In Aesop’s tale of the ant and the grasshopper, the busy ant made preparations for the coming winter, while the flighty grasshopper played away the summer. When winter came, the ant was prepared with substantial food for the winter while the grasshopper was starving.
The United States seems determined to play the grasshopper when it comes to our future. We use up our energy without a thought of what will happen when it runs out — and fossil fuels, no matter what other arguments one might make about them — are a finite resource. We fill our landfills to bursting…and recycling is failing in its promise. We ignore the changing climate that is drying out the “nation’s breadbasket” and burning up California’s farmland. And, most important, we don’t seem concerned with preparing our future citizens and leaders, our children.
In 1989 Carl Sagan said,
…we have permitted the amount of poverty in children to increase. Before the end of this century, more than half the kids in America may be below the CONTINUE READING: U.S. Neglects Tomorrow | Live Long and Prosper
