There’s a reasonable chance of a recession in the U.S. in 2023. – David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs
Fitch expects the U.S. economy to enter genuine recession territory — albeit relatively mild by historical standards — in 2Q23.
The projected recession is quite similar to that of 1990–1991, which followed similarly rapid Fed tightening in 1989–1990. – Olu Sonola, Head of U.S. Regional Economics at Fitch Ratings
Humanity has less than a five year window to take decisive action on climate change, the UK’s former chief scientist told the opening session of the National Climate Emergency Summit in Melbourne.
“We have to move rapidly,” said Professor Sir David King, founder and chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University and a former advisor to both the Blair and Brown governments.
“What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity. We are in a very very desperate situation.”
King had previously advised the UK government that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees was vital to avoiding uncontrollable environmental changes in the polar icecaps and Himalayas, but said he now realised this was wrong and the crucial point had already been crossed. “I am afraid the tipping point in that respect has been passed, and therefore we have to reverse these processes.”
He said emissions reductions, while imperative, could no longer control the crisis, and that radical geo-engineering interventions had become unavoidable.
“What we do in the next 2 to 3 years, will determine the future of humanity”
– Sir David King, World renowned climate scientist and the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK (February 2022)
“The science is clear. Canadians have been clear. We must not only continue taking real climate action, we must also move faster and go further. As Canadians are increasingly experiencing across the country, climate change is an existential threat.”
– Justin Trudeau
“This is an emergency and for emergency situations we need emergency action.”
– Ban Ki-Moon, Former UN Secretary-General
“We have to move rapidly. What we do, I believe, in the next 3-4 years will determine the future of humanity.”
– Prof Sir David King, ex science advisor to successive UK governments, last year
“…Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”
– Hans-Otto Portner, co chair of the IPCC Working Group II, sixth assessment in February this year (2022)
“Delay means death”
– UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, this year (2022)
“If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon”
– Sir David Attenborough
We are living in the darkest hour in human history so far. The science is clear and undisputed now: temperatures have risen as our greenhouse gas emissions have increased and are wreaking havoc on our planet… but it is going to get far, far worse. We are facing the end of civilization. This is an academic way of saying that humankind — billions of people — will face unlivable conditions and will devolve into starvation, slaughter and suffering on a global scale. This is not a distant future – millions of people are dying now because of climate destruction.
ÅTERSTÄLL VÅTMARKER
Torrlagda våtmarker orsakar 25% av Sveriges koldioxidutsläpp. Det är dags att göra något åt det! Kampanjen Återställ Våtmarker kräver att regeringen påbörjar en massiv insats för att återställa utdikade och torrlagda våtmarker!
Nous sommes la dernière génération capable d’empêcher un effondrement sociétal.
Malgré l’urgence absolue, le gouvernement a trahi sa promesse d’appliquer “sans filtre” les mesures de la Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (CCC), dont celle qui concerne la rénovation énergétique des bâtiments en France. Il a été condamné par ses propres tribunaux pour manquement à ses propres lois.
C’est désormais à nous, citoyens et citoyennes ordinaires, de faire appliquer les engagements auxquels notre gouvernement refuse de se plier. C’est à nous d’entrer en résistance civile.
En Suisse les bâtiments représentent la moitié (45%) de la consommation totale d’énergie et sont la deuxième source d’émission de C02, juste derrière les transports. Ils représentent environ 33 % de toutes les émissions de CO2. Malgré une forte baisse par rapport à 1990, les émissions des bâtiments en Suisse sont supérieures à la moyenne européenne. Dans les ménages, deux tiers de l’énergie finale part dans les chauffages qui fonctionne pour la plupart encore aux énergies fossiles.
Ainsi, les bâtiments sont de véritables gouffres énergétiques. Cela a un impact à la fois sur le climat, mais aussi sur les habitants. Avec l’augmentation du prix de l’énergie, les personnes les plus précaires se retrouvent dans une situation risquée, pouvant mener à une impossibilité de se chauffer par manque de moyens.
La rénovation des bâtiments est une mesure essentielle pour que la Suisse atteigne les objectifs climatiques qu’elle s’est fixés. Actuellement, un million de maisons sont à rénover d’urgence. Au rythme actuel, il faudrait 100 ans pour réhabiliter l’ensemble du parc immobilier Suisse. En effet, le taux de rénovation de l’enveloppe existante du bâtiment est de 1 % par an. Pour atteindre les objectifs de la stratégie énergétique 2050, il faudrait doubler, voire tripler, ce pourcentage.
OUR MISSION: Restoration of passenger rail across the country to at least year 2000 levels with affordable, accessible rail options reducing inequality and carbon emissions.
Restore Passenger Rail is a new climate campaign is setting up right now in Aotearoa. We have a plan to prevent the catastrophic climate change that we are currently heading for. That’s right – it’s a plan not just help to mitigate to some extent, but actually change the political playing field on climate across a number of democratic countries, and save the climate. How? Why? We have no time to loose: In the next 10-20 years we will hit 2 degrees warming, this will make 20% of the earth uninhabitable. This will mean 1 billion climate refugees. This will bring, violence, war and societal collapse will. Thankfully we can turn things around and provide public services that benefit our people. We can reduce overall consumption and share what we have. We have two to three years to do this but governments here and around the world lie and say they are dealing with it, while destruction of the natural world is accelerating and emissions are still rising. Is it really that bad? Sadly – yes. We can see with our own eyes the devastating effects of climate change and ecological collapse and the adverse affects on societies and global stability as a result. Here in NZ we are seeing 1 in 100 year extreme weather events happening year on year, sometimes twice in a year. We see fish wash up on our shores dead, in India we have seen deaths due to extreme heat, wildfires across the world, extreme cyclones in the US, Pakistan 1/3 underwater with 30 million people forced to leave their homes.
We are in a climate crisis and the BC Government continues to allow the logging of 1000 year old trees
Old Growth Forests act as an essential carbon sink; they hold the soil and reduce the risk and severity of floods and landslides; they act as a natural barrier to wild fires, are home to many endangered species and are culturally and spiritually significant ancestors of these lands.
Only 2.7% of B.C.’s original productive old growth forests remain.
A 2022 Poll showed 82% of British Columbians support legislation to ban all old growth logging in the province.
Over 1,100 people have been arrested at the Fairy Creek Blockade and numerous other blockades have been set up across the province.
We are facing the destruction of our society, the economy, everything we love and more.
Saving these precious and important ecosystems is an essential step in preserving a livable future. We must do whatever it nonviolently takes.
Our Demand: Pass legislation to immediately end ALL Old Growth logging in the province of British Columbia
Society is at a pivotal crossroads. Climate breakdown in the form of un-natural disasters is happening all across the globe. Our planet is on the brink of collapse.
Australia punches above its weight in contributing to global emissions as the third largest exporter of fossil fuels. Consecutive governments have allowed the nation’s resources to be plundered and exploited for the profit of a few.
We know democracy is broken when those elected to represent us are negligent in their duty of care to protect their citizens. The missing piece is the social and political will to make change happen.
If the Government is serious about the climate crisis there can be no more fossil fuel subsidies for the coal, gas and oil industries. No new approvals, no expansions, and rapid closure plans for all existing fossil fuel extraction.
That $11billion must be used for solutions rather than subsiding a destructive industry that makes huge profits and pays little or no taxes. There must be a commitment to invest in mitigation and adaption strategies.
We are at a crucial moment in history, where the global crisies are lined up one after the other.
Climate collapse, Covid-19, racism, destruction of biological diversity; all are symptoms of a toxic system which drives us towards extinction. A system which is built on economic inequality, depletion of the planet’s resources, destruction of nature and exploitation of people and nature for profit.
It is truly a global crisis. The future is uncertain and life itself is under threat. Now we can no longer ignore the problems. Now the time for acting in a way that aligns with the severity of the situation has come. Science has concluded. We stand at beginning of a man-made mass extinction, and our governments aren’t even close to properly protecting its citizens, our resources, our biological diversity, our planet, or our future.
Instead they actively contribute to further destruction.
We can not continue like this. The system takes lives.
This crisis knows no bounds and does not distinguish between races or ethnicities. Although wealth can give some protection, it is temporary. Time is running out, and if we fail to stand together in order to protect our planet we will all be in danger, and all will feel the consequences of the collapse.
Italy is being destroyed by the climate and ecological crisis. We are among the most affected countries in Europe and the next few years will be worse and worse. If we do not change course immediately, soon there will be no more food or work, we will risk losing our homes and ordinary people will pay the consequences of an unprecedented disaster.
Our country as we know it now is in danger of being wiped out; schools, hospitals, and all infrastructures will collapse if we don’t take action radically.
We are the Last Generation of the old world. We are here today to say we will create a new world – where humanity embraces itself, forgives itself, loves itself and commits to continue our great adventure. As the Last Generation, we will do whatever it takes to protect our generation and all future generations. As is our inalienable right.
The old world is dying. We are in the last hour, the darkest hour. This world is being decimated before our eyes. We are in between moments. What we do now decides the fate of both this world and the next. So we decide. We decide, we are no longer indulging in our fears, our despair, our resentments. We are putting ourselves behind us.
The choice: rapid transition to a low energy and low carbon world, or social collapse. We can do it now, in an orderly manner – creating millions of proper skilled jobs and protecting the rights of workers in sunset industries – or we wait for the unavoidable collapse.
Climate collapse will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, all human rights. It is already the greatest injustice visited on the global south in human history. If you are not in resistance you are appeasing evil. If you continue to stand by you are betraying 200 years of struggle and the sacrifice of those that came before us. It is time to put everything aside, we are going into resistance with or without you. Are you bystander or are you going to rise up?
(From the diaries of José Rizal, 1888) Japan has enchanted me. The beautiful scenery, the flowers, the trees, and the inhabitants — so pleasant. O-Sei-San, Sayonara, Sayonara! I have spent a happy golden month; I do not know if I can have another one like that in all my life. Love, money, friendship, appreciation, honors — these have not been wanting. To think that I am leaving this life for the uncertain, the unknown. There I was offered an easy way to live, beloved and esteemed… To you, I dedicate the final chapter of these memoirs of my youth. No woman, like you, has ever loved me. No woman, like you, has ever sacrificed for me. Like the flower of the chodji that falls from the stem fresh and whole without falling leaves or without withering — with poetry still despite its fall — thus you fell. Neither have you lost your purity nor have the delicate petals of your innocence faded — Sayonara, Sayonara! You shall never return to know that I have once more thought of you and that your image lives in my memory, and undoubtedly, I am always thinking of you. Your name lives in the sight of my lips, your image accompanies and animates all my thoughts. When shall I return to pass another divine afternoon like that in the temple of Meguro? When shall the sweet hours I spent with your return? When shall I find them sweeter, more tranquil, more pleasing? You the color of the camelia, its freshness, its elegance… Ah! The last descendant of a noble family, faithful to an unfortunate vengeance, you are lovely like . . . everything has ended! Sayonara, Sayonara!
Global cooling was much more an invention of the media than it was a real scientific concern. A survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers published between 1965 and 1979 shows that the large majority of research at the time predicted that the earth would warm as carbon-dioxide levels rose — as indeed it has. And some of those global-cooling projections were based on the idea that aerosol levels in the atmosphere — which are a product of air pollution from sources like coal burning and which contribute to cooling by deflecting sunlight in the atmosphere — would keep rising. But thanks to environmental legislation like the Clean Air Acts, global air-pollution levels — not including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide — peaked in the 1970s and began declining.
The reality is that scientists in the 1970s were just beginning to understand how climate change and aerosol pollution might impact global temperatures. Add in the media-hype cycle — which was true then as it is now — and you have some coverage that turned out to be wrong. But thanks to the Internet, those stories stay undead, recycled by notorious climate skeptics like George Will. Pay no attention to the Photoshop. It’s the science we should heed — and the science says man-made climate change is real and very, very worrying.
(EcoHealth and other like-minded research groups did not prevent the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve clearly failed. (But that’s in part because the world ignored the 2003 warning from SARS, which originated at Chinese wildlife markets and quickly spread globally.) And we never shut down the markets. That’s the problem,
We’re in this pandemic era where COVID is not the last one—I mean, give me a break. And there’s worse out there.
No country is immune to corruption. The abuse of public office for private gain erodes people’s trust in government and institutions, makes public policies less effective and fair, and siphons taxpayers’ money away from schools, roads, and hospitals.
While the wasted money is important, the cost is about much more. Corruption corrodes the government’s ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens.
But the political will to build strong and transparent institutions can turn the tide against corruption.
A carfree city is a population center that relies primarily on public transport, walking, or cycling for transport within the urban area. Districts where motorized vehicles are prohibited are referred to as carfree zones. Carfree city models have gained traction due to current issues with congestion and infrastructure, and proposed environmental and quality of life benefits. Currently in Asia, Europe and Africa, many cities continued to have carfree areas due to inception before the origin of the automobile. Many developing cities in Asia are currently using the proposed model to modernize its infrastructure.
The future of America’s national forests is being shaped now. The Biden administration is developing a system to inventory old-growth and mature forests on federal land that the president wants to be completed by next April. But given the immediate threats facing many of these forests and their importance to slowing climate change, bold action is required immediately to preserve not just old-growth and mature trees but entire national forest ecosystems comprising thousands of interdependent species.
President Biden should issue an executive order immediately directing his secretaries of the interior and agriculture to take all steps available to them to stop commercial logging on public land. We can’t wait a year.
Financial well-being is a state of being wherein a person can fully meet current and ongoing financial obligations, can feel secure in their financial future and is able to make choices that allow them to enjoy life.
More specifically, an individual’s financial well-being corresponds to the extent to which the individual feels that he or she: (1) has control over day-to-day and month-to-month finances; (2) has the capacity to absorb a financial shock; (3) is on track to meet his or her financial goals; and (4) has the financial freedom to make the choices that allow one to enjoy life.
Although specific goals and vision of the good life vary from person to person, these four elements reflect two common and consistent themes: security and freedom of choice, in the present and for the future.
Michel Mayor, accompagné de sa femme Françoise, a reçu un accueil triomphal à la cérémonie du Dies Academicus de l’Université de Genève.
L’humanité est liée à la Terre, elle n’ira pas s’établir ailleurs. Il n’y a pas de plan B. Et il ne faut pas charrier, elle est bien sympathique, notre Terre !
In the longer-term competition, China’s advantages begin with its population of 1.4 billion that creates an unparalleled pool of talent and data, the largest domestic market in the world, and universities that are graduating computer scientists in multiples of their American counterparts. China graduates four times as many bachelor’s students with STEM degrees and is on track to graduate twice as many STEM PhDs by 2025. By contrast, the number of domestic-born AI PhDs in the U.S. has not increased since 1990.
Because a primary asset in applying AI is the quantity of quality data, China has emerged as the Saudi Arabia of the twenty-first century’s most valuable commodity. Even so, the United States enjoys two advantages in human capital that Beijing cannot replicate. First, half of the world’s AI superstars work for U.S. companies. Second, America can recruit from all the world’s 7.9 billion people, while inherent insularity restricts China to its own population.
For now, China is neither willing nor able to replace the U.S. as the leading global power, because it is still inferior militarily (although it is catching up). Therefore, it wants to offer an alternative to the U.S. on the continental and maritime tracks between Asia and Europe. International organizations under Chinese leadership, such as the Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (2020) for the Indo-Pacific region, also serve this goal – a clear rejection of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, in which the U.S. plays a significant role.
What does this mean for the EU, for Western Europe, but also for Japan, South Korea, and other emerging Asian regions, especially Taiwan, which have so far been under the U.S. hegemonic umbrella? The change to the Biden administration has brought about a rapprochement between the previous free riders and the old leading power, even if the U.S.’s hegemonic dilemma has not been solved. There will be no return to the good old days when Washington took care of international public goods and did the “dirty work” in regions of fragile statehood, while countries like Germany could concentrate on social policy.
