I woke up last night out of a dream wherein I was delivering a lecture to a packed audience and thought it was worth writing down.

I see that there are a lot of young people in the audience tonight and this speech is especially for you, although it applies to all humans on the planet at this time.  There is no time to lose at this point.  Since 1970 I have been aware that humanity has needed a revolution and in recent years it has become ever more obvious that we are in a race with extinction. The stakes are much higher than I thought in my earlier years.
We hear much talk these days of “tipping points”. Here I am referring to the concept that we are risking tipping the planet into a new climate that will make life impossible for humans to continue to live on earth and bring about a mass extinction event of most other species as well. Recent news of mass die offs of some ocean species are canaries in this mine. We are killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

It is obvious that the people running our current world affairs are insane. We could call it the military/industrial, financial/political/agribusiness complex. Any CEO so obviously running their company into the grave would immediately be replaced by the shareholders.  The shareholders of this company called humanity should be firing our CEOs now before we are all dead! Every person is a shareholder in this grand company called humanity. Every species on Earth is a shareholder in this grand place called Earth. You can bet that all other species are voting against the current batch of CEOs.

It is insanity to spend trillions of dollars a year on military, bombs, wars, etc while millions go hungry. It is insane to pursue energy policies that are killing the planet. It is insane that fewer and fewer people own and rule the world’s resources while the masses suffer. It is insane to allow nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons to exist that could extinguish humanity. It is insane to unleash genetically-modified organisms and biocides into our food supply when their dire affects on human health are known, It is insane to run biological weapons labs to create germs that could kill millions or billions of people. I could go on with hundreds of other examples of the insanity currently running our world. And we, the shareholders, are letting them get away with it. 

At this point there should be world-wide protests in every city. There should be general strikes in every city and every country until the old dinosaurs are swept out of the way. All of our futures and the futures of our children, grandchildren and generations to come, if there are to be any more of them, depend on it.

You would think that the people in power, the old dinosaurs, would want the world to continue in a reasonable fashion for their children and grandchildren. But no, they seem to be acting as if they don’t care if the whole world dies so they can achieve world domination by the few. The only rational conclusion one can come to is that there really is a conspiracy of reptilian aliens to wipe out the human race so they can come in and mine the Earth of minerals. If there is a plan to wipe out the human race then it is proceeding really well at the moment and whether this is pre-meditated or not, the rest of us better stop them before it is too late.  I would advise anyone in the ruling class who does care about their descendents to join us.  Sweep the old dinosaurs out of the way!

It isn’t that we don’t know how to run a better world.  A world where things continually improve instead of continually worsen. We do know how and the solutions have been illumined by hundreds and thousands of authors in every respective field of human endeavor. As a 30-year student of permaculture I can outline the solutions for most of the problems that face humanity. I can detail how to grow enough food to feed all of humanity and do it on half the acreage we currently use. We know how to rebuild soils, stop human-accelerated erosion, vastly reduce flooding, tie up the excess carbon in the atmosphere, reforest the world, clean up the waters, and stabilize the climate, insofar as humans are currently throwing it out of whack. We can all have a reasonable, comfortable lifestyle with a 3-day work week.  Lots of time for socializing, rest, hobbies, family, arts, music, etc.  Sounds a lot better than extinction doesn’t it?

Where can I refer you to for these solutions? The permaculture literature in particular as well as the world’s most progressive thinkers in general.  My writings over the last couple of decades have elucidated a lot of what we need to do. In particular my articles on “Feeding People in Hard Times”;  "The Role of Home Gardens in Feeding the World and Sequestering Carbon”; “Employment, Unemployment and Misemployment in the United States”; "A Carbon Sequestration Proposal for the World”; “Building the New Economies: Some Thoughts and Resources”; “Towards a Positive Worldview”; “A Permaculture Approach to County and Regional Planning”; among others. My book “Restoration Forestry: An International Guide to Sustainable Forestry” is out of print, but copies do exist. The largest repository of my articles can be found at the website inlandnorthwestpermaculture.com. Go to Articles in the Resources section. I am just one of hundreds and thousands of authors who are writing up the solutions to these mammoth problems.  The solutions invariably are small solutions repeated by millions of citizens. They are not “big” solutions that need big government or centralized efforts. The solutions are in our hands.  We just need to get the old dinosaurs out of the way.

One of the most pressing problems the world needs to deal with at this moment is the Fukushima radioactive accident that is evolving in Japan. If things go terribly wrong there we might need to evacuate the northern hemisphere. Fukushima needs to be tackled by an international consortium of the best minds on the planet and financed fully.  In case you haven’t heard, TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric company is cutting corners, dragging their heels, and lying, lying, lying. A reasonable plan has been put forth by Arniee Gunderson to put together such a consortium. You can find the article online at http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/25/the-global-threat-of-fukushima/  Every person on the planet should be made aware of this situation and have a vote since all of our lives are potentially at stake.  And this is just one nuclear power site. All nuclear power sites should be shut down now, as well as dismantling all nuclear weapons, and efforts ramped up to figure out how to keep us all safe.

For those of you who don’t already read Dmitry Orlov, I highly recommend you read his writings. Most specifically his October 22 article on the 6th Stage of Collapse which follows on from his 2013 book “The Five Stages of Collapse”.  You can read it on his website cluborlov.blogspot.com. Dmitry points out that his book was overly optimistic in that it postulated a world where civilization collapses and out of the ashes some human survivors are left to re-populate the world. In the 6th stage of collapse he admits the possibility that the world’s environment might be changed so much that there are NO human survivors. 

The choice is yours and ours.  What do you vote? Extinction or sanity?  Currently almost all of us are enablers. We are enabling the old dinosaurs to ruin the world for profit. War, nuclear power, environmental destruction, oppression. All of this is insanity and not in the best interests of the human race or the world’s other species.

If you want to learn more about the solutions I recommend you take a permaculture design course and search out the writings of people who elucidate the solutions to our social ills. They are out there, but you won’t find them in the mass media which is controlled by the old dinosaurs. A word of caution about permaculture design courses. Shop around and do your research before signing up for one. Most pdcs are good value, but there are some poor quality ones out there as well. 

Sweep the old dinosaurs out of the way, our lives and our descendents lives depend on it. We might not have time to just wait for the current system to collapse so we can pick up the pieces. Yes, we all can, and should, make lifestyle changes to conserve resources and reduce our individual impacts, but at this point it is insanity to allow the old dinosaurs to rule the world with their huge appetite for destruction. Call a spade a spade, point out the insanity, create local coalitions that build into regional, national and global coalitions. As the World Social Forum slogan says. “A Better World is Possible”.