Leaps off Cliffs to Note This Week

March 31, 2017

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March 31, 2017 – With the month coming to a close it seems to be a good time, to sum up, those moments and events in our human experience that are best described as leaps off cliffs.

The first of the leaps began with the Brexit time clock starting when Britain’s Prime Minister sent an official letter to the heads of the European Union invoking divorce proceedings. The cost to the United Kingdom of this decision may prove to be monumental. Dissolving the EU partnership will have more than financial repercussions. Britain may dissolve as well with Scotland breaking away, with or without permission of the Westminster Parliament. And Northern Ireland also finding its own future in a relationship with Eire, its neighbour.

Then there was the executive order signed by President Donald Trump reversing the climate regulations established by his predecessor. The signed order was only the half of it. Trump’s head of the EPA told the press that he didn’t believe rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere had anything to do with global warming. Trump proposed dramatically cutting the budget of the EPA, and references to global warming and climate change, and programs focused on the science were all on the chopping block. On the Department of Energy’s website, all references to climate change and rising greenhouse gasses were to be excised. And America’s commitment to the Paris COP21 Climate Agreement was in question. Talk about a leap off a cliff that could take the rest of the planet with it.

And finally, there was a positive leap with the successful launch of a reused first stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has been taking leaps off cliffs ever since it arrived on the scene. Its CEO, Elon Musk, dreams of colonizing Mars and sees reusability of hardware as critical to human exploration of space and other worlds.

Considering Trump’s latest venture into attempting to revive coal mining and the burning of it for power generation, a wrong-headed attempt to revive an industry that is no longer cost competitive when compared to natural gas, wind, and solar, and noting the impact that coal will have on global warming in this century, we may need Musk’s rockets in the long run to find us a safe haven from the stupidity of governing leaders here on Earth.