There are no longer any easy choices. Those were few and far between four years ago and disappeared completely with the announcement of the closure of the Brunswick Smelter. Immediately people have stepped up to assign blame, and condemn the leadership that led to such “easily” avoidable failures. When the truth is that we all chose the easy path of inaction, and we did it for decades.
It is now 2020, artificial intelligence is beginning to screen for cancer earlier than we ever thought possible. Space tourism will be a thing and green energy is going to replace the way we heat our homes and power our cars. It is no longer acceptable to sit back and let decisions be made for us. We have to be masters of our own destiny.
We still have some time to take charge of our own future. But it requires two things that are not easily found and even harder to hold onto:
We need to have the vision to see what the challenges of the next 10 and 20 years will be and the courage to take the actions required to face them. We will have an aging population that will require age-friendly living as well as trained healthcare professionals. Industrial jobs will require more and more training and certification, and our community needs the infrastructure in order to give ourselves a chance at meeting those challenges.