The Woman With the Pram

 Earlier this week I managed to catch my 9700 bus as it was pulling out of its bay. I sat down in the last seat left, the one right in front, as the bus zoomed across the first intersection.

I was just fiddling with my iPod when we approached the next intersection, and braced for the right turn. The traffic lights had just changed, and the green man had started flashing, but the bus seemed to take a wide turn over the zebra white, to get ahead of the people crossing, so it could stay on schedule. They do it a lot here. It stopped within a metre of a young attractive woman pushing a pram.
She, and the people walking around her, didn't even glance sideways as the bus approached.

I wrote about this earlier in We Have Been Warned. Daniel posted a comment saying his father is getting ready to buy a new car. Not a hybrid, just another new car.
Yes, it does seem, if we are going to walk the road, with the little green man flashing, and not even consider what is approaching, it does seem as though we might have to forfeit our precious cargo. It's a destiny we've earned, it's what we deserve, it's what we walk towards, what we work towards every day in the nature we recycle into packaging, and garbage, the smoke that we blow out of our mouthes and machines. It's not a healthy way to live. It's JunkLiving, and we're going to have to give up living this way whether we choose to or not. We're going to lose a lot. Our lifestyles first, then the lifestyles of our children, and then, for some, our lives.
The idea of a pandemic - you'll be hearing this word more and more - does basically suggest that a sickness is brewing that will infect millions. That means there's a very real chance that your life is on the line. And mine. Nature has decided, it seems, that we need to be culled, to take care of the rest of the reserve.

Has anyone noticed what we have seen in the first 5 years, of the first decade of this new millenium? We've seen the highest buildings in New York in America demolished by some people who flew Boeing 747 aeroplanes full of people into them. These people are Islam fuelled extremists, who hate the West. And America's response is to hate them back, and call it Good vs Evil. There's a recipe for the Infinite War. It begins with the slew of bombings from Bali to London. It will end with Weapons of Mass destruction. I may need to check the news right now to make sure there hasn't been another huge terror attack in the last hour.
We've seen the worst storm in American history on the heels of the worst Hurricane run.
We're seeing a new flu which is really a deadly virus called H5N1 do deadly tricks we haven't seen before, wiping out millions of birds, and begin to kill families from the Philippines to Vietnam.
The world's resources are stretched very thin. Not our supplies of candy bars or flatscreens. Fresh air, food and energy. If you combine those words and rearrange the letters, you get this word: survival. And there are too ways really to look at it. There isn't enough oil (energy) to meet demand. That's the one way. The other one is more realistic. There are now just too many people on the planet, and this topheavy imbalance will have to be restored.

This will happen by a combination of natural and human disasters. These are interlinked of course. The common thread running through all of these, will be starvation. Starvation has been with us as long as we have been around, it's just that it has not effected those who can afford internet connections and cargo pants. Once supply lines are disrupted due to whatever crises, more and more we will see governments and civilians defeated in their attempts to rescue by the scope and scale of the carnage, and also by the fact that there will be fewer and fewer resources. Less fuel to get the food where it needs to go. Less fuel to run the machines that have financed the green revolution. Bottom line: not enough food.

I know you're reading this and thinking, "Boy, this is very doomsday, this is very negative."
You might want to cross the street looking straight ahead of you because it's negative to imagine that projectiles (called cars and busses) might not always be travelling within the legal limit.
What we can certainly expect more of as we enter the second half of our next decade is a lot more UNCERTAINTY. A lot more unexpected things will happen. Many will be man-made, by our own governments as is already happening, and many disasters will be the result of what man has made and done with our machines over two hundred years.
Next year will be hotter, and wetter, and windier. And the sound of gunfire will spread. And the last thing we will be thinking of will be farming.

We do have the means to deal with this. We can form groups and networks of people who are interested in being part of the solution on this planet. All those interested, gather at the curb and raise your hands. Okay, now let's take hands and all keep a watch out as we cross the road, and someone tap that lady on the shoulder, with the pram. She's still not paying attention.

California Earthquake Could Be the Next Katrina
By Jia-Rui Chong and Hector Becerra Times Staff Writers
Thu Sep 8, 7:55 AM ET

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones remembers attending an emergency training session in August 2001 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that discussed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the United States.

First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York. Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault.

Now that the first two have come to pass, she and other earthquake experts are using the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to reassess how California would handle a major temblor.