.  We watch our 14 million unemployed citizens struggle while our Congress substitutes them with millions of imported of unemployed immigrants.

From the world’s largest creditor nation, we now suffer horrific international debt as well as our own $10.1 trillion federal debt.

Like a 400 pound fat man at an “all you can eat” buffet, the citizens of this country continue devouring their resources, land, water and energy like tomorrow won’t arrive!  Not only that, they (we) added 3.1 million of humans to this country this year and every year via immigration—to accelerate those consumption levels. 

To show you what our actions mean to future generations, I invite you to visit www.storyofstuff.com with Annie Leonard.  Take 20 minutes to educate yourself as to what we face in 2009 and the long term—stemming from mindless consumerism for decades.

In addition to her brilliant rendition of America’s profligate and wasteful ways, she empowers you to take action toward a more sustainable future. 

Beyond that, in 2009, we face quickening damage to our planet home on a scale that escapes most Americans.

“The damage to global ecologies by human activity accelerated rapidly with the onset of industrialism,” said James Howard Kunstler, author, The Long Emergency. “The twentieth century, with its oil-nurtured bloom of human population, was especially harsh.  Everywhere, biological complexity was compromised or reduced to monoculture.  Habitats were wrecked.  Species exterminated.  Terrain and water were poisoned.  The amount of asphalt paving alone in the United States represents an ecological insult beyond calculation.  These man-made environmental catastrophes will combine with and be reinforced by the new problems of climate change in this Long Emergency [we all face].”

To give you a visual on our condition, you may visit “Planet in Peril” on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/planet.in.peril/

By viewing any portions of the series, you will see what kind of havoc humanity forces onto this planet and billions of its creatures.  For instance, we slaughter 100 million sharks annually for nothing more than their fins—for shark fin soup no less—while  we toss them back into the water alive to die an agonizing finality.  We kill 1 million animals that cross our roads in the USA every 24 hours=365 million vertebrate deaths annually, i.e., hawks, eagles, dogs, cats, mice, gophers, foxes, horses, deer, blue birds, armadillos, sheep, etc. They go about their business when they get whacked by our vehicles.  What right do we possess to kill THAT many fellow creatures year after year?

By visiting this website, you will enjoy a compelling audio-visual book that you will find entertaining and educational.  Visit this web site by Chris Martenson: http://www.chrismartenson.com/environmental_data 

He will guide you toward enlightenment and action to make for a better future for all creatures on this planet including humanity.

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