“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour,” Thomas Paine,
Common Sense, 1776
The original Declaration of Independence, badly faded from poor 19th-century preservation techniques, is on permanent display in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom, at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Each passing Fourth of July provides evidence that this document is better preserved than the land whose inhabitants it grants freedom and rights.
As the United States turns 236, relatively few people dwell on the possibility that within another 236 years, North America may cease to be a place capable of sustaining 300 million people in comfort, stability and peace.
That's because the land and water of the United States, and other nations, are increasingly subject to conditions absent in 1776. In fact, they’ve been largely absent from the 12,000-year epoch in which humans blossomed across the globe.
The question on this Fourth of July, with the nation's capital recovering from an unprecedented wind and lightning storm, an unprecedented heat wave, and mass electrical outages, is this: How can scrappy, upbeat Americans look forward to a future as bright as the past unless we grapple with our own “zone of extraordinary opportunity or misery,” a phrase that appears in Royal Dutch Shell’s 2011 report Signals and Signposts? It’s time for a second set of Founding Fathers to step forward, or a first set of Founding Mothers.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-04/can-the-u-s-economy-be-sustained-for-another-236-years-.html
The original Declaration of Independence, badly faded from poor 19th-century preservation techniques, is on permanent display in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom, at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Each passing Fourth of July provides evidence that this document is better preserved than the land whose inhabitants it grants freedom and rights.
As the United States turns 236, relatively few people dwell on the possibility that within another 236 years, North America may cease to be a place capable of sustaining 300 million people in comfort, stability and peace.
That's because the land and water of the United States, and other nations, are increasingly subject to conditions absent in 1776. In fact, they’ve been largely absent from the 12,000-year epoch in which humans blossomed across the globe.
The question on this Fourth of July, with the nation's capital recovering from an unprecedented wind and lightning storm, an unprecedented heat wave, and mass electrical outages, is this: How can scrappy, upbeat Americans look forward to a future as bright as the past unless we grapple with our own “zone of extraordinary opportunity or misery,” a phrase that appears in Royal Dutch Shell’s 2011 report Signals and Signposts? It’s time for a second set of Founding Fathers to step forward, or a first set of Founding Mothers.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-04/can-the-u-s-economy-be-sustained-for-another-236-years-.html
No comments:
Post a Comment