A series of essays....
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| MASSIVE NUMBERS : DEALING WITH LIFE ON A GRAND SCALE |
....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
I’m not a numbers kind of person by any means and I would never proclaim to prefer any math related class over, let’s say, an English Literature or French Language class. However, I realize how important math is in my daily life whether I’m sewing precisely sized, handmade draperies for a formal living room or spacing Christmas stockings the exact distance apart under the fireplace mantel. Math lives with us all on a daily basis whether we want to believe it or not.
Scrolling through social media this week, I’ve come across several articles related to what I would call ‘massive numbers’ and how they do and will affect all of our lives within a positive and negative degree.
Allow me to begin on a positive note.
In an article written by Zee Krstic for Martha Stewart~Life and published on September 5, 2019, Ireland will plant 22 million trees every year in order to combat climate change. Government officials have announced a plan to grow 440 million trees on this already beautiful and magical island nation simply because research has proven that it isn’t lush enough to offset its own carbon emissions and someone is willing to do something about it before it’s too late.
The tree seedlings to be planted will be around seventy percent conifers and thirty percent broad-leaf trees, depending on the location, and will create nearly twenty thousand acres of new forestry across the island nation, annually. And, Ireland isn’t the only place that is relying on trees to supercharge ecological efforts. Scotland has already planted more than 22 million trees in 2018 and Ethiopia planted, according to CNN, nearly 350 million trees in just a single day!!
Published this past July in the journal entitled Science, researchers found that planting more than 500 billion trees (massive numbers, my friends!) across the world could offset much of the carbon in our atmosphere. It’s just one highly attractive approach to addressing global warming and air pollution that many scientists and environmentalists totally agree upon. As simple as it may seem, planting young saplings could be the most effective solution to our massive climate problems.
And, the irony is that the precious trees of the lush Amazon jungle or moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome continue to suffer greatly from deforestation daily. Threatened by this practice which has been introduced by the greed of large companies and world leaders for profit, is the world’s richest and most varied biological reservoir containing several million species of insects, birds, wildlife, plants, and other forms of life...many still unrecorded by science. The splendid vegetation includes a wide variety of trees such as laurel, palm, rosewood, Brazil nut, and rubber trees. But, most importantly, the Amazon Rainforest is home to some of the world’s last remaining indigenous groups who have lived and thrived there for multiple generations.
Is this the trade-off between mankind’s health and well-being and the money-laden pockets of a few? Why do we still believe that selling our souls for the almighty dollar is more acceptable than preserving all of God’s magnificent creations on behalf of a natural order and to the benefit of all living things? Sadly, the luxurious expanse of the Amazon Rainforest has been suffering from this human induced blight for many years now with the depletion of its intricate purpose looming on the horizon.
Let’s talk a little bit about the relationship between timing and our government in Washington D.C. in terms of understanding ‘massive numbers.’ As of today, the national deficit has reached the astounding figure of (drumroll please) $1.1 trillion! The 2019 deficit, according to USA Today, is more than double what it was in 2015 and up from $160 billion in 2007, before the Great Recession, bearing in mind that the term ‘national deficit’ refers to the Federal Government’s budget balance from year to year, not the cumulative amount of debt. A deficit year only increases the debt we already have.
Earlier I mentioned the word ‘timing’ to which I will add ‘agenda,’ as well. Running on a platform of debt reduction, the Republican Party assured us that their plan was to cut the nearly $20 trillion government debt by cutting or eliminating programs that they deemed unnecessary such as food stamps, the Affordable Care Act (health insurance), Medicare and Medicaid, Clean Air and Water Acts, Climate Change research, and, eventually, Social Security, and so on. But, that wasn’t enough. As of January 2019, the Treasury Department has asked for, the second year in a row, an additional $1 trillion to support the 2017 tax cuts package proposed by a Trump administration and passed by a Republican Congress and will balloon the deficit by another $2 trillion since he took office in January of 2017.
The U.S. government's public debt is now more than $22 trillion....the highest it has ever been, even with programs designed and paid for in order to build-up and strengthen our people and the economy now being torn out of the system instead of nurtured and improved upon. Think of how $2 trillion put into place to modernize our infrastructure would be to our advantage as a nation rather than lining the pockets of the rich.
Did I forget to mention millions of tax payer’s dollars spent on weekly golf excursions, ramped up Secret Service debt, private jets misused by appointed Cabinet Secretaries?....and, this list can go on and on.
As the rich continue to get richer, the poor are suffering. A Trumpian Sh*t Show seems to have convinced some of the poor and suffering that he is their savior and the Kool-Aid is sipped among them like holy water blessed by the egomaniacal god they choose to worship. The irony, deceit, and stupidity here is unbearable.
‘Massive numbers’ is a game mankind plays with on a daily basis; sometimes with optimum results, but often leaving us mind blown and vulnerable. In terms of quantity, thousands of ‘anything’ can be a staggering amount to me! In terms of millions, billions, and trillions, this begins to encompass the stars in the night sky or the individual snowflakes sifting down from above and landing softly on the landscape; infinite and incalculable.
“You do the math,” is a familiar saying these days, with its background including the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically. Many thanks to the Free Dictionary for their definition of mathematics.
Perhaps it is because I admit to a more romantic mindset that trillions of dollars in debt frightens me and 500 billion new trees planted does not. It’s not so much the quantity of money that surprises, but rather the true reasons behind creating and handling such large sums in the first place. We must all decide if these actions are for the betterment of everyone involved or just a few tactless and blatantly greedy people who feel they alone should control the world via enormous bank accounts and self-proclaimed dominance.
Copyright © 2019 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
