I recently attended an educational conference on the environment, and it was pretty depressing. Almost every workshop told us that if we and the nation and the world did not make radical changes in the very near future, that the environment would reach a tipping point that would lead to runaway global warming that would be catastrophic.

World oil supply is peaking now, which means that from now on it will get more expensive and harder to find, just as 1.3 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians, are moving from negligible carbon footprints, to the lifestyles of the rich and famous that we aspire to. Our society is so dependant on oil for everything that it will fall apart without it.

Global warming is melting the ice caps and all of the glaciers, the rivers are drying up, and the aquifers are being pumped dry. We have just about maximized our ability to feed the 6.5 billion people on the earth and the crop land we use to do it is disappearing and becoming suburbs, and what is left is becoming infertile from overuse of fertilizers and pesticide. The population is expected to increase to 10 billion by 2050, which is when we need to reduce the current greenhouse gases by 80% to avert disaster. If the ice in Greenland melts the oceans will rise to the extent that there will be hundreds of millions of environmental refugees and even in the United States as many as 25% of the people will be displaced. Where will an additional 5 billion people live, and how will we feed them, when all of the land is already taken and two thirds of the people live on less than $2 a day now?

If we spent as much helping people, as we do waging war, everything would be possible, but people are unwilling to invest in the future. They would rather continue borrowing and pretending that the future will be the same as the past. We will owe $10 trillion and will be paying $500 billion a year just for the interest on the national debt when Bush leaves office.

Obviously the next president will have to have some different ideas and lead the country in a different direction. That person will need to inspire Americans to undertake a period of sacrifice and will have to marshal the country to a change as great as what happened during world war two. Most of the politicians today do not have the strength of an F.D.R. to bring about this change. Most politicians simply tell people what they want to hear, and most people don’t like to hear that they will have to sacrifice and change their behavior.

I was impressed with how Barack Obama can excite and mobilize the young people today. When he faced his greatest challenge, the un-American rants of his pastor, he did not deny and run from the controversy, or distract and go on the attack as most politicians would, he faced the problem head on and gave one of the most inspiring speeches on race in the history of the country.

Barack Obama got my vote that day, because he demonstrated the leadership and the ability to deal with the hard facts that we will need, if we are to survive the coming trials in the future. Obama is the only person running for president that can inspire and mobilize the country to do what must be done if we are to survive. Obama is the only one that can inspire the people of the world, and to convince them to stop the wars and genocide, so that all of the people of the world can work together to survive the greatest threat to humanity that we have ever faced.