A long list of lost or submerged lands and extinct civilizations couldn't see ahead, didn't care about their descendants, or cared only about the present. Foresight or the will to do anything about it seems difficult. It took decades to approve building the Erie Canal lest other communities get more out of it. The canal would be the foundation for the wealth, growth and success of New York State which built it, and the foundation for the wealth, growth and success of the United States as immigration, railroads and industry all followed its path and the development it sparked. Yet that route and its advantages were known across the continent before the Constitution was ratified.
I had hoped and thought that American science, universities and scientific institutions would equip us to see more clearly into the future, that American science, engineering and know-how would enable us to claw our way through the threats coming at us so that our civilization, could emerge triumphant and the future would belong to America.
But global warming has global implications. Russia borders the arctic. As the arctic warms it will, and already is, becoming more habitable and usable. Since a huge portion of Arctic landmass is in Russia, they can and will take advantage of it. So global warming will increase Russian power.
Conversely, as the globe warms, America will decline. The usability of America’s land, lakes and rivers will decline and already are. As they decline, America will have less to drink, water, irrigate, and farm, so America will decline. The American century will be a distant memory.
Perhaps that’s meaningless to many, too concerned with their own present lives, but our children will live in poverty. And we, Americans, will become refugees. While we are knocking at their doors, even Canada, our northern friend, will be increasingly fussy about who can move in and become Canadian. We, meanwhile, will be complaining about the inability of our children to live the lives we are living.
That won’t be a new complaint. Americans have been complaining that inflation has left our children with poorer lives than ours. But as we have protested the use of tax law, antitrust law and regulation of business to spread the wealth, we have concentrated ever more of America’s wealth in fewer and fewer hands – fewer men’s, women’s, and children’s. A substantial part of wealthy Americans don’t care because they think they can protect themselves – though I’m not sure they’re right.
Meanwhile Mr. Trump promises to tear apart the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other institutions designed to help us see and deal with the future, tore environmental policy apart in his first term, already moved to privatize control over the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, leave the Center for Disease Control under the helm of science deniers, and left many concerned about science funding.
Privatizing those functions will magnify national short-sightedness as American corporations focus on quick returns to investment and poo-poo the process of building successful institutions for a durable future.
So, we will be sacrificed to the wealthy, undermined by the wealthy, and will go down for the glory of wealth before they get to join us in an overheated hell.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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