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    The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth: The Story of a Planet Whose Caretakers Left It Behind
    The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth: The Story of a Planet Whose Caretakers Left It Behind
    The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth: The Story of a Planet Whose Caretakers Left It Behind
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth: The Story of a Planet Whose Caretakers Left It Behind

    By Eric Brownlee

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    About this ebook

    As the 21st Century opens, humanity has reached a critical junction in our relationship with planet Earth. Rather than humbling ourselves before our cosmic birthright, we are despoiling our home with our indulgent, narcisstic, behavior. Earth is now giving us a loud and clear, first and final, warning.

    Those who would try to rescue us from ourselves by building a more productive and sustainable global environment have been sidelined. Their only option now is to build a migration plan before it’s too late. Mars has become humanity’s salvation.

    The Bryant brothers, Mark and Matt, will take center stage in this drama. They arrive on planet Earth in the 1960s, at the beginning of the human space age. Their Colorado farm is the humble beginning for their stories. One will succumb to a self-inflicted lifetime of pain and suffering, and the other will lead humanity to its next home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateOct 10, 2019
    ISBN9781532085352
    The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth: The Story of a Planet Whose Caretakers Left It Behind

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      Book preview

      The Proud Shall Inherit the Earth - Eric Brownlee

      Copyright © 2019 Eric Brownlee.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-8536-9 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-8535-2 (e)

      iUniverse rev. date:  10/10/2019

      CONTENTS

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Chapter 1    The Cause

      Chapter 2    The Effect

      Chapter 3    Piedmont, Colorado

      Chapter 4    Life’s First Big Surprise

      Chapter 5    Separate Ways

      Chapter 6    (No) Clouds on the Horizon

      Chapter 7    Could Things Get Any Better?

      Chapter 8    Let’s Try Something Else

      Chapter 9    Where Do We Go from Here?

      Chapter 10    Earth and Mark Give Up

      Chapter 11    Piedmont, Mars

      Conclusion

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I am truly grateful to everyone who inspired and helped me write this book. It is the culmination of a lifelong journey inspirited by my mother’s love and support and passion for learning. She instilled in me, from my earliest reckoning, a magical combination of curiosity and academic success. All children should be so lucky.

      Kathy Evangelista did a masterful job editing the pile of words I gave her. She kindly suggested that all my run-on sentences and parenthetical phrases did not necessarily qualify as poetic license. Readers will be grateful for her literary intervention. If she did not achieve ultimate success, it is because she had a stubborn client.

      Steve Quigley built the best book cover I have ever seen. My hope is that the pages underneath will be as inspirational.

      Finally, my wife, Linda, has been a lifelong supporter, and occasional victim, of my passion for discovery. Her loving companionship on our grueling jaunts to far-flung places on our planet, whether it be hiking up Mt. Vesuvius, or trudging across the lava fields of Hawaii, means more to me than I could ever convey.

      INTRODUCTION

      THE SAD TRUTH

      By the year 2035, America had just endured its first lost generation of working-class Americans. The beginning of the 21st Century saw the end of their American Dream. In the span of a single generation, four hundred years of socio-economic progress came to an abrupt end. Traditional social norms and labor-intensive lifestyles were crushed under the weight of technological advances and global economic competition. Those who failed to acquire the skills to compete in the new global marketplace were marginalized by high unemployment and stagnant wages. Economic decline was followed closely by an unfolding health disaster, due primarily to obesity and drug addiction. Mortality rates among Americans under the age of 45 rose for the first time in recorded history.

