Planet Earth Year 20

Planet Earth, Year 2050

By Traci Hukill, AlterNet. Posted January 25, 2006.

"...the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is the world's most underappreciated eco-study, it's definitely the most unevenly appreciated one. When the huge report first emerged last spring after four years, $24 million and the efforts of more than 1,300 scientists in 95 countries, it made headlines elsewhere. In December it was awarded a Zayed Prize, something like an environmentalist Nobel. Here in the United States, though, the media barely registered its existence.

The U.N.-backed Millennium Assessment is the most thorough survey of global ecosystems ever undertaken. It's also the first report of its kind to link ecosystem health to human well-being, and in so doing strikes the rich, rich vein of human self-interest. Showing people what's in it for them is a great way to get something done..."

This study goes on to delinate specifics that we all will be forced to deal with:

• Governments will be grouped in security-obsessed regions
• Governments will become more tyrannical, exercising rigid control of goods and information.
  
• The wealth gap grows between and within nations.
  
• Wealthy nations shift resource-intensive industry to poorer countries
• Environmental neglect is exacerbated
• International environmental treaties are ignored.
  
• Resource Wars will be both large and small, but continuous
• Unprovoked attacks will be more common
• Religions will become more fundamentalist, more rigid, more intolerant of others
• Border security will be expanded due to environmental and economic migrations
• Shortages of critical energy will be a constant issue, rationing of electricity and petroeleum products will be common
  
• One bright spot: Less global trade means fewer species invasions. But ecosystem services overall show a decline, and most human well-being indicators deteriorate too…”

These are a few of the changes we can expect, both from this report and from my own readings of the situation.

We are in the midst of an enormous change for humanity, in particular those of us in the 'Western' World. We have become accustom to a life style that is no longer possible due to finite energy resources and 19th Century-style political manuevering.

The last bastion of freedom in the United States is the internet. We cannot march or act in protest without incurring the wrath of the Patriot Act which would label us terrorists if we block traffic or litter. Our news media is totally corrupt and completely subservient to the political power brokers in Washington. Our politicians are bought and traded by corporations like major league ball players. The process of voting for our politicians is now a subsidiary of Diebolt Corporation, And finally, the guarantees of rights and freedoms in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are now exceptions to the rule, rather than the rule of law.

Keep your eyes on the Internet, I have said for years that the politicians cannot allow the internet to continue without censorship. To complete their coup de'tat, the republicans must gain master of the internet.

Internet Freedom Under Fire: Act Now

"The CEOs of the largest cable and telephone companies are hatching a scheme that would give them control over what content you can view and what services you can use on the Internet.
Their plan would do away with the principle of "network neutrality" and shut down the open roadway we've come to expect on the Internet..."

Think, just for a few moments, about your children, and what kind of world you are preparing for them...