America has the knowledge, technology, and resources to address the unfolding crises that our country faces – unchecked and unsustainable patterns of growth, extreme wealth concentration, and the overarching threat of climate change. These specters need not drive our society to disintegration. And yet we, as a nation, have been unable to step up to these challenges - not due to a lack of technical ability, but because the dysfunction in our society and government has already reached the point that most of us cannot even recognize the imminent danger posed by the threats in our midst, and the accelerating disunity in America has made us incapable of springing into action to face those threats. And make no mistake - these looming threats will result in an ecological cataclysm if we do not radically change the way we are structured and how we operate.

This manifesto, written by a systems engineer with over twenty-five years of experience, aims to contribute to the public dialogue an understanding of how the tools of systems engineering can be applied to fix our broken civil and societal systems so that we can begin the necessary, radical, and rapid response to climate change. There is a tendency, when thinking through the current state of national and world affairs and projecting today’s problems and crises into the future, to despair. This manifesto is intended to counter that despair with a structured approach, demonstrating that, using only the tools we already have at hand, we can still establish a well-functioning and sustainable society.

Inspirations & Key References

BOOKS

VIDEOS & PODCASTS

Larry Lessig Ted Talk: Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it. (October 20, 2015)

Larry Lessig Ted Talk: How the Net destroyed democracy (August 10, 2017)

Dan Carlin: Common Sense 319 – A Recipe for Caesar (March, 31, 2020) https://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-319-a-recipe-for-caesar/

ARTICLES

John Molinaro & Solveig Spjeldnes: The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide (Aspen Institute, February 1, 2021) https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-college-and-the-rural-urban-divide/

Kurt Andersen: How America Lost Its Mind (The Atlantic, September, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

Jonathan Haidt: WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID (The Atlantic, April 11, 2022) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

Paul Rosenberg: A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy (salon.com, August 8, 2021) https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/a-terrifying-new-theory-fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories-as-an-evolutionary-strategy/

C Thi Nguyen: Escape the echo chamber (aeon, April 9, 2018) https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult

Peter Shanosky: America Has Become A Three-Caste, Medieval Economy (medium.com, February 17, 2022) https://marker.medium.com/america-has-become-a-three-caste-medieval-economy-f82a380d06bb

Samuel Earle: The Timeline We’re On Is Even Darker Than ‘The Matrix’ Envisioned (New York Times, December 22, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/opinion/the-matrix-resurrections-internet-dystopia.html

James Poniewozik: The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV (New Your Times, September 6, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/sunday/trump-reality-tv.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth – Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think (New York Magazine, July 10, 2017 – updated) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

Alex Steffen: Predatory Delay and the Rights of Future Generations (medium.com, April 29, 2016)https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/predatory-delay-and-the-rights-of-future-generations-69b06094a16

Alex Steffen: The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb (alexsteffen.com, May 11, 2015) https://www.alexsteffen.com/apocalypse_makes_us_dumb

Judith D. Schwartz: Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? (Yale Environment 360, March 4, 2014) https://e360.yale.edu/features/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new_weapon_in_climate_fight

Moises Velasquez-Manoff: Can Dirt Save the Earth (New York Times – Magazine, April 18, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/dirt-save-earth-carbon-farming-climate-change.html

Damien Cave: Can a Carbon-Emitting Iron Ore Tycoon Save the Planet? (New Your Times, October 16, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/16/business/energy-environment/green-energy-fortescue-andrew-forrest.html

Christopher Ketcham: The Fallacy of Endless Economic Growth (Pacific Standard, September 22, 2018) https://psmag.com/magazine/fallacy-of-endless-growth

Charles Hugh Smith: Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants! (oftwominds.com, October 21, 2016) https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct16/neocolonialism10-16.html

Richard A. Werner: Shifting from Central Planning to a Decentralised Economy: Do we Need Central Banks? (Paper presented at the 14^th Rhodes Forum: Dialogue of Civilisations research Institute, Panel 2: Economic Alternatives when Conventional Models Fail, Rhodos, Greece, 1 October 2016) https://professorwerner.org/category/articles-essays/

Tim Purcell: Primer: The Eurodollar Market (Lykeion, February 17, 2021) https://www.thelykeion.com/primer-the-eurodollar-market/

