The Presidential speech we so desperately need.
My fellow citizens of this aspiring nation on this inspiring planet:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, aware of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors, and mindful of the stresses placed on our home nation, continent, and planet. I thank the many who have worked for the great transition I shall speak about today — and one that is unquestionably now upon this and future generations.
The United States has been a global leader in pioneering a democracy and in articulating a noble vision of inalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet we have emerged from recent presidential campaigns full of vicious charges, meretricious advertisements, petty personal attacks, and avoidance of issues of great consequence to our nation and all life on this planet. We must no longer fail to address the ecological reality confronting life on earth.
The mega-issue desperately needing to be addressed is about maintaining the life support systems of this planet. Disturbing issues such as the recent weather disrupting droughts and hurricanes are more accurately described as symptoms of a deeper set of problems.
The root causes of our life-support mega-problem can be found in: a) our waste and over-consumption of non-renewable natural resources, b) our fascination with technology accompanied by growing nature deficit disorder in our youth, c) our growing global population whose numbers in many places exceed the carrying capacity or fecundity of the land, and finally d) habitat destruction from misplaced development as well as fossil fuel extraction and combustion — leading possibly to more runaway weather disruption. All of this is exacerbated by the current global economy that is run on the Cheater Economics that allows the polluting of our bodies and the planet for free.
Our life-support mega-problem requires a bold, creative solution that substitutes a True Cost Economy for Cheater Economics. Today, I pledge to make our nation once again the leader on the global stage, and doing so by solving social and ecological crises via economic innovation and restructuring. My next four years will be to describe and help us all build this new economy so that the pursuit of happiness for all is here well into the future.
