Answer #16 - I don't want to be disappointed 20 years from now

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did." - Mark Twain

A friend told me recently, 'you need to make the in-my-perfect-life list - what would make you happy in the next hour, next day, next week, next year, next 20 years.'

Solid advice.  In the next hour, it'd be good to get some exercise.  In the next day, it'd be good to play the piano and solidify some dangling legalities, in the next week, it'd be good to have some sort of extensive reconstructive surgery and completely remake myself into someone entirely different.  Preferably blonde and really tall.  In the next year, it'd be .. wait, why am I always so glib?

In the next year it would be good to be less glib and more charismatic.  I'd like people, say, to send me money, randomly, because of my charisma - because they just find me irresistible - so I can be like one of the court composers, commissioned, as it were, by random donations.

WAIT.  still glib.  I really have to think about this.

I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone this morning, with the cover "YOU IDIOTS Meet the Planet's Worst Enemies - Inside the Battle Over Global Warming."  I never buy or read Rolling Stone - but, well, might as well get as many perspectives on the issue as possible.  I have a couple of very intelligent, well-spoken, politically rabidly right-wing friends who believe that Global Warming isn't an issue that should effect the national economic interests.

I argue: the world scientific community's consensus isn't even a whimper in the background anymore - the effects are visible everywhere.  They won't have it, though.  They believe that these 'studies' are funded by special interest, or that this is a situation that has little to do with man's carbon contribution, and therefore, is none of our business.  I argue: Copenhagen was a goddamn disaster because of the unbelievable weight that Oil and Coal Lobbyists carry.. the negative environmental impact of both of these powerful industries is overwhelming!  They won't have it.  Democrats, they say, are a lot of unrealistic, whiny wimps on the dole who'll leave a legacy of debt to our great grandchildren.

Interesting perspective.  But still, what kind of fools will we be to protect our gold while the food and water runs out?  We could be the world's leader in green energy.  Why is it more logical to shit where we eat by exploiting coal and the last drops of oil?  I just don't get the thinking.  Constant reckless consumption and disposal, on a planet that cannot (CANNOT) support the resource drain, leaves us with nothing but a future of starvation, thirst, disease, and death. 

In the next year, I want to feel like I did everything I could to address this reality - away from the rhetoric and dogma, away from the political in-fighting, away from the shit hole that the U.S. 2-party system has dug for itself.  I want to know the difference between scientific propaganda and objectively-funded study. And then I want to do everything I can so that in 20 years, when my children ask me what I did, I won't be disappointed with the answer I give them.

And I want a goat to replace my lawn mower.  I think my dog wants that, too.