I wouldn’t want to be a kid growing up these days. There’s a fairly good chance that the world is going to get worse over the next 50 to 100 years. The two things that scare me most are global warming and nuclear proliferation. We’re now starting to see that all the concern expressed about these two issues over the past 10 years is turning out to be justified. What’s worse is that there’s going to be synergy between them — global warming is going to encourage the use of nukes, and nuke use is going to make global warming worse. If global warming causes starvation and refugee movements, and nuclear weapons are a dime a dozen, then someone’s gonna be desperate enough to use them. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

Obviously, the brainy people at The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are rather worried too. About 10 days ago, they moved the minute hand on their “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight; it now reads five minutes to midnight, just about as bad as back in the early 1960s, when atomic missiles were arriving in Cuba. The sign next to the clock says: “The threat of a second nuclear age and the expected consequences of climate change push the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight”.

One more bit of pessimism, if I may. President Bush asked the Democrats in Congress to give his new plan for Iraq a chance. So, in effect, GWB and Condi are taking that good old John Lennon / Yoko Ono tune from the late 60s and twisting the refrain a bit: ALL WE ARE SAYING – IS GIVE WAR A CHANCE. I’m sure that someone is doing a comedy skit about that somewhere. Just too bad that people have to die in order to prove that the failed policy of a failed presidency really has failed.