>Are we so lacking in innovation that we cannot come up with sustainable development models? Well, yes. We Americans are fat, lazy and comfortable. 70 years of

>Are we so lacking in innovation that we cannot come up with sustainable development models? Well, yes. We Americans are fat, lazy and comfortable. 70 years of being on top will do that to you. But we are still voracious, even in old age, and will happily burn resources on our vanity, greed, and, perhaps worst of all, mere convenience. We are not willing to inconvenience ourselves to address global threats. (And that alone is enough to disqualify us from any kind of global leadership role.) (In fact I believe it was a twin existential threat that led them to loose their minds. Global climate change requires of Democracy what I call a "voluntary contraction". This is impossible to accept by the many people in this culture who feel entitled to earn/consume even more than their parents, and their grandparents, because it's been that way for 80 years. Sustainability changes this; it means accepting that you'll have less material wealth than your parents. The other threat is more personal: politically correct thought policing from the left, complete with mob enforcement through cancel culture. Together these threats might be powerful enough to cause a delusion in which one is saved from reality by a reality TV star.)