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Linda Buzzell

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The World's New Favorite Sport: Kicking the Can Down the Road

Posted: 09/17/2012 7:26 pm

The world has a new favorite sport, and it's not soccer or one of the Olympic games. It's the ancient game of kicking the can down the road, and it's gaining popularity all over the globe.

We see it in economies that run up debts that the future will have to pay. And most tragically, we see it in the ongoing refusal to deal with massive social and environmental problems that are ticking away like a planetary time bomb.

The most heinous crime of the generation of adults currently running the world isn't the trashing of our collective life support systems and the economies on which they depend, but the immoral practice of repeatedly kicking the can down the road so that it will be future generations who have to clean up the messes and pay back the debts.

We see this "kicking the can" behavior in every area of modern life. We don't want to solve any problems NOW.

Let's not deal with the climate disruption and instability which is already causing ever-greater destruction in many locations around the world. Let's not face the environmental and financial debts that will take years and years to repay -- if they can be repaid at all. Let's not address the spending down or contamination of the legacy we inherited -- soil, seeds, food systems, fossil fuel resources, water systems, wild nature, our fellow animal species, the oceans -- and certainly let's not give much thought or money to its healing, regeneration or repair.

And certainly let's not adequately finance our children's education systems to give today's young people the knowledge they will need to have a fighting chance of fixing the messes we leave them.

And speaking of children, we certainly don't want to discuss the massive overpopulation that in one lifetime has grown way beyond the planet's support capacity, threatening our children and grandchildren with living through the kind of pandemics, massive die-offs and degradation of human life we haven't seen since the Black Death in the 14th century.

No, we certainly don't want to think about any of this. What a downer!

Instead, let's party on til the music stops, celebrating and emulating the 1 percent who can grab a huge percentage of the world's goods while they last.

And while all of this occurs, our leaders, would-be leaders and most of the adult citizens on our planet keep kicking the can down the road, hoping that all of the problems we've created won't really hit the fan while we're alive or will magically be solved by some new technology before we have to endure any consequences of our actions -- or inaction.

Is this any way to run a planet?

But what the heck. Let the kids look out for themselves.

 
 
 
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The world has a new favorite sport, and it's not soccer or one of the Olympic games. It's the ancient game of kicking the can down the road, and it's gaining popularity all over the globe. We see it ...
The world has a new favorite sport, and it's not soccer or one of the Olympic games. It's the ancient game of kicking the can down the road, and it's gaining popularity all over the globe. We see it ...
 
 
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10:01 PM on 10/19/2012
We need 4 things: Fusion, nanotechnology/molecular manufacturing, and a real space program to start. All of them are achievable in the next decade or two. All of them exist in a crude form NOW, like the V2 in comparison to the Saturn IV.

Then, we need ambition.
04:33 PM on 09/18/2012
You go, Linda! Great blog.
03:48 PM on 09/18/2012
And as we well know, eventually the game grows tiring, the light fades, the kids go home with the can altogether forgotten... to rust, to moulder, languishing in a long and slow decay. My, what a fun and exciting game.
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01:40 PM on 09/19/2012
Maybe the key to understanding "kicking the can down the road" as a metaphor for our current global behavior is to fully get that this game is both childish and rather pointless. So sad that adults in our culture are playing it right when conditions are becoming ever more threatening. As a species, we really need to grow up quickly to deal with the current threats to our continued existence on this planet.
04:45 AM on 09/18/2012
"Prof. Sergei Pulinets - the father of earthquake prediction and more.

What we were not to know until today..."

"Science is progressing, earthquake predictions can be made, their places indicated. For many scientists and experts this may seem heresy, but it is no longer. Prof. Sergei Pulinets from the Moscow Institute of Applied Geophysics and director of the Space Electrodynamics Division, IZMIRAN, Moscow, has the scientific evidence and made that public.

Then his research reveals the intertwining and connection of several scientific disciplines and presents a 'holistic view' of our galaxy (the 'Milky Way'), our planetary system and our planet, Earth." He and his small team of physicists worked on this multi-disciplinary research for almost 20 years.

The results are staggering.

Then his research reveals the intertwining and connection of several scientific disciplines and presents a 'holistic view' of our galaxy (the 'Milky Way'), our planetary system and our planet, Earth. One and the same machinery is at work here, he proved.

Earth' climate, earthquakes, weather, solar and cosmic influences go hand in hand."

http://tinyurl.com/8ohrfph

V. G. Bondur, S. A. Pulinets, and G. A. Kim, Role of Variations in Galactic Cosmic Rays in Tropical Cyclogenesis: Evidence of Hurricane Katrina, Transactions (Doklady) of the Russian Academy of Sciences/Earth Science Section, Vol. 422, No. 7, 1124-1128, 2008

http://tinyurl.com/8clopqh
11:08 PM on 09/17/2012
there's nothing new about kicking the can down the road..
02:44 PM on 09/18/2012
While it's true that kicking the can down the road is an ancient sport, scrappydoodle, perhaps there has never been a time in humanity's existence when the consequences could be so dire. And throughout history there have been inspiring examples of people who refused to play this game. One of the mottos of the civil rights movement was "If not now, when? If not us, who?" And I don't think America's founders said "well let's let the next generation deal with George III.
07:29 PM on 09/18/2012
This comment is the frosting on your cake above! But can the sociopaths be defeated? Looks like they have the upper hand at this point with the politicians in their pockets. I do not see any way to change the constitution to start public financing of elections and a parliamentary system where third parties can have an influence.
11:58 PM on 09/18/2012
we're overpopulated.. climate change or disease or some other type of calamity will kill a few hundred million people off the earth soon but there are 6 BILLION.. mother nature is going to take us down a notch.. there will be survivors and they will reboot the system..