William H. Janeway: Venture capital didn’t build that (Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2012) https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-dec-27-la-oe-janeway-innovation-govt-investment-20121227-story.html

David Brooks: Leading With Two Minds (New York Times, May 6, 2010) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/opinion/07brooks.html

END NOTES

[1] Report from the Costs of War project: Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths (Brown University, September 1, 2021) A report released by the Costs of War project https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar

[2] A. Trevor Thrall and Erik Goepner: Step Back: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy from the Failed War on Terror (CATO Institute, Policy Analysis No. 814, June 26.2017) https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/step-back-lessons-us-foreign-policy-failed-war-terror

[3] Dan Shreve and Wade Schauer: Deep decarbonization requires deep pockets (Wood Mackenzie, June 2019) https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-renewables-would-cost-4-5-trillion-analysis-finds, http://www.decarbonisation.think.woodmac.com/

[4] Hunger in America (Feeding America) https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

[5] Kimberly Amadeo: Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage (the balance, August 30, 2020) https://www.thebalance.com/living-wage-3305771

[6] Felix Smith: Exclusive: America’s true unemployment rate (AXIOS, October 13, 2020) https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html

David Brooks: The Missing Fifth by (New York Times, May 9, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/opinion/10brooks.html

[7] Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, Robert Wallace: Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature - University of California Press, 2007) 54, 58

[8] K. J. Hölkeskamp: Written Law in Archaic Greece (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philogical Society, 1992) 93

[9] Norman Reynolds: The Athenian constitution from Solon to Pericles B.C. 594 – B.C. 457 (University of Louisville, Paper 1864, 1942)

[10] Ezra Klein: The definitive case for ending the filibuster (New York Times, October 1, 2020 https://www.vox.com/21424582/filibuster-joe-biden-2020-senate-democrats-abolish-trump

[11] Robert Brulle: 30 years ago global warming became front-page news – and both Republicans and Democrats took itseriously (The Conversation, 2018) https://theconversation.com/30-years-ago-global-warming-became-front-page-news-and-both-republicans-and-democrats-took-it-seriously-97658

[12] Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson: Finland is a Capitalist Paradise (New York Times, December 7, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/finland-socialism-capitalism.html

[13] Sujata Gupta: Military towns are the most racially integrated places in the U.S. Here’s why (ScienceNews.org, February 8, 2022) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/military-towns-integration-segregation-united-states#:~:text=On%20July%2026%2C%201948%2C%20President,that%20the%20armed%20forces%20integrate.

[14] Nicholas D. Kristof: Our Lefty Military (New York Times, June 15, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16kristof.html

[15] Roland Paulsen: The Art Of Not Working At Work (The Atlantic, November 3, 2014) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/the-art-of-not-working-at-work/382121/

[16] Howard Nicholas: Economics in Simple Terms (from a lecture delivered at the Institute of Socieal Sutdies, The Hague (ISS), April 14, 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpZSla0egW0

[17] Walter A. McDougall:Freedom Just Around the Corner (New York, Harper Collins, 2004) 58

[18] C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, C40 Knowledge Hub, City of Heidelberg: How Heidelberg built one of the world’s largest carbon-neutral districts (C40 Knowledge Hub, January, 2021) https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/How-Heidelberg-built-one-of-the-worlds-largest-carbon-neutral-districts?language=en_US

[19] Eric Posner: Milton Friedman Was Wrong (The Atlantic, August 22, 2019) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/milton-friedman-shareholder-wrong/596545/

[20] Charles M. Blow: Empire at the End of Decadence (New York Times, February 18, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/opinion/19blow.html

[21] Kerstine Appunn, Freja Eriiksen, Julian Wettengel: Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy transition targets (Clean Energy Wire, July 26, 2021) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets

[22] https://www.worldmeters.info

[23] James Poniewozik: Audience of One – Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America (New York, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2019) xiv

Neil Postman:Amusing Ourselves to Death – Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, Viking, 1985)

[24] Jacqueline Howard: Americans devote more than 10 hours a day to screen time, and growing ( CNN health, July 29, 2016) https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html#:~:text=The%20average%20American%20spends%20nearly,first%20quarter%20of%20this%20year.

