Perfection Pending

“I think historians a hundred years from now will puzzle over how it could be that the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, as far back as the early 1970s, came to recognize that dependence on foreign oil was a problem, posed a threat, comprised our freedom of action.

How every President from Richard Nixon down to the present one, President Bush, declared, “We’re gonna fix this problem.” None of them did.”
- Andrew J. Bacevich on Bill Moyers, 08/15/08

Nearly thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter gave his “Crisis of Confidence” speech. In that speech, Carter warns us that our increasing dependence on oil poses a serious threat to our country:

This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

Did we take his warning seriously?

In his book, Collapse, Jared Diamond provides several lessons from past civilizations, like the classic history of Easter Island:

Once, it was home to a thriving culture that produced the enormous stone statues that continue to inspire awe. It was home to dozens of species of trees, which created and protected an ecosystem fertile enough to support as many as thirty thousand people. Today, it’s a barren and largely empty outcropping of volcanic rock. What happened? Did a rare plant virus wipe out the island’s forest cover? Not at all. The Easter Islanders chopped their trees down, one by one, until they were all gone.

My first reaction, reading stories like this, is to think, “What idiots! Didn’t they realize what they were doing?”

But I wonder… a hundred years from now, could the same be said of us?