Looking backward, going forward

It's an old concept and it's hard to shake but too many of us--individuals, sure, but whole societies and our governments, federal, state and local--seem to be trying to go forward but are doing it by looking back. That is, we're using rules from the last 100 years or even more, thinking old rules and laws apply to current problems and situations.

Nowhere is this more true than in our wars. The saying is that the beginning of the war today, paraphrased, is always fought in the last war's terms. It is especially true now, with what must always be referred to as "Bush's War". The thought was, however much it's denied, that we need to go in and take over their oil, since we need it so badly into the future.

If you operate in the past, this is certainly true. We have used cars and combustion engines, etc., to propel our society forward, to increase our productivity and even for something as simple as recreation. Sure.

But we've known we need to ween ourselves off the "oil fix" since the 70's? Remember? Our President at the time warned us about it. You know, Jimmy Carter? And he was right, of course. We should have been turning down our thermostats in the winter and driving less and driving more fuel-efficient cars and giving tax breaks for truly beneficial, alternative energy sources.

We did it for a little while, it went away, so we voted in Ronald Reagan and walked away from it all, fools that we are.

So instead of looking and moving forward, we looked and moved backward. We made and drove ridiculously large automobiles (the kind we used to make fun of) and kept importing oil. And that's where we are today.

In the meantime, our government, acting on our behalf, looked in the rear view mirror and attacked another sovereign nation, quite against international law, as I've written here before--and refuse to forget.

So that's why we're in this huge mess we're in. We're in a war we shouldn't be in, losing soldiers we shouldn't be losing, sending money and materiel to another country--and in the Middle East, no less, where so much of the world's money is going, for great irony--and so on.

What we should do, for the world's and our own benefit, if we were to start looking forward--hey, I can be hopeful, can't I--is sponsoring a huge scientific effort to harness solar power, specifically with photovoltaic cells. The benefits are so great and plentiful it should be obvious to us all--even the "little guy" on the street.

First, we take all the pressure off the Middle East. That would take at least several minutes off the "doomsday clock". (Remember that? If not, Google same). It would ratchet us down from nuclear annihilation significantly. It would take ugliness out of relationships between the United States and the former Soviet Union--another big benefit--and so much more.

Additionally, it would take carbon dioxide production out of our existence, in a very real way. With efficient electrical power, created from photovoltaic cells, entire countries could and would power their homes and businesses this way. There would be no reason we couldn't have and use this as a source of energy for our automobiles. Those two switches alone would put us on phenomenally improved paths to energy independence and far cleaner air and atmosphere.

This would, of course, have the effect of reducing Global Climate Change in a very real way. This would help put off the radical change of the world's living spaces. The benefits are great and almost immediately tangible.

If we were looking forward, the "war" we should and would wage would be on ourselves, to do this very thing--perfect solar energy, specifically with photovoltaic cells. Keeping in mind the truism that "the greatest battle is the battle within", it seems like this is the new, forward-thinking war we should be in, if we should be in one at all. Battle ourselves to be more conservation-minded, more creative, more "new-thinking", if that's a word. Not to sound like a politician, God forbid, but we need to truly challenge ourselves to be and to do everything we can to bring about this specific change on this planet as soon as possible, for all our many benefits.

Sure, the current electrical power companies would have to lose out, as would the oil companies since we would need neither any longer but we've got to go forward, for all our survival.

The country that does this, that perfect solar power, will actually, truly win "the war". They will be the country that is far ahead technologically and so, reap the financial benefits. They'll be the big winners in this world--and not a shot will have been fired.

It's the same way with newspapers, technology, the paper industry and news, all wrapped in one. If we keep looking backward, we'll keep asking the question, "what's going to become of the newspaper?" But if we look forward, we'll realize we have to do away with newspapers for obvious reasons. First, we can no longer afford to keep cutting down trees to create them. Face it, the forests are the lungs of the planet (not my original thought) and we can't keep cutting them down so we can keep up on one- and two-day old news. The computer and the internet are far faster. Newspapers are failing anyway. We have to go on to this next medium. (Of course, we'll also have to force ourselves, as citizens of our countries and the world, to open our eyes and minds to news--some of which we won't want to hear or believe and this will be difficult, at least--but it's got to happen.

The same is true for the enitre paper industry. We really need, worldwide, to start going paperless. It was predicted years ago and we aren't even remotely close to it but we have to. We need to go paperless for the our own existence and the existence of the planet. Again, we're cutting down trees but can't afford to continue to do so. We've had paper for thousands of years but we really do, frankly, need to give them up. Face it. It's too obvious and too obviously true if we don't just continue to look back.

I'm convinced that the solutions to man's biggest problems--electrical energy, oil and the use of it, the automobile and the internal combustion engine, Global Climate Change, war and wars, war over energy, the seemingly intractable problems in the Middle East and so much more--are just beyond our grasp. The answers aren't that far away. We can reach and grab them, with effort. And we should--but we have to look forward--we have to stop looking back. We have to look at our situation now and into the future.

And we need to start very soon.