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The future isn’t what it used to be

The future isn’t what it used to be

Two recent films couldn’t be more at odds in their vision of the future. Mad Max: Fury Road is the long-awaited continuation of the Mad Max movie series. The movie is essentially a relentless chase scene set in a world burned to desert by climate change and bereft of civilization which has long since vanished in a haze of war and resource shortages.

(Spoiler alert: In this piece I discuss many events at the end of each film. For Mad Max fans this should make no difference in their enjoyment of the long and injurious chase scenes that are the meat of the film. I do not see how the confusing concatenation of nonsequiters that make up Tomorrowland could be ruined by my commentary. But, those who want to see the film without knowing the end should read no further–until they return from a showing.)

In Disney’s Tomorrowland something’s gone wrong in the mysterious Platonic dimension of forms called Tomorrowland which communicates with and influences the real world of today. Hugh Laurie plays the ruler of Tomorrowland. He laments that he has been sending messages to the real world for years about all the stupid things people are doing: wasting resources, changing the climate, polluting the planet, engaging in senseless wars. But almost no one seems to be listening. For those few who are, all they do is talk about the negative without offering any solutions.

By now–meaning present-day global society–we were supposed to have gleaming, clean, clockwork cities everywhere–with flying cars, of course. So, where did we go wrong?

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A Thirst for Economic Change?

A Thirst for Economic Change?

I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it. –John Stuart Mill, On the Stationary State

In the face of global resource shortages and the alarming rate at which we are losing species, many of us share the hope that J.S. Mill so ominously communicates in one of his better-known quotes. But what will it take to catalyze the shift to an economic state that respects our natural boundaries? Perhaps the catalyst could be a life-altering dearth of a critical resource that, until recently, most of us in the United States have taken for granted: water.

The idea that a water shortage like the one California is currently facing could cool the economic engines that have elevated the state to the eighth-largest economy in the world has been discussed in local media and state government offices alike. The Desert Sun, a paper serving the rapidly-growing Coachella Valley in the southern part of the state, recently posed the question of whether water worries will slow development in the valley. The New York Times expressed its worries about California’s continuing economic vigor by stating the drought “. . . is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.”

CA Drought - Kevin Cortopassi

 

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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