      The response by those caught in this trap was fatal. Staring an existential threat directly in the face, they chose neither to create a new tradition of higher educational attainment, nor to begin engaging in healthier lifestyles, but to more firmly embrace their cultural inheritance and to deny personal responsibility for their plight. In an effort to recapture lost prosperity, they demanded from their elected officials a return of low-value manufacturing jobs, the increased extraction of non-renewable fossil fuels, and the deportation of migrant laborers to free up jobs they were no longer willing or able to perform. This destructive irony was lost on those advocating for a return to days gone by. They kept fighting a culture war they had already lost, and failed to fight a battle, which was eminently winnable, for the economic survival of their families, their country, and their planet. This is their story. And mine.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE CAUSE

      By the time I approached my golden years in 2020, lifelong employment in jobs which required neither skill nor education, but which was accompanied by a pension and health care until death, was a fading memory. American manufacturing employment peaked in the late 1970s with more than 20 million jobs, but in 2009, at the end of the Great Recession, the number was cut nearly in half. Ironically, by 2015 the manufacturing sector had regained all its pre-recession value, and was never more prosperous, thanks to the integration of technology which had replaced all those lost workers. This meant that those most passionate in advocating for a return of America’s manufacturing prowess had already missed it. The rejuvenation happened all around them, leaving them stranded. High-paying blue-collar jobs disappeared, to be replaced by higher-value new-economy jobs, those requiring some sort of science education or technology training. In 2018, one million manufacturing jobs were vacant, due primarily to a lack of skills in the workforce.

      Surprisingly, given the overwhelming correlation between education and prosperity, the percentage of American men with college or technical degrees did not budge after the mid-70s, and remained stuck at less than 30%. Those with high-school educations (or less) suffered unemployment rates of 10-15% at the end of the Great Recession, up from a low of 3% in the 1950s. American women, on the other hand, outsmarted their male colleagues, literally. By 2017, nearly 40% of those between the ages of 25-29 had earned a bachelor’s degree.

      The bottom line for the least-educated Americans was dismal. In 1980, the yearly income of Americans without a high-school degree was $10,000, compared to those with Bachelor’s Degrees at $15,000, a disparity of only 50%. By 2015, those numbers were $25,000 and $60,000, a gap of nearly 150%. The final nail in the coffin for hourly workers, typically those without a college degree, was the stagnation of their earning power. In 1972, the average hourly wage in America was $22. By 2018, it was still $22. Had it kept up with inflation, it would have been $55 by 2018.

      In conjunction with stagnating education and income levels, 65% of American adults were overweight or obese by 2018, with resulting skyrocketing costs in healthcare. The average American spent nearly half a million dollars on out-of-pocket medical costs between the ages of 65-85, or $25,000 per year, with diabetes treatment alone accounting for ¼ of the total. Many poor Americans, even those with health insurance, were in a literal death spiral. Many stopped treating their health problems due to debilitating out-of-pocket costs, mostly from large deductibles necessary to keep monthly premiums low. When they became too ill or disabled to continue working, they had no savings to fall back on, and, in effect, became wards of the state. By 2018, the federal government was spending $500B a year, almost $2000 for every man, woman, and child, on disability-income payments.

      The third leg of the traditional social safety net to disappear, after secure employment and lifelong healthcare, was post-retirement income security, provided in the past by corporate pensions and Social-Security payments. By 2020, corporate pensions had nearly disappeared, and were replaced by 401(k) plans. These were created by Congress in 1978, and were eventually adopted by all corporate and government employers. They are funded by employee and employer contributions, and are typically invested in stocks and bonds. Congress, however, did not mandate employee participation in 401(k) plans, and America’s primary and secondary schools failed to fill the gap with the basic financial education necessary to understand the enormous benefits of the plans over traditional pensions. So, many Americans opted out of the program through ignorance and fear. Their decision temporarily put extra discretionary dollars in their pocket, but the long-term fatal repercussions of their actions were set firmly in place.

      To add insult to injury, the Social Security Trust Fund experienced its first deficit in 2018. For the first time since the program’s inception, annual social-security payouts were larger than collected payroll contributions. The fund itself was projected to be depleted in the early 2030s. The financial-services industry began informing Americans of this looming financial disaster in the 1970s. Every young adult knew that Social Security won’t be around when I retire, but very few of them understood the ramifications, or had a plan to overcome the impact to them and their families.

      These three factors, a dismal reflection upon the collective health, wealth, and wisdom of Americans, caused an immense burden on the nation’s finances. Desperate American citizens, having already tossed away their only

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