It's New Year's Eve where I live, so let me wish everyone a very happy, healthy and safe 2017.
This coming year is high risk from many perspectives. Climate change is an ongoing threat and will undoubtedly cause problems in many locations. It will contribute to civil unrest, food shortages, and more extreme weather events. The rise of corporations running governments is a threat to people everywhere, including those places where it's not happening to the same extent because of the on-flow impact on world trade. There is a heightened threat to world-wide security with the election of the unstable, reckless Donald Trump to the highest position in the USA. There is a threat to science and a devaluation of knowledge, which are being disregarded in many countries particularly in the USA, Australia, the UK. Many people in power are actively pursuing plans and policies to spread falsehoods on a scale that is unimaginable to some. The tactics being used are very familiar to those of us who've been watching them applied to climate information: smear the experts, create fake experts, make up false "facts", appeal to greed and fear and bigotry.
We cannot afford to just sit back and wait to see what happens. This is a time to take action in whatever way we can.
While some people are worse off and for some their circumstances have changed little, most people in the world have never been better off materially or health-wise than they are today, yet they have elected corrupt leaders or had them foisted on them, in part because their expectations exceeded the reality. We have allowed the wrong people to run (ruin) the world, people who are motivated not by any intent to make the world a better place, but by greed and a lust for personal power at the expense of the world as a whole.
Don't let them get away with it.
I'm sorry to write such a downer article while wishing you all a Happy New Year. We are on the edge of a dangerous precipice. Let's not fall into it.
