There seems to be a perfect storm brewing in the world at the moment.

First we have this oil situation, real or manufactured, that is going to have long term ramifications to the US economy and threatens the quality of life that Americans have enjoyed in the last half of the 20th century. If gas prices continue to rise and the analysts at Goldman Sachs are right and we'll see $105 price tag on a barrel of oil, the petroleum based economy that we have is going to crack. Lots of people are going to fall into those fissures.


Then you have Tom Friedman writing about the new realities of globalization with his thesis that the world is increasing flat, that there exists now an almost level technological playing field on which the US is slowly but surely being pushed to the sidelines as India and China ramp up both educationally and economically. While India and China are educating their people at higher rate, graduating more engineers and computer scientists, America is an education decline, falling behind in the sciences, in math, in just about everything but law. The shortfall that had existed was previously filled by importing students and their PhDs from, most notably India and China, but increasing security concerns that keep some of the best talent at home and the level playing field that ameliorates the need for educated elites to migrate to the US for employment opportunities is creating a tipping point where the balance of educational and economic power is shifting east.

Then there is this small story about library closings in Salinas that I wrote about last year and the NYT has picked up today. Salinas might be a no account small town in central California that no one would pay much attention to if it were not the hometown of John Steinbeck, but what's going on there represents on a micro scale the consequences of decisions that we as a country have been making on a global scale.

At the same time that India and China are improving access to communication pipelines that empower their populace in this increasing globalized world, Salinas is shutting down its libraries, severing critical access to information that is the key to economic prosperity and a hallmark of a healthy democracy. This is not a strategic decision. I'm sure that the politicians in Salinas are not making this choice lightly. However their hands are tied. They have a multi-million dollar budget shortfall and economic reality is forcing them to make this incredibly difficult decision. While this might now be happening only in this small farming community, you can bet your Euros that this library necrosis will be coming to a city near you, and soon.

It's very easy to look at this situation as say, well, America had a nice run, we're going to go into a long, slow decline that has befallen all the great civilizations at one time or another. And that will happen if people do nothing. And there's a good chance that people will do nothing.

I look at this moment as a great opportunity for American to take the reigns of the world and lead, however, I don't believe that our increasingly corrupt and entrenched politicians have the will to make the decisions and the sacrifices to affect change and challenge the country on the issues of education, technology and consumption.

If we don't make education our number one priority. If we don't fix our public education system. If we continue to graduate illiterates from our high schools. If the cost of education continues to rise. If we let our libraries be mothballed. If we do nothing about this crisis, then we will go into that decline, the pace of which will be inversely proportional to our lack of ability to recognize and fix this massive problem.

UPDATE: Yahoo! is on the trail of gas prices in South Lake Tahoe. Take a look at this pic. Look familiar! The prices might have changed (gone up, of course) but the place remains the same.