............ Ozymandias.

For a long time, I have been haunted by the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) that are emblazoned in a sonnet about Ozymandias.

" I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away. " --Schelley

What was the "colossal wreck" this "king of kings" observed and how had it happened? What caused the destruction of the world?

The calamity Ozymandias witnessed may not have been more or less than the incredible consequences of human greed having exceeded limits to its growth. That is to say, the adamant and relentless greediness of kings and self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe precipitated the gigantic, distinctly human-driven catastrophe to which The King of kings makes reference.

A billion members of the human family exist on resources valued at less than one dollar per day. Africa is suffering from "slow drip" problems. Europe is getting warmer fast. Arctic ice is retreating and the arctic coast of Alaska is eroding.

Where are the new ideas, the financial backing, and the innovations needed to address these problems? There are tens of trillions of dollars in the global human economy. Where has all that money gone?

The front page of the NYTimes tells the family of humanity that we are on the verge of a global economic catastrophe. Are the taxpayers, acting alone, to become responsible for the problems now presented to the human community by the greed of a small group of rich and powerful people worldwide?

Why are an astonishingly small number of greedy people, holding hundreds of billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains from what are now recognizable as patently unsustainable business models and Ponzi-like financial schemes, not taking responsibility for their avarice?

Who are the people behind the forbidding financial disaster we see splashed across the front pages of newspapers around the world this morning? Perhaps they need to be named, shamed and held to account.

Some greedy people are easy to identify. They are ones who have proclaimed themselves "Masters of the Universe" or Bohemians or the Greedy Boys of Greenwich or the Bilderbergers or members of The Trilateral Commission or the many too many outrageously enriched `experts' and politicians who say and do anything to enhance wealth and power of themselves and their benefactors.

At least to me, it appears the problems in the global economy we are seeing today are the results of greed having reached its limits or, to put it another way, having "hit the wall" of unsustainability. That is to say, greediness of self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and their minions has reached the point of greed's unsustainability. The global economy can no longer support the conspicuous, patently unsustainable behavior of a small segment of the family of humanity.

Yes, definitely yes, something new and different needs to be done. Bold action is needed; but, more of the same, old business-as-usual behavior appears insufficient. Limits need to be placed on patently unsustainable behavior. People who are responsible for the global economic mess need to account for their behavior.

The family of humanity is not responsible for the world's economic mess; but at the moment taxpayers worldwide are being held solely accountable. There is something not quite right about such unfair and inequitable circumstances.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php