Maybe we need to rethink primary and high schools first and then we wouldn’t need so many people to go to college to compete for jobs doing absolutely nothing that benefits our planet. The vast majority of human labors don’t need any formal school at all. Civilization needs schools to keep people conditioned as civilians. That’s fine. Let’s just not believe that it’s a ‘need’ instead of a luxury. Using the Invisible Hand Job economics theories to justify people working for equal pay in a bloated overhead economic boondoggle has nothing to do with people working for an equal right to physical resources in the future.
It’s not about what we want right now. It’s about what future people will need in order to survive on this changing planet. Our oblivious political machinery will in no way meet the goals necessary to slow down the warming trend (think “almost Venus”, not “Ooh! cozy greenhouses in the Boston suburbs!”), so we have to start planning how we will be doing triage in 10 years. What people are going to be allowed to move near farmland? What education will THEY need? What contributions will cities be making to farms (instead of the current system of extraction)? What actual resources will be available as desertification and extreme weather events take over? How much and what type of government will be possible as people become seasonal nomads without air conditioning, addresses, cars, stock markets or cheap fossil fuels?
What science programs will need to be continued, expanded and curtailed to meet real needs (massive solar and battery technology) ? How will new food science be disseminated to ignorant nomads?
What military presence will be required to keep the peace at regional borders (forget your nationalism), suburbs and farm fields?
You people really have no frickin’ clue what’s about to happen, and if you do, you can’t talk about it because it’s a competition over who will become the scapegoat. That’s the job you’re applying for, by the way. Read the assessments by the Pentagon, NOAA and pretty much anything in science publications from outside Amurka.
Sure, go on and play around with the deck chairs in Washington and NYC and LA while the topsoil continues washing down to the Gulf of Mexico. People are going to be dying anyway. What difference will it make to a failing state where they become sediments?
