In 1989 I was twenty four years old. In North America, a major free trade agreement was being signed by a right wing President Reagan, and an equally pro business regime in Canada. Toronto was booming, spurred by a real estate frenzy. Money was everywhere, but I had a palpable sense that I was being bought off and the real bill would come due much later.
A sea change was happening. In Canada, Mr. Trudeau was being systematically discredited for deficit spending, even though Mr. Mulroney, the Prime Minister at the time would actually plunge the country into more debt over a shorter time than Mr. Trudeau ever did. However, unlike Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Mulroney would achieve his rampant profligacy without lowering the poverty rate or increasing the literacy rate.
The true legacy of Mr. Mulroney is the elimination of the "manufacturing tax" to help unburden corporations and the replacement of the tax with the "Goods And Services Tax" payed for by every citizen in the country on the overwhelming majority of every purchase they ever made.
In the United States Ronald Reagan was busy attacking Grenada and removing solar panels that President Carter had placed on the roof of the White House. It was an era of sea change whose ramifications are felt to this day. Our consent was manipulated and manufactured and we accepted it like the sheep we are.
For some reason, I had a Time Magazine, a publication that I never read and rarely respected. But this issue caught my eye. Time Magazine named the planet earth as its "Man Of The Year" in an effort to raise awareness.
Tewnty one years on we've accomplished nothing. We sit like turtles in a pot of ever warming water, stunned and stupid, pretending to ourselves that scientists are "kooks" while Chrysler urges us to stay the course. How is it that I live in a world where economic indicators are more important than environmental indicators?
Thats one reason that I don't have kids.
Yes, people have been warning us the end is near since time immemorial, but humans have never existed on this scale, nor have they ever faced problems of this magnitude.
In the face of billions of Chinese, a billion people on the Indian subcontinent and hundreds of millions of people in Indochina all wanting and increasingly gaining what we take for granted the tap of consumption is clearly unsustainable. And frankly, in a just world, its difficult for me to righteously deny to others standards that I enjoy. That don't seem fair to me.
With a nod to George Carlin, people don't care about the planet, they care about their own habitat and by extension, their own self interest. Those of us who are most invested in the status quo will be the last to admit that there is a problem. This revelation will probably not come until they are sandbagging their front porch. We might be the most intelligent species, but no one said we were the wisest.
So, I have come to the conclusion that it is time to party like its 1999. The game is over, our fate is sealed, so why worry about it? Its not like I have kids or anything.
At the end of the day, the only question is in what round will humanity go down? My money is on the under.
http://www.goyestoeverything.com
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