[25] Shoshana Zuboff: You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation (New York Times, November 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/facebook-privacy.html

[26] C. Thi Nguyen: Escape the echo chamber (aeon, April 9, 2018) https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult

[27] Jonathan Haidt: WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID (The Atlantic, April 11, 2022) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

[28] Gregory Bateson: Naven: A survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1936)

[29] Paul Rosenberg – interview with Michael Bang Petersen: A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy (salon.com, August 8, 2021) https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/a-terrifying-new-theory-fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories-as-an-evolutionary-strategy/

[30] Stephen Whitefield: Why the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated (theconversation.com, September 2, 2020)

[31] Isaac Chotiner: Too Close for Comfort – How much do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich? Historian Richard Evans weighs in (slate.com, February 10, 2017)

[32] Kurt Andersen: How America Lost Its Mind (The Atlantic, September, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

[33] Dan Carlin: Common Sense 319 – A Recipe for Caesar (dancarlin.com, 31 March, 2020)

[34] Satyajit DasExtreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (New Jersey, FT Press, 2011)

[35] Chuck Collins: Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S., Job Losses and Pandemic Profiteers (inequality.org, October 18, 2021)https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/

[36] Alexandre Tanzi and Mike dorning: Top 1% of U.S. Earners Now Hold More Wealth Than All of the Middle Class (Bloomberg, October 8, 2021) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/top-1-earners-hold-more-wealth-than-the-u-s-middle-class?cmpid=BBD100821_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=211008&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

[37] Ana Hernández and Lowell R. Ricketts: Has Wealth Inequality in America Changed over Time? Here Are Key Statistics (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, December 2, 2020) https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics

[38] Nick Hanauer, a Seattle entrepreneur worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has started the think tank Civic Ventures working to solve the wealth divide and other problems with U.S. society https://civic-ventures.com/

[39] Pietra Rivoli: The real financial bubble - book review of John Kay’s Other People’s Money (Financial Times, September 25, 2015)

https://www.ft.com/content/bf4e7770-613a-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2

[40] Matt Blackman: Decoding the Derivative Dilemma (TRADERSLOG) https://www.traderslog.com/derivative-dilemma

[41] Richard Duncan: abridgement of Chapter 9 of The Corruption of Capitalism (Washington DC, CLSA Books, 2009)https://richardduncaneconomics.com/deregulation-derivatives-the-threat-of-mass-destruction/

[42] John Molinaro & Solveig Spjeldnes: The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide (Aspen Institute, February 1, 2021) https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-college-and-the-rural-urban-divide/

[43] Jonathan Shaw: A Radical Fix for the republic (Harvard Magazine, July-August 2012) Also refer to Harvard Professor and director of the Safra Center for Ethics Lawrence Lessig’s TED talk listed under Further Reading - Videos

[44] Shannon Hall: Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago (Scientific American, October 26, 2015) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

[45] https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/climate_tipping_points

[46] Grant Currin: Arctic Permafrost is Going Through a Rapid Meltdown – 70 Years Early (LIVESCIENCE, June 13, 2019) https://www.livescience.com/65709-arctic-permafrost-melts-decades-early.html

[47] Ted Schnurr: Permafrost and the Global Carbon Cycle (Arctic Report Card: Update for 2019, NOAA Arctic Program) https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2019/ArtMID/7916/ArticleID/844/Permafrost-and-the-Global-Carbon-Cycle

[48] Luciana V. Gatti et. al.: Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change (Nature 595, 2021) pp. 388-393 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6

[49] Carolyn Gramling: Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years (ScienceNews, December 13, 2021) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-ice-shelf-collapse-climate-5-years

[50] Douglas Fox: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Seems to Be Good at Collapsing (National Geographic, June 13, 2018) https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-climate-change/

[51] Nina Chestney: Atlantic Ocean Currents weaken, signaling big weather changes – study (Reuters, August 5, 2021) https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/atlantic-ocean-currents-weaken-signalling-big-weather-changes-study-2021-08-05/

[52] David Kramer: US government acts to reduce dependence on China for rare-earth magnets (Physics Today, Volume 74, Issue 2, February 1, 2021) p. 20 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4675

[53] Leena Grandell and Mikael Höök: Assessing Rare Metal Availability Challenges for Solar Energy Technologies (Sustainability, ISSN 2071-1050, September 2015) pp. 11818-11837

