As 2019 slips into the rear-view mirror faster than a firefly flashes its tail-lights, 2020 rolls into view like a wildfire across Australia. Or, like a forest fire in California. This new year faces jam-ups like Los Angeles, Denver or New York’s gridlocked traffic. Yes, 2020 grows dirtier faster than the Brown Cloud arching over every major city in the USA. Cancer chases and catches millions of Americans faster than a Tesla can re-charge its batteries.
What’s so amazing about 2020: Americans face multiple horrific challenges on many fronts. We’ve got the killing fields of Chicago where folks kill each other daily in that city’s “gun free” zone. We face racial violence growing in the ghettoes across this country. We face water systems going dry. We continue killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan—with no end in sight. We see our schools graduating teenagers with little ability to read, write or perform simple math. An astounding 7 out of 10 African-American babies arrive out of wedlock to be brought up on welfare and single mothers.
Across our major cities, we saw 38 police officers meet their death at the hands of violent citizens executing them in 2019. How many will die defending us this year? In New York City, thug teens poured water on officers and taunted them with impunity.
Our country faces more problems than a bathtub full of worms. And you know, it’s not going to get better in our big cities. It’s going to get worse, much worse. We’re going to see racial tensions escalate into major violence. We’re going to see backlashes on Muslims as some of their jihadist buddies blow up a few places in the USA or kill a bunch of Americans. We’re going to see drug addiction, suicides and opioid deaths skyrocket. It’s in the cards.
We may be facing “civilizational despair.” A debilitating sense or loss of our culture, our language, our laws and our connectedness to each other and our country. It’s the end result of multiculturalism: and it’s moving across our land at breakneck speed. We, the American people, don’t know who we are anymore because we’re no longer ourselves inside our own country. You see it reflected in the nasty divisions in our U.S. Congress. Two sides hate each other: democrats and republicans will not pull together for the common good. And several House Members from Michigan and Minnesota would like to destroy our country: Somalian Ilhan Omar and Palestinian Rashida Tlaib. Another from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez follows their lead. All three possess cotton-candy for brains.
But one of the most pressing items for 2020 stems from our entire planet facing horrific problems. Last year, Time named Greta Thunberg “Person of the Year” for her stance on “Catastrophic Climate Destabilization.” At 15, she’s outspoken for the children of her generation. At the same time, she’s suffered a boat-load of negative feedback from many quarters.
Whether you understand climate change or not, accept it or not—the human race faces some of the greatest consequences for our species in over 2,000 years.
She said, “We are at the beginning of a mass extinction of life on this planet, and all you can talk about is fairy tales of eternal economic growth…how dare you.”
She’s correct! According to the 40 year study by Norman Myers of Oxford University, we lose 100 species every single day of the year to extinction in 2020. The famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson stated emphatically that, on our current course, “The human race will wipe out 1/3 of all animal species on this planet via encroachment or poisoning of their habitat by 2050.”
Because, at some point, as we destroy the “Web of Life” on this planet, we too, one day, will find ourselves heading into Mother Nature’s wood-chipper.
Greta Thunberg said, “I often talk to people who say, ‘No, we have to be hopeful and to inspire each other, and we can’t tell (people) too many negative things’ . . . But, no — we have to tell it like it is. Because if there are no positive things to tell, then what should we do, should we spread false hope? We can’t do that, we have to tell the truth.”
For example, 20 years ago, Oprah Winfrey exposed the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” just off San Francisco at 60 million tons of plastic compacted between two gyers, about the size of Texas and 30 to 90 feet deep. As a veteran 60 year scuba diver around the world, I’ve seen it. It’s huge, it’s ugly, it’s growing, and it’s deadly to MILLIONS of marine and avian creatures in our oceans. Today, because no world leader has moved to stop it, the “patch” grew to 100 million tons. Today, fish eat the plastic, birds eat the plastic, the sun breaks it down so it’s in our food chain; so, we humans eat the plastic and our children.
And not one single leader in the world will put a simple 50 cent deposit-return law into the mix to create an economic incentive to return all plastics for proper reuse. NOT ONE leader and NO ONE in the United States Congress! We humans may be clever, but we are stupid beyond measure.
I’ve given you a couple of the problems facing America and all humans on this planet in 2020. We created 70,000 chemicals that we inject into the air, water and land 24/7. Anybody speaking up about that? Of course, every person reading this commentary knows a friend with cancer or you face cancer yourself. Why? Because no one speaks up against Monsanto, Bayer or Dow Chemical Company. Go see the move: Dark Waters, to show you how amoral those people prove themselves.
And, even with the “climate change” people, they refuse to connect the fact that the human race grows by 83 million people, net gain, annually—so, as we head toward adding 3 billion more of ourselves—there’s no way in hell we could save ourselves as we exceed 10 billion people by 2050 on this fragile little planet out in the far reaches of the Milky Way.
Sobering point: I have tried to interview on 60 Minutes, NPR, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, CNN, FOX and over 100 radio stations to bring the facts for the past 20 years. Result: they flee any discussion of human overpopulation in America. Yet, we remain on course to add another 140 million people in 30 years! It’s too late for India; and once that next 140 million people land on America, it will be too late for us.
As a civilization, we face horrific consequences as to our numbers, to our water, energy and resources. We face tremendous consequences as to our quality of life and standard of living. Are we doing anything to make it a better future for our children? Answer: Nope! We prove ourselves as stupid as those people who let India reach 1.3 billion and China hit 1.4 billion.
We might survive 2020, but the sleddin’ will get rougher, nastier and more than gritty in the coming decade.
And Greta Thunberg? She’s got guts and we need to move on her activism with our own activism for our own children.
Frosty Wooldridge
Golden, CO
Population-Immigration-Environmental specialist: speaker at colleges, civic clubs, high schools and conferences. Facebook: Frosty Wooldridge. Facebook Adventure Page: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World. www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com, www.frostywooldridge.com. Six continent world bicycle traveler, Speaker/writer/adventurer, Adventure book: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World.
