Opinion: In today’s pages: Winning Iraq, remaking civilization
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Columnist Jonah Goldberg says the surge is a losing strategy for John McCain, and author Paul C. Light thinks both candidates should prepare to hit the ground running in January. Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer says it’s not just energy policy that has to change:
Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium. We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization.
The editorial board agrees with proposals to ban plastic shopping bags in the city and new fast food outlets in South L.A. The board also says it doesn’t matter who’s right on Iraq, it just matters that everybody agrees on a drawdown:
The combined forces of domestic political pressure in the United States and an increasingly confident government in Iraq are creating a rare opportunity in our protracted conquest of that country -- the chance for consensus. It is time for hard-liners on all sides of the issue to back down and agree on a responsible, orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces, to begin forthwith.
On the letters page readers discuss the state’s high school dropout numbers. Granada Hills’ Brian Hayes says, ‘Sure looks like No Child Left Behind is living up to expectations.’
*Cartoon by Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle