Strayer, last chapter excerpt

This is such a short excerpt being the last part. Globalization has been the defining socio-economic philosophy since the 1960s. Has it really? I never heard the word “Globalization” during The Cold War. I never heard it being used in common usage within the vernacular and realpolitik until the first NAFTA legislation was passed around  1994, I thin. And then there was also European Union being enacted, formerly the Common Market.  I think Strayer is right that a lot of the wars and social conscious issues have faded into memory with the rise of globalism. I don’t think a lot of today’s generation really can identify with the issues of the 60’s, or the wars. And the people involved now are pretty much at retirement age. It’s kind of surreal like the scene in Airplane II where the elderly hippie couple are having a conversation like: “You remember the time, you and so and so were on that Acid trip at Woodstock?”

The 20^th Century fundamentally challenged our ability to tap new resources of fossil fuels and technologies like nuclear energy. I remember someone once said that “The 20^th Century was like a thousand 19^th Centuries and the 21^st Century will probably be like one hundred 20^th Centuries in terms of technological innovations.” Especially if we get things right with energy alternatives and no innovations. Yes, Americans have used unfortunately,  50 to 100 times more energy than someone in Bangladesh. That was a grievance in the film: “How Stuff Works.” Population has dramatically increased with our ability to increase production of crop yields and cattle via technological innovation, fertilizers, pesticides, dams, et cetera, the burning of fossil fuels increasing global warming, ad naseam. Environmentalism had its roots in 19^th Century Romanticism movements and were promoted by people like John Muir, The Sierra Club founder, and maybe I would say Theodore Roosevelt had some input in the early movement since he help establish the first national park system. But, it didn’t really take off until the 1970’s and 1980’s.