With Taxes, If They Aren't Working Right,

After The Bomb We Developed A Fairly Good System For Moving Food Around And Have Avoided The Kind Of Massive Famines That Attract The Media. Although Of Course We've Had A Fair Number Of Them, Particularly In Africa, Since The Bomb Was Written. But We Have Had A Steady Level Of Attrition Of Malnutrition And Malnutrition-related Disease. Probably Something On The Order Of 5 To 10 Million People Starve To Death Each Year, But They're Spread Out; They're Not Dramatic News Events.

Woman Should Have The Choice Whether To Have An Abortion Or Not, But I Like What Bill Clinton Said: It Ought To Be Safe And Rare. You Don't Want To Offend People With It. You Try And Do As Much As You Can To Let People Be Different, But Also To Try And Protect Them From Things That They Think Are Bad. And It's Worth All Of Us Giving A Little.

Historically, Things Were Moving In A Pretty Good Direction Until The Reagan Presidency. And Then It All Got Reversed. The Mexico City Policy Was Instituted - The Idea Of Wrecking The Environment For This Generation's Profit And Forgetting About Our Gets Got Firmly Embedded. I'm Sad To Say The Clinton Administration Didn't Turn It Around And The Bush Administration, Well, I Think They're The Worst Administration We've Ever Had, And I Used To Be A Republican.

Your Children Should Have It Impressed Upon Them That Their Adult Life-style Will Bear Very Little Resemblance To Yours And That They Should Now Be Acquiring Knowledge, Skills, Values, And Tastes That Will Sustain Them In Less Materially Affluent Circumstances. On The Other Hand, The Fresh Insights And Imaginations Of Your Children May Help You Find A Viable Future While There's Still Time.

Stanford May Be The Best University In The World, But You Can Get All The Way Through Here Without Knowing Where Your Food Came From, Without Being Able To Say Where We Came From, Without Being Able To Give A Coherent Description Of Why The Climate Is Changing And Why We Should Be Concerned About It. So I Started Teaching A Course In Human Evolution And The Environment That's Open To All Stanford Students, No Prerequisites.