death-defying speeds down crowded highways don't drive into each other. The same reasons a nuclear world didn't self destruct. And the same reasons across the planet people are working smart, long and hard to improve the wellbeing of others.
A quadrupling of the planet's wealth since the 1970s didn't just produce dangerous billionaire classes, even dreadfully unequally distributed it has still enabled a wellbeing for billions of people never dreamed of before. And we can do so much better.
I'm reading an old biography by journalist James Reston, and I liked something he said in the intro when speaking about all the terrors and wars the planet came through to 1991, when he published. "And in America, while the extremists of the Right and the Left made the most noise, the moderates made most of the laws." The eager zealots and seditionists who unite in believing the center must be destroyed are nothing new.
That was Reston looking back. It wasn't quite so clear looking forward, as we are now. "In 1919, Lord Grey, the British foreign secretary, said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." He was wrong, of course. "But just as I came to the end of my journey, Uncle Sam turned them on again."
It's worth pointing out that our long traditions of democracy and stability of government are very different from Germany and Russia, which had none when they self destructed again and again.
Not to diminish climate change. It's going to be devastating tragedy upon tragedy. It will cause many wars and deaths. It will require us to change how we live and to build and rebuild. But even a brief scan of history since the time of Lord Grey shows that that is what we do. And there are far too many books now to burn.
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