From a realist perspective, it follows that Europe must be prepared to share the burden of stability and security. In this way Europe, and countries around the world, can help support the U.S. in the hegemonic struggle with China.
The two alternatives to this scenario are not very pleasant. In the first, a future Chinese world order arises, oriented toward the bureaucratic development state and where the Communist Party in China calls the shots. In the second, the anarchy of the world of states returns for an extended period, in which government is not based on international public goods but on the principle of each country for itself, because the Sino-American conflict will drag on for the foreseeable future.
Europe triumphant, 1400-1850
In the nineteenth century, the coming of steamships, telegraphs, and the railroad continued shrinking space; and as its economic potential was unleashed, the United States began challenging Britain, going from being an economic periphery to being a core in its own right. America triumphant, 1850-2050?
The United States’ GDP overtook Britain’s in 1872 and Germany’s followed suit in 1908. In 1914 and again in 1939, German leaders concluded that the only way to solve the geostrategic problem of being trapped between France and Russia was through violence. The resulting wars devastated Europe, bankrupted Britain, and left the United States and Soviet Union to divide the spoils between them.
Japan overtook West Germany to become the world’s second-biggest economy in 1967, and in 1992, China pushed Japan out of the number two spot. In the thirty years after Chairman Mao died in 1976, the Chinese economy grew tenfold and its share of global economic output more than tripled.
Will it ever be possible to replace the human mind with all its functions with a machine, even the most sophisticated, such as consciousness? My answer is definitely no, although many people, including some distinguished scientists, argue that one day this may be possible. This day, despite whatever the greatest of optimists and in spite of the speed of scientific progress, will never happen in my opinion and this is why.
Mind uploading could (I emphasize could) emulate the brain in its entirety and therefore with all its biological and functional substrate. To work, this technique should involve all the mapping of our brain and of all other animals to match the level of a computer. In the latter case, since animals have a less complex brain than ours, the process should be easier to emulate. Theoretically this is true and therefore it may be possible one day to build a machine that replaces our mind, including consciousness, but, I repeat, in reality this will never happen.
People are not reasoning logically at all — rather they are looking for a balance between costs and benefits in social exchange (“you give me X, I give you Y”), or in the calculus of social status (“you’re in social category X, so you’re entitled to benefit Y”). They’re especially sensitive to cheaters and poseurs — those who take a benefit without paying the appropriate cost, or having the appropriate status. Sometimes this sensitivity to social cheating happens to correspond to logical inference, but often it doesn’t.
Exaluminal is an Internet of Things device that will notify you the Earth is about to be destroyed by a supernova up to one hour before it happens. By simply plugging Exaluminal into a wall outlet and connecting to the local WiFi network, Exaluminal will silently wait for the Earth’s demise. When Extraluminal recieves a signal from the Extraluminal service, it will sound an alarm warning you of Earth’s impending doom.
AI が進化して
AI が何をしているのかを説明できる人がいなくなりつつあるなかで
AI に対する私たちのスタンスが大きく変わりつつある
どのようなアルゴリズムでその結果に至ったのかを説明できるようにすると
AI のパフォーマンスが落ちるから
AI のパフォーマンスを上げるために AI のブラックボックス化が許容される
データサイエンティストも AI のアルゴリズムを作成するエンジニアも
データから直接導き出される結果について 何の説明もできない
ブラックボックスの内部で何が起こっているのかを理解してもいない
The world has dealt with unthinkable crisis after unthinkable crisis and yet we remain resilient. The next chapter must focus on building resilient people – backed up by education, health and social protection.
In the most frequently cited one-liner in the study of international relations, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides explained, It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.
Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War, a conflict that engulfed his homeland, the city-state of Athens, in the fifth century BCE, and which in time came to consume almost the entirety of ancient Greece. A former soldier, Thucydides watched as Athens challenged the dominant Greek power of the day, the martial city-state of Sparta. He observed the outbreak of armed hostilities between the two powers and detailed the fighting’s horrific toll. He did not live to see its bitter end, when a weakened Sparta finally vanquished Athens, but it is just as well for him.
