Terminal Planet Or Green Earth?

About the Book

Ed Cowan’s book is a seminal essay on how we get organized and build a healthy, sustainable planet! Imagine that you have just set down to a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner one November evening and the lights go off. After awhile you realize, they won’t ever come back on! America has just been EMPed. There’s more grim news about EMP in Terminal Planet or Green Earth!

Or imagine that, instead of the above, you and your family wake up one December morning to learn that terrorist have just pulled a one-two punch on Hanford, Washington and Idaho Falls, Idaho, our two nuclear reprocessing/storage facilities out West. Each contains more radiation than would be generated by a full-scale nuclear war. Precisely because we maintain these two “Most Poisonous Spots on Earth” above ground, a nuclear attack with small, Nagasaki-sized warheads while a major winter storm was passing through the area would leave most of North America uninhabitable for millennia!

Imagine that instead of the above two scenarios, we use media more creatively, sometimes even provocatively. One way is to ask prominent politicians and other prominent people clever Socratic questions designed to expose the ubiquitous clouds of hypocrisy that now obscure public debate. We begin when we ask all heads of state, starting with the American President, this question:

‘Do you agree, Mr. President, that the top five problems of the planet are:
1) the nuclear-tipped arms race, number one because it is the only problem that can destroy us (with ozone coming up quickly on the outside rail) and because by solving it, we can save trillions of dollars,
2) excessive population and population growth,
3) the stagnant, self-cannibalizing, super wasteful, global, corporate market economy,
4) disparity between the rich and poor within nations and disparity between nations, and
5) the Environment, the Master of Ceremonies problem that never leaves us, that we solve only in degree, and if you do not agree, Mr. President, what are the top five problems of the planet and where, sir, is your plan to solve them?” There’s much more about this argument in the book.

This President will dodge the question, so it must be asked repeatedly. However, other heads of state will welcome the question and answer it, and so, Cowan argues, let’s assume the question leads to a worldwide debate about our top problems. He stresses the need for plans, plans, and more plans. His 27-page blueprint disarmament plan lays out all of the essentials of comprehensive disarmament, and he then begs the reader to better each point or the whole plan.

“This,” he says, “will lead to comprehensive disarmament, which will enable Americans to save $2.6 trillion dollars by 1/1/2014, a very powerful incentive. Imagine how that money could be used to solve our other pressing problems and build the Renewable Civilization, leading to a Sustainable Civilization. That huge savings will be possible only when we provoke a worldwide debate about our top problems. Also, consider how we can use quotes like the following from the founder of the Republican Party:

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.” Yes, nearly all Americans agree, Abe Lincoln, that people are more important than money. Or imagine the following question for Reverend Billy Graham and our President: “Was Jesus Christ a conservative or a liberal?” Reverend Graham will probably come to the President’s rescue with something like, “Jesus Christ was not political.” If so, he falls into a trap, expressed by Cowan as:

“Are you kidding, Reverend Graham. The greatest political act in history, sir, was when that semi-literate carpenter from N