Despite persuasive evidence that vaccinations prevent or lessen the effects of the coronavirus, vaccine resistance persists, endangering the rest of the population. And our failure to provide vaccines to poor countries increases exponentially an invitation for new even deadlier variants to emerge.
More pertinent to the survival of humans, gruesome disasters including fires, floods, horrific storms attributed to climate change, and warnings of almost certain future catastrophes could make the planet unlivable. Tragically, these ever accelerating threats have elicited stunted responses from nations. Many offer inadequate pledges, renege and cheat on their commitments, and almost all give priority to economic and lifestyle choices.
To rely on activists, as passionate and committed as they may be, who seek to influence politicians and others of an impending apocalypse from climate change, is increasingly looking like a dead-end.
Science may offer the only hope of preventing the extinction of the human species and proving Henry Gee wrong in his forecast. Technologies such as carbon capture (removal) which holds great promise and yet to be discovered scientific breakthroughs offer the only realistic solutions for reversing the effects of climate change since international plans to cut emissions fall short of points of no return.
Drastic action is called for. Instead of investing in desperate efforts to convince those who are immune to facts and logic of the dire emergency, the international community of rational people should take sweeping action.
A massive commitment to save the planet must be launched now . We need a climate change Manhattan Project, like the successful World War II program that beat Germany and Japan to the development of an atomic bomb. Although the bomb ended WWII it inflicted enormous death and destruction. A Manhattan Project for climate change and other potential catastrophes would in contrast protect lives and hopefully disrupt the threat of extinction,
This project should not only study and expand existing alternative technologies but should also explore new ones. We should enlist the best scientific minds to think outside of the box--what Buddhists call "beginners mind." That means thinking without assumptions or limits. Primarily embracing existing technologies developed by for-profit enterprises, runs the risk of lobbies, cronyism, pork-barrel projects, and aversion to explorations that don't promise immediate returns leading the battle against climate change. And with the profit motive at the forefront of the "leave it to the market" model for innovation and implementation of alternative energy sources, timetables for slowing and reversing the warming of the planet are out of touch with natures deadlines for extinction of life.
That's why the Climate Manhattan Project should be initiated, organized, and administered outside of government--preferably by trustworthy elder leaders with management expertise from the business world or other domains who are at a point in their lives beyond personal financial self-interest.
The urgency for immediate action became abundantly clear to me when I recently revisited an article that I wrote fourteen years ago, two years after Al Gore released his groundbreaking 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, which set out to educate the public about climate change. The media was rife with warnings by Gore and others. The compelling data warranted an all-hands-on-deck alarm to make addressing climate change the number-one priority for the world. But it didn't happen then and it's not happening now.
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