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Solving the Economic Generation Gap

I want­ed to start off this morn­ing using an American poet and nov­el­ist, Langston Hughes. And I quote him to have said, ​“What hap­pens to a dream deferred?” It is a ques­tion now fac­ing mil­lions all over the world, espe­cial­ly young peo­ple. Why? Because of pover­ty. Because of exces­sive inequality

Douglas Rushkoff’s Advice for the Next President

I think it would be inter­est­ing if the President had to be a min­is­ter for a day and actu­al­ly engaged with peo­ple’s spir­i­tu­al bank­rupt­cy, and think about, ​“Do I want to solve this by lying to them with anoth­er myth, or do I want to help them con­front the truth?”

The Conversation #19 — Joseph Tainter

I see a set of con­straints fac­ing us in the future, and they’re all going to be very expen­sive. First is fund­ing retire­ments for the Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion. Second is con­tin­u­ing increas­es in the costs of health­care. The third is replac­ing decay­ing infra­struc­ture. The fourth is adapt­ing to cli­mate change and repair­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age. The fifth is devel­op­ing new sources of ener­gy. The sixth is what I see as in all like­li­hood con­tin­u­ing high mil­i­tary costs. The sev­enth is the costs of innovation. 

The Conversation #6 — Jan Lundberg

If we are look­ing at what oil real­ly pro­vides to soci­ety, and what keeps us going for essen­tial ser­vices and goods, then our life sup­port sys­tem is in jeop­ardy. We are not prepar­ing for peak oil. We are not reor­ga­niz­ing our­selves for a degrad­ed ecosys­tem. So we are head­ing head­long into col­lapse, and this is some­thing that is not being dis­cussed. It is taboo to imag­ine that the whole growth scheme some­how comes to an end or that there is some­thing like peak oil that does­n’t trans­late into some tran­si­tion of renew­able ener­gy to make pos­si­ble a green con­sumer soci­ety with this lev­el of population.

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