Why Must We Overlook Such Lethal Dangers?
by Alexandar H.

"All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing" -Mohandas Gandhi

    When teenagers participate in the activity now commonly referred to as "street racing" they reach speeds in excess of 150 miles-per-hour in business or residential districts, or in alleyways.  What would happen if a single vehicle were to roll out of its driveway and block the street?

    It is for this reason that street racing is illegal, but what other risks are we as a people taking that are just as lethal?  In 1976 a movie came out called Gumball Rally.  Before entering California, in discussing the 55 MPH speed limit with his navigator, O'Bannon (the main character) remarked, "Fifty five is dangerous; it's fast enough to kill you - but it's slow enough to make you think you're safe."

    If 55 is considered dangerous by some, then why would those same people go faster?  The average speed of traffic on the I-5 is 75 MPH despite the 65 MPH speed limit.  The speedometer says you're going 70, but with the gentle curves, ups and downs, bridges and tunnels when necessary the freeways fool you into perceiving speed differently.  With this "freeway effect" most drivers cannot accurately estimate in human terms (rather than mathematical terms) how fast they're going.  If there were a row of parked cars inches from a speeding car, the later car's speed would be more obvious.

    In the same way that the freeway alters our perception of speed, there are many other things we don't notice.  For instance, there are many more toxins and harmful gasses in our atmosphere than there were one or two hundred years ago.  This is because everything we do that involves combustion (generating power, driving, etc.) places odd particles and gasses in the atmosphere; most of these have been proven harmful to oxygen breathing animals with lungs.  We have adapted of course, but not without consequence: none of the current contaminant-related lung diseases have been around more than 150 years.  Today, children are acquiring asthma at an alarming rate.

    At one time, when someone moved out of their parents home, they would find an open space, refine the necessary materials (usually wood), and would build their house WITHOUT spending their life's savings.  In the suburb that I live in the median price of a house (not a good or large house just a house) is above 700 THOUSAND dollars, and the price is rising.  Do you have 700 thousand dollars in the bank?  There are rumors that the housing "bubble" is about to burst.  when the bubble bursts the price of housing will drop significantly, but it will most likely take the economy with it.  After this happens, few people will have the money to pay for even a cheap house:  hence. Very few people will have a place to live.

    Fossil fuels have been used for over a thousand years and in most of that time (about until 1900) not that much of it was used.  Not until the twentieth Century did combustion-powered transportation and energy sources become popular. As these technologies became more refined, people started burning fossil fuels at an increasingly phenomenal rate.  It is known that all petroleum reserves on the planet will be depleted in a short period of time. What will happen when we no longer have any oil based fuels?  Natural gas is expected to run out not long after oil.  What will we heat our houses with when this happens?  Most of our power plants burn coal as fuel.  There is a limited amount of coal on the planet that's not to mention the health problems resulting from coal mining and coal and the fact that burning coal creates more and worse pollutants than burning gasoline.  What will power our cities when we run out of coal?   Or do we want another Chernobyl? a nuclear disaster far worse than Hiroshima? Our society (specifically in the United States and China) is completely unprepared for these eventualities.  But Wait:

There's more!

Throughout recorded history, the human race has been very warlike. "bad stewards of the Earth" some have called us.  near the end of World War II, Germany almost created a devastating weapon, but the United States invaded and stopped them.  After taking the German scientists over to North America to work for us, the U.S. refined their similar weapon: the nuclear bomb.  (side note: it is pronounced "nuclear" NOT "nucular".)  During the Cold War the major nations of the world (including the United states) signed a "Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty" that mandated that no countries not already having nuclear weapons must not create them AND that countries that already have them must engage in a "general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international controls." Of the signatories, the United States has not destroyed its nuclear cache and Mr. Bush has disavowed the treaty, thereby encouraging all other nations to do likewise, has had "little Nucular bombs," as he calls them, built for a what he considers a small scale nuclear war and now is even talking about using these "little nucular bombs" on Iran. (In actuality these new bombs are significantly larger than the ones that were used on Japan in 1945).  The devastation and loss of life from the use of these bombs will be much worse and more wide-scale than that caused by the use of depleted uranium, a radioactive substance that has killed and injured millions of children (and even our own troops) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. The end result of the use of these bombs could be the end of all on Earth.

    So when will we hit the car with no brakes?  Obviously, different problems will come at different times, but most of them can be circumvented.  Harmful gasses and particles can be removed from our atmosphere, the technology for that is in existence.  To lower the price of housing, the government could at least sponsor a program to build single-family dwellings and give them away to the poor FOR FREE.  if congress revoked NAFTA and imposed tariffs, it would build up the economy terrifically and make life more affordable for Americans.  If we used certain renewable fuels like ethanol from sugar cane or hemp (also known as marijuana), we would never run out because we could regrow it quickly and hemp can be grown for hundreds of years in the same place.  If we started replacing our power plants with plants that run off of natural (non-nuclear) sources, solar cells and dam/hydro-generators to name a couple, we would have a never ending electrical source.  And,

This is key:

    We need to stop fighting our deadly wars.  As history has shown, possession of something inevitably leads to its use. To stop people from using armies to attack each other, we must rid ourselves of the armies, that is to say we need to find our servicemen other jobs and disband the armed forces. We can raise future armies, if necessary.  Japan lost a world war with its army but conquered the world with its technology and lack of an army. 

    And above all, drive only as fast as you can easily control your car (90), and don't kill anyone.  If we're careful, we will never have to ask the question "why did we ignore such lethal dangers - and almost go extinct for it?"


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