[54] Richard Pearson: Are We in the Midst Of a Sixth Mass Extinction? (New York Times, June 3, 2012)

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/01/opinion/sunday/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=article&region=Marginalia

[55] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2017) xiii

[56] Wired Staff: Robert Gates: Overhaul the Pentagon (Wired, September 212, 2009) https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-smartlist-gates/

[57] The absurd truth about fossil fuel subsidies (Flip the Script, October 13, 2021) https://generation180.org/the-absurd-truth-about-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

[58] Eli Dourado: We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess ( New York Times, August 16, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/politics/we-need-to-build-our-way-out-of-this-mess.html

[59] Tim Purcell: Primer: The Eurodollar Market (Lykeion, February 17, 2021) https://www.thelykeion.com/primer-the-eurodollar-market/

(also refer to Richard A. Werner, end note 103, on how banks create money via the issuing of credit)

[60] Charles Hugh Smith brilliantly deconstructed and exposed the underlying structure and ‘engines’ of the colonization of the citizenry by the wealthy in: Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants! (oftwominds.com, October 21, 2016) https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct16/neocolonialism10-16.html

[61] John Ralston Saul: Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993)

[62] Richard Mitchell: Writing Against Your Life - a speech given November, 1986 at Loyola Marymount University https://sourcetext.com/writing-against-your-life/

[63] Sheldon S. Wolin: Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017) 18

[64] Steve James: Hoop Dreams (Public Broadcasting Service, 1994)

[65] Brian Kahn: CO2 Takes Just 10 Years to Reach Planet’s Peak Heat (Climate Central, December 3, 2014) https://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-peak-heat-18394

[66] Raul Gallegos: What America Doesn’t Get About Dictatorships (New York Times, June 20, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/opinion/venezuelas-dictatorship-maduro.html

[67] Katrin Bennhold: After Deadly Floods, a German Village Rethinks Its Relationship to Nature (New York Times, Aug. 6, 2021)

[68] Van Badham, Sydney, Australia: No, Australia Is Not Actually an Evil Dictatorship (New York Times, October 14, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/opinion/australia-far-right-america.html

[69] Christopher Hayes: Twilight of the Elites (New York, Crown, 2012) 183

[70] Kevin Phillips: Numbers Racket (Harper’s Magazine, May, 2008) https://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket/

[71] https://www.climate.gov/maps-data#global-climate-dashboard

[72] http://www.shadowstats.com/ “John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics” is an electronic newsletter service that exposes and analyzes flaws in current U.S. government economic data and reporting, as well as in certain private-sector numbers, and provides an assessment of underlying economic and financial conditions, net of financial-market and political hype.”

[73] James K. Galbraith: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (Free Press, 2008) 126

[74] Alex Steffen: Predatory Delay and the Rights of Future Generations (medium.com, April 29, 2016) https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/predatory-delay-and-the-rights-of-future-generations-69b06094a16

[75] Michael T. Nietzel, Low Literacy Levels Among U.S. Adults Could Be Costing The Economy $2.2 Trillion A Year (Forbes, September 9, 2020) https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=31c0076f4c90

[76] Felix Smith: Exclusive: America’s true unemployment rate (AXIOS, October 13, 2020)

https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html

[77] https://borgenproject.org/poverty-in-taiwan/

[78] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/

[79] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx

[80] Michael Abramowitz: Taiwan’s Exemplary Democracy Deserves America’s Attention and Support (freedomhouse.org, July 15, 2019) https://freedomhouse.org/article/taiwans-exemplary-democracy-deserves-americas-attention-and-support

[81] Democracy Index 2020 (The Economist – Intelligence Unit) https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2020/

[82] Lawrence Lessig: America is not a democracy: Until we fix the core problem, all other political promises are meaningless (Daily News, September 28, 2015) https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/lawrence-lessig-america-not-democracy-article-1.2374820

[83] Monmouth University: Public Supports Both Early Voting And Requiring Photo ID to Vote – One-third remain convinced of 2020 election fraud (Monmouth University Polling Institute, June 21, 2021) https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_062121/

[84] PRRI Staff: Understanding QAnon’s Connection to American Politics, Religion, and Media Consumption (PRRI, prri,org, May 27, 2021) https://www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-american-politics-report/

