Just as Arrival dramatizes, we are in a race against time to develop technologies of cooperation and communication that supersede our current operating system, based on domination, fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, debt-based currency, and winner-take-all competition.
We've already burdened future generations with government debt, nuclear waste and greenhouse gases.
In rapid succession, our global crises have ranged from the environmental to the economic — from tsunamis leveling entire regions of Asia and destroying seemingly impregnable nuclear reactors, to debt and unemployment crushing ostensibly healthy nations.
There is also some debate about what proportion of a nuclear plant's debt should be covered: the act says up to 80% of the costs of construction, but that might be sufficient to cover the full amount borrowed, leaving banks with no risk at all.
Consider just a handful of recent events: the financial crisis of 2008; the gulf oil spill of 2010; and the Japanese nuclear disaster, the debt-ceiling debacle and euro crisis this year.
But in a short span of years, we've experienced the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the financial meltdown of 2008, the gulf oil spill of 2010, the Japanese nuclear disaster, the debt-ceiling debacle and the current euro crisis.
The standoff over Iran's nuclear program, the European debt crisis and other events will most likely affect the economy more.
Since then, the recovery has been held back by a series of factors, including the Japanese tsunami and nuclear meltdown, the European debt crisis, renewed geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Persian Gulf and a global rise in energy prices.
"We believe it is appropriate to halt reactor licensing decisions and stop creating an intergenerational debt of nuclear waste that will burden our children and grandchildren for centuries to come," Stephen Smith, executive director of one of the groups that sued, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said in a press release.
Inflation, a collapsing housing market, the nuclear exchange in Chechnya, debt spiraling out of control … no one really knows why this Second Great Depression has happened.
