Time is running out

James Rado died recently at the age of 90. He was the co-author of Hair, the 1967 ground-breaking musical.

So my mind drifted back to the night when I drove down to the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood to see it. I’ll never forget the lyrics to the opening song:

“When the moon is in the seventh house

and Jupiter aligns with Mars

then peace will guide our planet

and love will steer the stars

this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”

I began to wonder why 54 years later those words move me to tears.

What happened to the hope for humanity suggested through the images? How sad to think that today we’ve lowered our standards and surrendered to our baser, violent instincts.

Anybody who reads the newspaper or watches the evening news can see that our tiny blue planet is not being guided toward peace, and the promise of love steering the stars seems like a lost opportunity.

With 81 million people being added to the global population every year, and almost 8 billion people on earth now, each day brings a new world record for out-ofcontrol population growth.

Senseless, bloody wars are raging all over the globe. When will we ever learn?

Man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming with devastating droughts, wildfires, and crop failures.

Species like elephants, penguins, and monarch butterflies are facing extinction.

Humans are like lemmings, racing inevitably toward a precipice and unable to change direction.

Time is running out, but the current crop of world leaders have their heads in the sand.

Man needs a plan.

Our only hope for survival lies in the new generation, people like Greta Thunberg. It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not, it only matters whether she’s right or not.

Art Sirota Lancaster