Day 345…
The Munich Conference is an annual gathering of the world’s top national security and military leaders. This morning, President Biden is addressing the group and renewing our vow to support and uphold our alliances with our international partners.
His main message is, “America is back.”
The relief of seeing him on the same, albeit virtual, stage with Chancellor Merkel of Germany, President Macron of France, Prime Minister Draghi of Italy, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, Prime Minister Suga of Japan and Prime Minister Johnson of Great Britain is palpable.
Earlier, he participated in a G7 COVID-19 meeting. Prime Minister Johnson pledged that surplus supplies of British vaccine would be donated to the developing world and, in turn, President Biden pledged an additional $4 billion from the United States towards the effort.
As of today, the United States is officially back in the Paris Accord. The Paris Agreement is a commitment from countries across the globe that was signed in 2016. In it, the countries who participated, pledged to work together to reduce climate pollution and, over time, increase that commitment.
189 nations from the 197 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have ratified the agreement. The countries that haven’t are either major oil exporters like Iran, Iraq and Libya or nations that are being torn apart by conflict like Yemen and South Sudan. The most recent country to ratify was Angola this past August.
Our former President pulled us out of this.
This morning, President Biden also firmly re-avowed America’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a mutually beneficial military alliance between 30 European and North American governments that was created after the end of World War II.
Our former President had no understanding of what any of these agreements meant. He didn’t understand their purpose. He didn’t even know who many of our allies were or where on the globe they were located.
We had freely elected the mean kid who cut all of his classes and stole lunch money from his classmates, to be president of the Student Council. The meth-head maladjusted teen who waited out by the wall after school for band practice to finish so that he and his friends could gang up on one of the smaller smarter kids, destroy their violin and leave them in a filthy heap in a dumpster was the kid who we chose to represent the entire student body.
President Biden’s call for national unity does not mean that we meet that bully and his gang half-way. What it means is that we leave the door open for them to enter and rejoin the rest of us inside the cafetorium. But only if they behave.
“America is back.”
I hope so. Our planet is just not all that big and there are a lot of us on it. We cannot afford to go it alone. Our fate is inextricably linked to the fates of all of our neighbors.
New Zealand has successfully combated the virus in their country. To keep it that way, their borders are closed. In the short term, that is a great way to protect themselves. In the long term, however, a large part of their GDP comes from tourism. That will not be able to resume until other countries get to the same place in terms of infections that they have.
The United States is behind only China in the total amount of C02 emissions that we release every year into our shared atmosphere. The pollution from our two countries does not just hover above our territories, it is released into the air and every other country on the planet suffers as a result.
Whatever happens, in President Biden we seem to have a leader who is well-versed in all of our international agreements, understands who our friends are and, maybe more importantly, who our enemies are, and has a fundamental knowledge of how the international political machine works.
The only way to ensure failure is for us not to engage.
In the disaster movie from the 1970’s, The Poseidon Adventure, a giant tsunami wave overturns an ocean liner on New Year’s Eve. Gene Hackman plays a minister who believes that god helps those who help themselves. He organizes and leads a small group down to the bottom of the ship. Because the ship has capsized, the bottom is, of course, now the top. The top is now completely underwater. The way down is the only way out.
There is another group who refuses to follow. They refuse to participate in the Reverend’s effort believing that staying where they are is the way to safety. The Reverend has no choice but to leave them behind.
The journey that the minister takes his group on is harrowing and dangerous. Difficulties arise at every turn. Some people are lost, but some of them ultimately survive. This is somewhat of a spoiler, but none of the people who refused to engage and, instead, stayed behind on their own live through the disaster. That shouldn’t be a spoiler, however, because even as we watch them refusing to participate, we know that they are doomed.
In honor of the successful landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars yesterday, Krispy Kreme has created a special Mars donut. It is filled with chocolate cream and covered in a swirled red and orange caramel icing with a sprinkling of Oreo cookie crumbs.
