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Rolla Peace News September 29, 2020 |
Dear Friends:Editor's note: Please consider writing for our newsletter. It's always very exciting to be able to publish submissions from our readers.In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 2. LAST FRIDAY'S GLOBAL STRIKE FOR THE CLIMATE 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) Sir John Glubb and the Fate of Empires b) China: Carbon-Neutral by 2060 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 This Thursday, Helen and I will not be able to attend the Noon Vigil for Peace. We have been potentially exposed to the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease and are self-quarantining. Subject to a negative test, we intend to return to the Thursday Noon Peace Vigils the following week. We will put a few signs on our front porch. Please feel free to take them and hold vigil on Thursday without us. 2. LAST FRIDAY'S GLOBAL STRIKE FOR THE CLIMATE Rolla joined over a thousand other locations worldwide in holding an action for the Climate last Friday. While nowhere near as large as last year's action, the situation is now even more dire than it was last year as we suffer through a season of unprecedented wildfires in the West and a record-setting hurricane season in the Southeast. 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) Sir John Glubb and the Fate of Empires b) China: Carbon-Neutral by 2060 Sir John Glubb and the Fate of Empires Last week I recommended an article by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies which contained a link to a short essay written by John Glubb in 1976, THE FATE OF EMPIRES and SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL“Empires, like adolescents, think they’ll live forever. In geopolitics, as in biology, expiration dates are never visible. When death comes, it’s always a shock.” This is an amazing essay. Glubb traces 3,000 years of empires in Europe and the Middle East and describes striking simlarities among them. Empires go through distinct ages. They are: 1. The Age of Pioneers, when a people burst out of their homeland and spread into other lands. 2 .The Age of Conquests, when the nascent empire subdues and incorporates within itself new lands. 3. The Age of Commerce, when the empire grows wealthy as the center of trade. 4. The Age of Affluence, when wealth and power begin to lead to moral decay. 5. The Age of Intellect, when empire turns to intellectual and artistic pursuits. 6. The Age of Decadence — the twilight years as the empire, hollowed out by selfishness, greed, and a loss of a sense of duty, after too long a period of wealth and power, enters a downward spiral, ending eventually in disintegration. Glubb notes that the entire process, regardless of dates and the level of technology, takes about 250 years or 10 generations and this appears constant over 3,000 years of European and Middle-Eastern history. Glubb surmises that these are natural stages of growth and decline, much as an individual goes through childhood, adolescence, youth, middle-age and old-age. He also notes that while the lives of empires shows an amazing uniformity, their destruction, which depends on external factors, does not. The last stage should be of particular interest to us, here in the United States, since that is where we are, as an empire, now. All the signs of disintegration are there. I think we would be wise to terminate our empire voluntarily and gracefully; however, that is the last thing our leaders have in mind. Whether its Donald Trump's desire to return to a glorious mythological past of long long ago or Joe Biden's desire to return to a more recent era, there seems to be little talk of cutting our loses before they overwhelm us. This 26 page essay should be required reading in every high-school history course; but, as Glubb points out, “We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.” I think the reason Glubb is not so widely read is that he slaughters so many sacred cows. Perhaps, Dear Reader, he slaughters some of yours too. Actually, I feel somewhat ashamed that as I approach 80 years, I have never seen this essay before. And I wonder: how about you, Dear Reader? Are you familiar with this essay? If not, read it; and if you think it is as important as I do, recommend it to your family and friends. China: Carbon-Neutral by 2060 China has announced at the United Nations that it plans to be carbon-neutral by 2060, 40 years from now. China has suffered tremendously this Spring and Summer from climate-change-induced floods of biblical proportions. This is to China's immense credit, that it is finally taking climate change seriously — and particularly, to Ou Hongyi's credit. 17-year-old Ou Hongyi is, to my knowledge, China's first climate striker. But how about the United States? How many years of devastating wildfires before we finally announce plans to go carbon-neutral? China can't do it alone. No country or group of countries can. Climate change is a global threat to all of us. We all must put aside our differences and work to preserve our only home, Planet Earth. Benjamin Franklin put it so well when we said: If China succeeds, it might shave 0.2 to 0.3°C from global heating forecasts for 2100. That is not nearly enough. We, in the United States, and everybody else must do our part too. And 2060 may very well be too late. We must make progress faster.“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” Rolla Peace News is distributed by email once a week on Tuesday evenings (except on rare occasions) and is posted on the web at http://tomsager.org (click on Grassroots Rolla: at the top of rightmost column). If you don't wish to get notices of peace events in the Rolla area, let me know and I'll take you off this list. If you want to be added to this list, let me know. Wage peace, Tom yushasager (at) yahoo.com |