Texas in Flames

“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”
                                                                                                                                           Eleanor Roosevelt

                                                                                                                                                          
Eric LaMont Gregory

... it takes vision to create jobs

As firefighters struggle to save Bastrop State Park from raging wildfires, one cannot but be aware that year after year fires rage across this great country destroying lives, property, habitats and many many livelihoods.  Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of this conflagration.

Cancer spreads through the American population much like the raging fires of Texas, and we must, naturally, ask that the victims and their families find some way of coping with the tragedy that cancer brings with it.

The latest Republican Party Presidential debate between the current hopefuls spent much time discussing the issue of the best way to create jobs in this country, jobs that will pull us out of the doldrums of our economic malaise, which has consumed many many victims in its wake.

What does wildfires and cancer have to do with job creation, one might ask?

The simple answer is that it takes vision to create jobs, and American history is full of examples where our leaders have had the necessary vision to steer a course that produced jobs, wealth and a forward looking America.

Post civil war America was spirited ahead by a vision that brought about the transcontinental railway system that united the great land mass of this country from the Alantic to the Pacific coast.  A Post World War Two Eisenhower asked us to dream of new communities and jobs for the returning soldiers that had risked all to make the world safe for prosperity and liberty.  JFK asks us to dream of one day sending Americans to the far reaches of the universe to explore and discover and enrich us with finds that would tranform the way we live.

These great visions required the intellectual and manpower of Americans to be put to the task of building a better America and from these efforts great prosperity was created across this land.

Vision is also needed now to put us on a path that leads to industrial and intellectual greatness.  And, fires and cancer can be two of the triggers that get us moving along the right path.

Meaning no disrepect to those brave firefighters who risk life and limb to protect us from the ravages of uncontrolled fires, but it is high time for us to conquer fire, and not merely fight it. 

I propose a ten year effort to improve our firefighting techniques and strategies, and there is work underway along this path from one of our Ivy League centers of higher learning.  Taking advantage of our current knowledge of fire, strategies are being developed that will rob any fire of any size of one of the most important ingredients that promote and prolong fires, heat.

This technique will allow a firefighting crew to place a device in a burning building and within minutes the atmospheric temperature within the building is brought below the threshold necessary for the fire to burn any material within the structure.

To combat wildfires, pellets of a very cold material is spread over the fire reducing the temperature of any burning substance below its ignition point and as the pellets sublimate they release just enough carbon dioxide to smother the ground layer and thereby prevent flareups, or more precisely spontaneous re-ignition.

We need only the will to bring about the tools to conquer fire.  Every university and company with any of the expertise, knowledge, and technical skills must be brought to bare on this problem, and in ten years the sad saga of millions of acres of American land being reduced to ashes year after year will be a thing of the past. 

Vision will create the jobs necessary to meet the challenge.

We can no longer allow cancer to rob life prematurely from our citizens.  I propose a ten year effort to conquer cancer.  This effort, organised much like that effort that produced the first atomic bomb, must be wide in scope and reach the depths of our scientific and medical knowledge of the problem.

We can no longer approach cancer like its just another illness that a few labs and research institutes are involved in.  Just like that effort that has allowed us to reach the outer limits of space, we must endeavour to reach the inner depths of the very cells upon which life itself is constructed.  A scientist once said in relation to our understanding of the smallest things that we are made of 'there is a lot of room at the bottom', and it is time for us to explore that inner space, and to conquer cancer.

This is a Great nation, we are a Great people - our vision and our hope for the future will as it has always done; see us come shining through.

And, that is how we create jobs in America today!