It seemed un-American not to try one, so yesterday, out on my walk in the sleeting rain, I aimed for the new Krispy Kreme mega store in Times Square and got one. I mean…
The person who delivered the news of the landing to the rest of the world was an Indian-American woman named Swati Mohan.
Inspired by seeing her first Star Trek episode when she was nine, Dr. Mohan went on to study mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University and then got her masters and doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics at M.I.T. in Boston.
The Mars 2020 mission began in 2013 during the Obama administration. The workforce behind it looks far more like our nation than many other missions ever have.
More than 17,000 people work for NASA. According to them, 72% are White, 12% are Black, 8% are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 7% are Hispanic or Latino, 1% are American Indian or Alaska Native and less than 1% are more than one race.
One of the things that made Star Trek notable at the time was its multi-racial cast. NASA seems to be doing its best to try to catch up to them. Yesterday, the scientists in the NASA control room could easily have been on the bridge of the USS Enterprise.
NASA’s basic mission statement is, “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Yesterday’s landing was hopefully a step towards that.
Our prior Administration signaled what they believe lies in the future by creating a new branch of our armed forces called Space Force. Perhaps that is what will come, it maybe even be inevitable. For now, though, Mars 2020 lies in the hands of our scientists.
“America is back,” is likely to be viewed by our allies with equal amounts of relief and apprehension.
At our best, we have the ability to influence the world for the better, at our worst, our meddling can create situations that end up being far more dire than if we’d just not gotten involved at all.
The phrase known as the Peter Parker principal is, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter Parker is Spiderman’s alter-ego. The concept, however, is much older than Stan Lee’s comic book. Luke 12:48 in the Christian bible says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
Why us? Well for one thing, we are among those who have been most guilty of creating the problem in the first place. We have spent the last four long years purposefully shirking all of our global responsibility.
Every single person that we share this globe with is breathing the air that we have helped to make dirty. The garbage that we dump into the ocean washes up on the shores of allies and enemies alike.
The plastics that we helped create have been consumed by almost every creature in the world. A brand-new shrimp-like creature that was just discovered in one of the deepest ocean trenches on earth was named Eurythenes plasticus after the man-made particles that were discovered in its digestive system.
The climate change, whose relentless progress we are helping to fuel affects all of us. We HAVE to lead the charge in cleaning all of this up. Putting on blinders and selfishly hopping on a plane for a weekend on a beach in Cancún to lay in the sun is not the way to fix anything. We have to do the work.
Landing the new rover on Mars was thrilling. We cannot, however, make the same mistakes up there that we have down here. Whatever errors of judgment we make and whatever problems we face, working together with our allies is the only chance we have to keep our ship from sinking.
In the meantime, despite the lingering flurries of snow, I may just have to wander past the Krispy Kreme store again today. Just to see if they are still selling the Mars donuts, of course - not that I’m going to get another one.
Unless, of course, I do. While I firmly believe in planning, I also like to leave my options open.
After writing about Krispy Kreme, I suddenly got a sinking feeling in my stomach and realized that I should do some research to see where they stand politically.
While some of their leadership have privately donated to causes on the right, they don't seem to have donated to extremists and their contributions have been relatively small. They appear to be gay-friendly and when President Obama was elected, they created a special "Freedom of Choice" doughnut that sent the extreme right into a tailspin.
A German family owns Krispy Kreme and Pret-a-Manger among others. Last year, it came out that some of their family members had supported or actually were Nazis during World War II. In response, the company donated $11 million to charity.
I am somewhat relieved. A company that recognizes and owns up to its actions from the past and, apparently, changes how they think, should be encouraged.
The landing on Mars is as remarkable an indication of where our future may lie as anything we have seen for a long time.
It’s an event well worthy of celebration, so, on my list of things to do today…
Justify second doughnut - check.
💕Yes, today....alot of reasons to celebrate! 🌞🌟💫💫💫