While others identified an array of contributing causes of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides went to the heart of the matter. When he turned the spotlight on the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, he identified a primary driver at the root of some of history’s most catastrophic and puzzling wars. Intentions aside, when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception. It happened between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BCE, between Germany and Britain a century ago, and almost led to war between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
Like so many others, Athens believed its advance to be benign. Over the half century that preceded the conflict, it had emerged as a steeple of civilization. Philosophy, drama, architecture, democracy, history, and naval prowess—Athens had it all, beyond anything previously seen under the sun. Its rapid development began to threaten Sparta, which had grown accustomed to its position as the dominant power on the Peloponnese. As Athenian confidence and pride grew, so too did its demands for respect and expectations that arrangements be revised to reflect new realities of power. These were, Thucydides tells us, natural reactions to its changing station. How could Athenians not believe that their interests deserved more weight? How could Athenians not expect that they should have greater influence in resolving differences?
But it was also natural, Thucydides explained, that Spartans should see the Athenian claims as unreasonable, and even ungrateful. Who, Spartans rightly asked, provided the security environment that allowed Athens to flourish? As Athens swelled with a growing sense of its own importance, and felt entitled to greater say and sway, Sparta reacted with insecurity, fear, and a determination to defend the status quo.
Similar dynamics can be found in a host of other settings, indeed even in families. When a young man’s adolescent surge poses the prospect that he will overshadow his older sibling (or even his father), what do we expect? Should the allocation of bedrooms, or closet space, or seating be adjusted to reflect relative size as well as age? In alpha-dominated species like gorillas, as a potential successor grows larger and stronger, both the pack leader and the wannabe prepare for a showdown. In businesses, when disruptive technologies allow upstart companies like Apple, Google, or Uber to break quickly into new industries, the result is often a bitter competition that forces established companies like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, or taxi operators to adapt their business models—or perish. Thucydides’s Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power. This can happen in any sphere. But its implications are most dangerous in international affairs. For just as the original instance of Thucydides’s Trap resulted in a war that brought ancient Greece to its knees, this phenomenon has haunted diplomacy in the millennia since. Today it has set the world’s two biggest powers on a path to a cataclysm nobody wants, but which they may prove unable to avoid.
Project’s overall aim is to analyze people’s values, beliefs and norms in a comparative cross-national and over-time perspective. To reach this aim, project covers a broad scope of topics from the field of Sociology, Political Science, International Relations, Economics, Public Health, Demography, Anthropology, Social Psychology and etc. In addition, WVS is the only academic study which covers the whole scope of global variations, from very poor to very rich societies in all world’s main cultural zones.
Robot-Robot-Human Interaction is an emerging field, holding the potential to reveal social effects involved in human interaction with more than one robot. We tested if an interaction between one participant and two non-humanoid robots can lead to negative feelings related to ostracism, and if it can impact fundamental psychological needs including control, belonging, meaningful existence, and self-esteem. We implemented a physical ball-tossing activity based on the Cyberball paradigm. The robots’ ball-tossing ratio towards the participant was manipulated in three conditions: Exclusion (10%), Inclusion (33%), and Over-inclusion (75%). Objective and subjective measures indicated that the Exclusion condition led to an ostracism experience which involved feeling “rejected”, “ignored”, and “meaningless”, with an impact on various needs including control, belonging, and meaningful existence. We conclude that interaction with more than one robot can form a powerful social context with the potential to impact psychological needs, even when the robots have no humanoid features.
All of this is completely, utterly wrong.
The great defining event of the twenty-first century — one of the great defining events in human history — will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end. We do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust — a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
If you find this news shocking, that’s not surprising. The United Nations forecasts that our population will grow from seven billion to eleven billion in this century before leveling off after 2100. But an increasing number of demographers around the world believe the UN estimates are far too high. More likely, they say, the planet’s population will peak at around nine billion sometime between 2040 and 2060, and then start to decline, perhaps prompting the UN to designate a symbolic death to mark the occasion. By the end of this century, we could be back to where we are right now, and steadily growing fewer.
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease by controlling insect vectors of infection. However, it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.
**
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.