The last few books I've read--Carbon Ideologies, The Water Will Come, Uninhabitable Earth, Drying Up and (currently) The Geography of Risk--offer very little cause for optimism. Whether we're talking about nations or states or cities, the opposition is designed into government, and corruption is designed into opposition. People think only short-term. They want to keep their jobs, they want to rebuild their homes exactly where they were flattened by the ocean, they want a water permit, they want a construction permit where it makes no sense. I don't know how we get out of this.

And that's "optimism" that is saying a third of the US's towns need to disappear and we need to let half of our infrastructure just crumble.

taxes. Sustainability of the planet and human-kind depend upon balance.

Here's the biggest "corundum" of the world; the root of every problem. No matter what system of government: How to trade, barter, buy, and sell valuables for worldwide peace and stability. A fine imaging, John, but literally quite scary...