The Jan. 13 front-page headline, "U.S. lives: Nasty brutish and short? Report compares wealthy countries," sounds like 40 years of trickle down "voodoo economics" to me. Of course, a decade later when President Bush, along with the prime ministers of Britain and Russia said that "climate change was a greater threat than nuclear war," nobody listened then, either. As this latest report concludes that "Something fundamental is going wrong... and it's getting worse" isn't news to this environmental planner who graduated in 1974 and has never seen an ethical opportunity to be part of any credible solution. Instead, all I see is more bankrupt institutional non-science nonsense that a majority of citizens say is taking us down the wrong track.

I'd suggest that it's time for us to go on a new adventure, before it's too late. Time to stop being puppets tied to institutional strings that have trapped us in a rigged evolution of conscious insanity, and move to the rhythms of conscious evolution. A new world, "devoted to the cultivation of the tribal individual: wildly independent, yet yearning for community, totally free yet deeply disciplined; in love with form, yet identified with the formless, willing to dance the leap of consciousness for future generations" (gabrielleroth.com). See you at the dance!

John C. Ruth

Bellingham