THINK AHEAD: CLONE RIGHTS AND OTHER CHALLENGES

Catastrophic Thinking does not explicitly address thinking ahead and problem solving before the problem is apparent. BUT there is a lot to be said about prescient problem solving. It is a part of the Art of Thinking. The best opportunity to design policies and create a consensus is before politics and especially emotions enter into the dialogue. Before there are financial interests or selfish interests at play it may be possible to agree on what is right and fair.

1.Specifically, one problem that should be addressed right now are clone rights. It is one thing to clone a sheep, but quite another to deal with the moral and ethical grounds raised by cloning humans. This is dark science in my view. It is the worst of the foolish quests. In my religious training, I am led to the conclusion that a clone is a separate human soul. Cloning is a separate type of procreation. Just like twins have two souls, and your children have separate souls than yours. The human body is just a receptacle for a separate human being who will experience a separate existence and make separate life decisions leading up to a separate salvation or damnation. So it should be easy to agree now to treat clones like children, with the same rights and freedoms. You don’t get to “own” a clone any more than any other person as a slave. Blog that.

2.Another problem which must be addressed now is benign versus malignant drones flying in our airspace. There are several things that need to happen before we can allow private or commercial use of drones. Consider air space to be a strategic asset.

•  ·         We need to be able to identify a good drone from a bad drone, with a passive identifying beacon that can be read by a police drone. 

• ·         All drones must be licensed and individually identified and registered. 

• ·         No fly zones and restricted air space needs to be mapped out. 

• ·         Violation of those air spaces will result in the drone being shot down and the owner fined.  The owner would also be strictly liable for any damages caused by their drone, including any damages caused by the drone after it was shot down.

• ·         We must have police and military drones patrolling our air space before commercial drones are allowed.  These drones must serve both surveillance and predator functions, capable of shooting down any hostile drone.  They must also be able to fly faster than any other drones.

• ·          We must be able to shoot down a bad drone, before it can do any harm.  If a drone is shot down by mistake, there can be no government liability exposure to the owner or other affected parties, like the customer. 

• ·         If a drone is flown in any way contrary to law, the owner must be fined and imprisoned.  This includes using the drone in the commission of a felony or misdemeanor, like selling or delivering drugs.

• ·         We must tax the drones for all the costs associated with drone monitoring, policing, and defense.    With a 10 percent use tax for the Social Security Trust Fund.

• ·          We must be able to defend against an attack of a group of bad drones.  We must be able to clear the airspace of all drones in an emergency, so that the First Responder drones can work without interference.  

 3.Buy Greenland for $1 with a commitment to Denmark to spend $X billion per year to develop controls for melting and use those controls to stop Greenland from raising sea levels 5 to 10 meters and drowning Denmark. Why would they sell? Because they can’t do it themselves. Denmark has the elephant in the room by the tail, but they can’t begin to control it.

4.Create an international treaty to recognize sovereignty based on shorelines in the year 2000.

5.Require all roofs to be covered with phase-change materials which are light in heat and dark in cold. Provide a phase-in period of ten years or so.

6.Establish farmland reservations where farms can receive tax benefits by declaring themselves unavailable for development for 100 years. Like freeze property taxes for that time, to assure that the strategic assets are not lost through short-sighted exploitation.

7.Develop a fleet of escort carriers which are like hospital ships with full medical facilities on board. They would also carry a swarm of drones, a squadron of jet fighters, and a host of helicopters. They could be employed to keep the peace which nowadays requires military protection for the victims as well as medical personnel. The next time an Ebola-like pandemic breaks out, we would dispatch these ships to help control the outbreak as well as kill off any hostile parties trying to interfere with medical or humanitarian aid. The ships would be a better alternative than foolishly flying Ebola patients to America for treatment. I think America had over 120 escort carriers in World War Two.

8.Require all federal candidates for elective office to prepare a Political Prospectus governed by SEC rules for honesty with the same criminal punishments for lying on the prospectus as our corporations face in their prospectuses. Require that they be posted online for as long as the candidate is in office.

9.Establish a program to research Stratospheric tampering. We need to be able to clean out volcanic dust like the world experienced in the year without a summer (1816).

10.Death Penalty by hanging for drug and human traffickers and mass murders and terrorists. With an expedited one time appeal and prompt hanging. The deterrent effect would be worth it. Why hanging? Because in a catastrophe we might only have rope and not lethal drugs. Also syringes might be too valuable to waste on criminal justice.

Please refer to the numbers for your comments. Use #11 for other ideas.

What other challenges are out there that we should address now, before it becomes a hot political topic?