I have often felt in these discussions that mine was a lonely voice, in defending the rights of unborn generations to a share of these non renewable resources.

I don’t understand why the time period matters, or that a longer period to complete exhaustion of a resource is more defensible than a short period.

“Nonrenewable”essentially means, will INEVITABLY run out, while “renewable” essentially means, will NEVER run out, although admittedly a distinction should be made between perpetual power sources: Solar, wind, wave; and renewable resources like bio mass, which obviously needs to be managed.

I have tried to condense this idea into a question I can post at Online Opinion. Here, of course, you can register your vote, as well as comment. I suspect putting my full name in the post will be considered too confrontational for some, or too much of a challenge. I would stress here the suggestion that your family should know your user name, so even distant descendants will theoretically at least be able to look you up, while protecting your current anonymity.

I believe, historically, the 20^th and 21^st centuries are going to be a ‘stand out’ period, like the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Obviously, future historians are going to look back at this period, and make some judgements on the decisions we make.

But will it only be historians?

On another thread, it was suggested that we users make sure our families know our user names and passwords, ‘just in case’.

Out of idle curiosity, I checked the records OLO keeps of everyone’s posts. My first post was in April, 2006 (and I misspelt Muslim). I wonder how long will OLO continue to keep these posts?

Unlike past history, which has been largely interested in Heads of State, and people of
significance, in future it seems likely our descendants will be able to very easily and very quickly look up what we, as their personal ancestors, felt about about the issues of our day.

How are our great great grandchildren going to judge us, on issues like the use of non renewable resources?

More importantly, would awareness of personal accountability change anyone’s mind?

My name is Peter William Grimley, and I would like to state for the record, that I believe the over use of any resource -living or dead- to the point of depletion or extinction, is

STUPID.

How about you?

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And yet, I would suggest the most egregious discrimination is still in front of us. This discrimination is so ubiquitous, so all pervading, we don’t even see it. We take it for granted, every day.

Every day, we judge each other.

We -or at least, the more rational among us- judge each other not by our sex, or by the colour of our skin, or even by where we were born.

We judge each other by how much money we can put -and keep- in our pockets.

The more discerning reader might note the care I took, to avoid saying: “how much money we produce”. This is because, in this age, if anything we discriminate against people who produce; if you have to get your hands dirty to make a buck, you can’t be very bright.

I believe history will judge this age, as the time when some of the richest people were also the most useless. A great many of the richest people in our age produce nothing. They create nothing, they build nothing, they make nothing.

In fact, worse than nothing. They create debt.

Out of thin air.

In our current system, new money is created when a person, business or government walks into a bank and says “if you give my money today, I will give you back MORE money than I borrowed”.

Currently, minted money accounts for only about 3% of all money in circulation. The other 97% exists only in bank ledgers, as IOU’s from borrowers.

Almost half the price of most of the items we buy, can be attributed to interest on loans; by the producer, manufacturer, transporter, retailer etc., etc.

And the profits from this interest taking ends up, not in the coffers of democratic governments, but in the pockets of a few privileged individuals.

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The Crap we are fed.

How often have we been told by Governments of both persuasions that we must have investment? They make it sound like a gift.

Last I heard, investors put money into something, with the very real expectation of taking considerably more out; over a given -or sometimes, almost unending- period of time. The smartest investors obviously, achieve the best return for the lowest outlay.

What should we do then?

Hang a big sign outside Sydney Heads:

We live in a world which produces enough food for everyone. That’s right; we produce more than enough food for every single person on the planet, yet around 30,000 children die every day, from hunger, bad water and diseases all directly attributable to their lack of wealth.

And today, because the western world is facing a paper crisis, that number of fatalities, that number of children tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the crime of being poor, is set to escalate.

A paper crisis.

Not a shortage of paper. Not a shortage of resources, or willing labour, or technology, or intelligence, -although that last point is arguable.

A lot of people, living breathing children, women and men are going to die… because bankers can’t make their figures add up.

And the reason they can’t add up, is because they were essentially nonsensical to start with.

We have devolved into a simple two class system; those who pay interest, and those who collect interest. The collectors of interest are -ultimately- all individuals, whereas the payers of interest can be entire nations.

The poorest nations on the planet cannot afford to feed their own people, yet they are still expected to pay back loans to the richest nations.

“For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.” Source

Far from the rich helping the poor, the poor are working -and dying- to make the rich even richer.