The news has been consumed with Afghanistan. I don’t want to belittle the problem but believe it or not we have do have bigger problems. Some of the problems are so big that the news is casually bored somewhat with the stories. The Covid pandemic will not go away because of the political stupidity in this country. Then there is climate change and the environment. We also have all the gun violence and the fact that we have a part of our population that want to turn our government into a fascist style of government. These are much bigger problems than Afghanistan is but hey, they won’t sell as many newspapers so the press will always go with the hot stories and push back the real problems that won’t go away to the back page. It is always easier to keep the people’s attention when the hot story is always changing.

As I have stated before that I live in Florida. All of the long term problems seem to affect Florida more than some states. When I moved here 2 years ago the big story was the red tide. 2 years later we still have the red tide. Not as bad but to me, it seems like it never really went away. I will admit that the red tide is a natural occurrence that dates back to when the Spanish first sailed these waters. What is not a natural occurrence is all the crap that we are pumping into the Gulf that just may be feeding the red tide making it worse than it would be by natural occurrence. All the algae blooms that occur when they dump the water from Lake Okeechobee that drains into the Caloosahatchee River sending all those toxins down to the Gulf of Mexico. It is simple physics. To every action there is a reaction. We dump crap into the Gulf of Mexico there is going to be a reaction. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. I have seen the huge fish kills on Pine Island sound and it is disgusting. Our number one resource for the entire state is our water. Above anything else we should be protecting our water.

The waters on the gulf are also warming more than they have in the past but the entire ocean is also warming. That could also be aiding the red tide but one thing it is really aiding is the strength of our storms and the frequency. Our forests have been burning out west and there is starting to be signs of severe water shortages out west. Scientist have been telling us that for years and too many people have been ignoring what the science has been saying. Pretty soon if not already we will be reaching a point of no return. Our burning of fossil fuels is the main culprit and we must wean ourselves off our addiction to oil. It is not only killing the environment but it will also kill us. The lying that we have experienced about climate change was just all about money. The science has been there to make our society greener but the natural resource companies like the coal and oil companies would not be making their huge profits. They bribe our elected officials into passing legislation to kill a green economy or blocks legislation that would help the environment all for those huge profits. People lose everything to forest fires they don’t care. Stronger storms hitting our coastlines destroying property and lives and they don’t care. Our politicians send their thoughts and prayers but as long as they get their money they don’t care. A teenager from Sweden came to the UN to speak on the environment and the then President of the United States tried to bully and ridicule that dedicated teenager. As usual we are the problem.

It has been argued that the price tag for doing too little is going to be far greater than the one of doing too much if there is such a thing as doing too much. Can you imagine the mass exodus of people from areas that no longer have water or from places that will be reclaimed by the sea because of the rising waters? That is going to be an enormous number and it is going to be a worldwide problem that will lead to its fare share of conflicts. Then you have to add that the fact the green economy is the economy of the future and the ones that develop the technology first is going to have a leg up on the rest of the word. This may turn into an if you snooze you lose situation.

The leaders of the world fifty years from now will be the ones with the strongest green economies. We used to be leaders. Are we still? Will we still be 50 years from now?