Mankind must go green or die, says Prince Charles

[GliderGuider]

37. You misconstrue my intention, I think.

I have never been an American. I'm a Canadian who has had the enormous good luck to spend two full years "away" - a year in Holland, and a year in France (Paris in 1968 of all the outrageous pieces of good luck.) After leaving the Paris riots I traveled through Prague that spring - two weeks before the Russians invaded - then drove north through Moscow and out through Leningrad. I've been to Central and South America, North Africa and even to Massachusetts. So yes, I know something of the world.

That, however, was not my point. Let me try and explain it this way.

We (all of us - rich and poor; black, brown, yellow and white alike) are living as integral but fungible production/consumption units in a great, interdependent global industrial civilization. It's not just that the UK depends on planeloads of US dollars. The US depends in turn on container-loads of Chinese goods; Germany depends on electricity from France; Thailand on industrial machines from Germany; Canada on planeloads of Chilean grapes; Japan on shiploads of Canadian lumber; Poland on Russian oil - you get the picture.

In all of this, we have not one iota of choice. This edifice was created and is run by men with a Plan to be something that would keep us amused and satisfied while they got rich. In the process we have become entranced by the artificial, and medicate away our inevitable alienation. Like Disney visitors popping Tylenol to keep the headache at bay while we marvel at Mickey and imagine what Peter Pan does at night with Tinkerbell.

On that level, the whole world is Disneyland.

Is that any clearer?