 It's the end of the world as we know it, but soft landings are possible. The reason the world's ending as we know it is the convergence of these five things. The one is that our economics is almost completely disconnected from ecological sensibilities. The second is we're as a world and as a country reaching the limits of inequality and the social consequences of that inequality are so stark. A third is that we're living in the most militarized country in the history of the world that is now at a point where every effort it uses to hold on to its privileged position through military power or every time it allows a military-industrial complex to garner resources that aren't really needed for authentic defense. We in fact accelerate the pace of our internal economic and social decline. And then there's climate change and here I have to change my language and say it's the end of the world but soft landings may be possible. This is a planetary emergency that really requires us to shift priorities and the final converging factor is our dysfunctional political system in which both political parties are captive to moneyed interests and the necessary reforms are being blocked which means that we need a powerful social movement in this country to shift the direction of our priorities. We've started a new organization in Minnesota called the Minnesota Arms Spending Alternatives Project. As soon as possible we need to be making a transition away from militarization and war spending to meeting our needs. So we have a simple resolution process that we're bringing before city councils, library boards, school boards, civic organizations and it calls attention for example in my state that Minnesota taxpayers have spent $39.8 billion just for our state share of the Afghan and Iraqi wars. At the same time we've reduced governance to managing austerity at all levels of government so if you're a city council member, if you're a state legislator what you're doing is you're managing austerity and it doesn't have to be that way. If we just reject militarized priorities that again are not linked to authentic defense needs are driven by what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex needs if we were to shift those priorities it's like winning the lottery every day for the rest of our lives. It opens up tremendous possibilities. So many people in our state are hurting as firefighters get cut, police get cut, school class sizes get bigger, music programs get cut, library boards or libraries get shut down and not many people are making a connection between those events deteriorating infrastructure, bridges falling down and the fact that we are squandering our wealth on more.