why they hate us, part 1 trillion

Hmmm ... a trillion for wanton destruction, and a paltry 1 billion (promised aide feeds no mouths) for helping people eat.

What was that about hearts and minds? Apparently there is no space in the agenda for stomachs. I mean, how could anyone truthfully assert that we have our priorities anywhere but in exactly the right place? It's not like the haves try to instigate the have-nots. However, to be fair, people have actually done the acts depicted, and in the name of Islam. So why do people get so offended by the replaying of facts? These things happened. It is offensive to Muslims to blame all Islam because of the acts of a few, this is true, but this is also known as freedom of speech. We give you the freedom to worship whatever you like, a freedom which many Islamic countries do not have, and you cannot choose your freedoms piecemeal - they come as a set, take them all or leave them all.

Walking home from bowling I had a thought: the current Industrial Revolution (e.g., 'modern' society post 1700-ish) is experiencing a condensed form of resource abuse in the same style as agriculture did. The Middle East used to be quite habitable, and there is evidence to suggest intensive farming by humans is a large part of the reason it's so arid today (not universally). Until people thought of things like crop rotation or terraced farming, we were on a path to self-destruction (albeit over a much longer time horizon and with a lot lower public knowledge of the consequences). Industry finds itself in the same predicament today, whether it cares to admit it or not.

My hope/dream is that we can one day find new ways to fully make use of the land, in the same way modern farmers have been able to (and like native Americans used to in their hunting). If we could live in a "carbon neutral" society, whereby we exhausted only those emissions absorbed by plants through photosynthesis, or didn't emit anything beyond negligible emissions at all, that would truly be a great achievement for civilization.