Did Bezos In Seeing Earth From Afar Really Understand Its Fragility?

By Donald A. Collins | 23 July 2021
Church and State

(Image by Comfreak from Pixabay)

My initial assessment of these rich rocket launchers playing with their expensive toys could be wrong if what they saw helped us act on Earth’s fragility as Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, opined in his post flight interview. He said we must protect that small orb we live on.

Our space flights have given us this stunning Earth view many times, but the universal impact of climate change and other human caused problems gives us urgent insight on the need for prompt action NOW.

Our greatest problem now is not that science has failed to tell us how to fix “Our Plundered Planet” as Fairfield Osborn opined in his famous book in 1948, but the real problem is getting world leaders, particularly our own leaders, to get this Earth fixing process really going.

See Fairfield Osborn’s prescient book information here.

I had the great pleasure to have lunch in the late 1960’s with Fair, as he was called by his friends, at one of his favorite NGOs, the New York Zoological Society research center on Long Island, shortly before his death in 1969. What a charming and farsighted man. He was with his book one of the first instigators of our attention to our environment. You can read his biography here.

You can read more about the scientific case for population reduction in my new book now available on Amazon, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion By 2100?”.

Sadly, the pathetic GOP is still acting like Jim Crow racists on voting rights bills designed to reduce minorities votes and is seemingly incapable of larger visions about human needs.

Then we see many of these Republican oligarchs resisting getting the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, attacking obvious bills like a modest infrastructure law which is still pending passage. Ugh!

If America’s 500 billionaires could meet, perhaps they could sort out these dangerous roadblocks and work out a fair deal on taxes and the larger issues of planetary welfare.

Before Trump, corporations paid taxes over 30 percent with no ill effect and without increasing the untenable wealth gap which exits today between rich and poor in America.

Then upon his arrival Trump cut these taxes to 21 percent which GOP leaders now resist raising to a reasonable but still inadequate 28 percent as Biden has suggested.

So Mr Bezos, as one of the world’s richest men, might help gather a world reform meeting with other billionaires such as Warren Buffett and others of like mind, just as Osborn had hoped so many years ago. I attended the first Earth Day meeting on April 22, 1970, 51 years ago before the need for climate attention was as obvious. Earth Day is still noted but the media attention it gets is minimal, as was the recent celebration of World Population Day. You can read about Earth Day here.

A group such as Bezos could likely gather, men of mighty wealth and influence, could issue a Fair Osborn style report which could lay out these urgently needed reforms and possibly even agree to not give political gifts to GOP candidates who inhibit voting rights, or block reasonable infrastructure spending and urge a fair minimum tax rates for all corporations.

This effort would not diminish the urgency of addressing the population issue mentioned above.

There are obviously other issues which need urgent attention, but for starters these might be possible to elevate in priority.

Speaking of another big issue, astronomers are and for some time have been tracking with modern telescopes asteroids nearing Earth.

As everyone knows the biggest one hit 66 million years ago in the Yucatán and killed off the dinosaurs and much more. There have been many smaller hits since, but vigilance remains our primary defense, as with now saving the human species.

What say you, Rocket Man?

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013, Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive? and We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?.

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