Tiffany Hsu: 41 million Americans believe QAnon Conspiracy, Survey Finds (New York Times, February 25, 2022) https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#qanon-believers-us-survey

[85] Olga Oksman: Conspiracy craze: why 12 million Americans believe alien lizards rule us (The Guardian, April 7, 2016) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/07/conspiracy-theory-paranoia-aliens-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk

[86] Alec MacGillis: An Ocean Away, I Found Some Common Sense on Mask Wearing (New York Times, October 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/opinion/covid-germany-masks-vaccines.html

[87] Jason Hickel: What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification (Globalizations, DOI:10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222

[88] A social philosophy that promotes the well-being of the group without sacrificing the significance of the individual

https://www.wordsense.eu/societism/

[89] Michael Grant: The Fall of the Roman Empire (New York, Barnes & Noble, 1976) xii

[90] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017) 13

[91] Jamelle Bouie: What ‘Structural Racism’ Really Means (New York Times, November 9, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/structural-racism.html

[92] Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco: Days of Destruction Days of Revolt (New York, Nation Books, 2012) 64

[93] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017) x

[94] Michael McGreevy and Fran Baum: Against the odds, South Australia is a renewable energy powerhouse. How on Earth did they do it? (theconversation.com, February 24, 2021) https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia-is-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-how-on-earth-did-they-do-it-153789

[95] Denmark is a laboratory for green solutions (Denmark official website) https://denmark.dk/innovation-and-design/green-solutions

[96] Rachel Waldholz, Alaska’s Energy Desk: Kodiak has almost 100 percent renewable power. It took sci-fi tech to get there (KTOO. September 15, 2017) https://www.ktoo.org/2017/09/15/kodiak-almost-100-percent-renewable-power-took-sci-fi-tech-get/

[97] Morris Berman: Why America Failed – The Roots of Imperial Decline (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014) 81-82

[98] Jessica Murray: Half of emissions cuts will come from future tech, says John Kerry (The Guardian, May 16, 2021) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/16/half-of-emissions-cuts-will-come-from-future-tech-says-john-kerry

[99] Leo Marx: The Machine in the Garden - Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1964) 197

[100] Ben Steverman: The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich (Bloomberg Businessweek, May 23, 2019) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-23/the-wealth-detective-who-finds-the-hidden-money-of-the-super-rich

[101] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017) 12

[102] Chuck Collins: U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged by 70 Percent, or $2.1 Trillion, During Pandemic (Institute for Policy Studies, October 18, 2021) https://ips-dc.org/u-s-billionaire-wealth-surged-by-70-percent-or-2-1-trillion-during-pandemic-theyre-now-worth-a-combined-5-trillion/

[103] Ha Joon Chang: Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism (New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2011) 254-255

[104] Matt Phillips: Lord Adair Turner on the “largely fictional” world of finance (QUARTZ, January 20, 2016) https://qz.com/586664/lord-adair-turner-on-the-largely-fictional-world-of-finance/

[105] Kavaljit Singh - Director of Madhyam, a New Delhi-based non-profit policy research institute: A clear treatment of the Financial Transaction Tax subject: Madhyam Briefing Paper No. 24 (Madhyam, March 23, 2019) https://www.madhyam.org.in/why-the-us-needs-a-financial-transaction-tax/

[106] Andrew Wilner: New Age of Sail looks to slash massive maritime carbon emissions (news.mongabay.com, March 15, 2021) https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/new-age-of-sail-looks-to-slash-massive-maritime-carbon-emissions/

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[111] Prachi Patel: China Says It’s Closing in on Thorium Nuclear Reactor (IEEE Spectrum, August 4, 2021) https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclear-reactor

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[114] https://www.climatefoundation.org/marine-permaculture.html

[115] Emma Bryce: CAN THE FOREST’S OF THE WORLD’S OCEANS CONTRIBUTE TO ALLEVIATE THE CLIMATE CRISIS? (ensia.com) https://ensia.com/features/kelp-carbon-sequestration-climate-mitigation/

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[169] Emma Young: How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs (The Atlantic, January 19, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/

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[184] Madeline Ngo: Skilled Workers Are Scarce, Posing a Challenge for Biden’s Infrastructure Plan (New York Times, September 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/biden-infrastructure-plan.html

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