[Colorado-Valley]

Just saw this graduation speech by Bill Moyers to Huntington College.

"... So I have been thinking seriously about what I might say to you in this Baccalaureate service. Frankly, I'm not sure anyone from my generation should be saying anything to your generation except, "We're sorry. We're really sorry for the mess you're inheriting. We are sorry for the war in Iraq. For the huge debts you will have to pay for without getting a new social infrastructure in return. We're sorry for the polarized country. The corporate scandals. The corrupt politics. Our imperiled democracy. We're sorry for the sprawl and our addiction to oil and for all those toxins in the environment. Sorry about all this, class of 2006. Good luck cleaning it up."

"You're going to have your hands full, frankly. I don't need to tell you of the gloomy scenarios being written for your time. Three books on my desk right now question whether human beings will even survive the 21st century. Just listen to their titles: The Long Emergency: Surviving the Convergence Catastrophe; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; The Winds of Change: Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations.

"These are just three of the recent books that make the apocalypse prophesied in the Bible ... the Revelations of St. John ... look like child's play. I won't summarize them for you except to say that they spell out Doomsday scenarios for global catastrophe. There's another recent book called The Revenge of Gaia that could well have been subtitled, "The Earth Strikes Back," because the author, James Lovelock, says human consumption, our obsession with technology and our habit of "playing God" are stripping bare nature's assets until the Earth's only consolation will be to take us down with her.

"Before this century is over, he writes, "Billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be kept in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." So there you have it: The future of the race, to be joined in a final and fatal march of the penguins ..."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0522-35.htm

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'W')ow! Moyers is completely awake!

[aldente]

You're sort of on the wrong track there pstarr, it is not about convincing people. We all are stuck in certain situations and circumstances and as much as one tries to modify the outcome of short term future events it nearly always is related to influencing the (personal) monetary realm.

Michael C.Ruppert once commented that if there is anything that could change things it is the way money works.

So who does a Bill Moyer actually suppose to preach to, the financially independent or the massively indebted (which, let's face it, is the majority)!?

[miraculix]

it is not all gloom in this remarkable speech:

Of course that's not the only scenario. You can Google your way to a lot of optimistic possibilities. For one, the digital revolution that will transform how we do business and live our lives, including active intelligent wireless devices that in just a short time could link every aspect of our physical world and even human brains, creating hundreds of thousands of small-scale business opportunities. There are medical breakthroughs that will conquer many ills and extend longevity. Economic changes will lift hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty in the next 25 years, dwarfing anything that's come along in the previous 100 years. These are possible scenarios, too. But I'm a journalist, not a prophet. I can't say which of these scenarios will prove true. You won't be bored, that's for sure. I just wish I were going to be around to see what you do with the peril and the promise.

This passage summerizes my feelings the best:

If the world confuses you a little, it confuses me a lot. When I graduated fifty years ago I thought I had the answers. But life is where you get your answers questioned, and the odds are that you can look forward to being even more perplexed fifty years from now than you are at this very moment. If your parents level with you, truly speak their hearts, I suspect they would tell you life confuses them, too, and that it rarely turns out the way you thought it would.

I find I am alternatively afraid, cantankerous, bewildered, often hostile, sometimes gracious, and battered by a hundred new sensations every day. I can be filled with a pessimism as gloomy as the depth of the middle ages, yet deep within me I'm possessed of a hope that simply won't quit. A friend on Wall Street said one day that he was optimistic about the market, and I asked him, "Then why do you look so worried?" He replied, "Because I'm not sure my optimism is justified." Neither am I. So I vacillate between the determination to act, to change things, and the desire to retreat into the snuggeries of self, family and friends.

I wonder if any of us in this great, disputatious, over-analyzed, over-televised and under-tenderized country know what the deuce we're talking about, myself included. All my illusions are up for grabs, and I find myself re-assessing many of the assumptions that served me comfortable much of my life.

[FoxV]

What's he trying to do, help the Die-off along by getting all new graduates to commit suicide.

This is a joke right, he did not actually give that speech did he.

[Eli]

Pstarr is right on track with this one.

No one gives a hoot what Bill Moyers thinks, he is stuck on public broadcasting for heavens sake.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'P')starr is right on track with this one.

No one gives a hoot what Bill Moyers thinks, he is stuck on public broadcasting for heavens sake.

[dhfenton]

I agree, Moyers' candor is primarily because he is a public broadcast journalist. When they don't have the corporate Czars telling them what is and isn't aceptable journalism, they can tell the truth as they find it. Bill Moyers has always been a particularly brilliant man with the courage to tell it as it is; not how corporate America wants you to believe it is. When Bill speaks, I listen; because this is a man who is going to say things that you don't hear on the big four networks, and certainly not on Clear Channel radio. Unfortunately, I don't see the future Moyers, Herschs and Cronkites out there in young journalism. They're more worried about getting their hair done, wearing designer clothes, and landing the big reward from the corporate giants that control them.

[CARVER]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Before this century is over, he writes, "Billions of us will die ..."

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CARVER', '.')..so yes, billions of us will die before the century is over.

[Novus]

For a long time now I have been viewing the the 21st century as the century of death. The number of people dying will outnumber those born by a large margin leading to a massive population decrease by 2100. There will probably be fewer than a billion people alive by then.