Author’s note: I received an email from a member of congress, touting Newt Gingrich’s latest book on America’s most pressing problems and how to deal with them. Following is my own take on the subject.

1. Biosphere. Number 1 on the list. The "biosphere" consists of the atmosphere (a spherical shell of respirable air that all humans inhabit) and the top few hundred meters of the world’s oceans. From the individual’s perspective the atmosphere may seem to be infinite in size, with speck-sized 747s passing over head. But from the perspective of outer space it is a very thin veneer that clings tenuously to the planet’s surface. Relative to the earth’s radius, the shell of water inhabited by the vast majority of marine life is also very thin. Mankind and many other lifeforms depend on the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle. This cycle is quite simple: (a) photosynthesizers (plants) take in carbon dioxide and exude oxygen; and (b) animals take in oxygen and exude carbon dioxide. The cycle is resilient and to some extent self-regulating. But it is not eternal and indestructible. If the oxygen producers are depleted beyond a critical point, most of the oxygen users (including humans) stand an excellent chance of going extinct before balance can be restored. Two of the oxygen-producing communities are presently under attack: (1) the plankton in the ocean are under increasing stress by global warming and pollution; (2) the vast canopy of greenery in Venezuela, Brazil, etc. is being slashed and burned at a horrendous rate. The most immediately evident cause of global warming is greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide at the top of the list. For the first time in history, mankind is adding dangerously excessive amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. A means of producing energy without the production of vast quantities of this gas as a byproduct is critically needed. (Burning ethanol isn’t the answer.) Paleontology indicates that at least two major extinctions have occurred in earth’s past. It could happen again. The prospect of Homo sapiens becoming extinct makes all other problems pale in comparison.

2. Fiscal Irresponsibility. The United States is in what has been characterized as fiscal free fall. The standards by which individual citizens and the states must live are as old as civilization itself. The federal sector lives in an entirely different world. It is a la-la world, like a Ponzi scheme, which must eventually collapse. The impact upon human life, when the collapse finally occurs, is impossible to gauge precisely. The federal solution to "imperial over-stretch" is to plunge the nation deeper and deeper into debt and to dilute the paper currency. Bonds and T-bills are being issued and snapped up by emerging economic powers like China at an unprecedented rate. In brief, the federal government is selling America to cover its losses. It may already be too late to return the nation to anything resembling a firm financial footing.

3. "Entitlement" Programs. The biggest rip off in the history of mankind has been social security. The initial idea was that FICA withholding taxes would be invested, and the income generated by such investments would protect retirees from lives of destitution. The fund has been plundered practically since its inception by the federal government, the rationale being that "we don’t need to invest this money; when the time comes, we can pay out to the elderly with taxes collected from the young!" The whole idea was that there would always be more working stiffs paying into FICA than there would be retirees withdrawing from it. As we all know, this isn’t turning out to be the case. Part of the solution may be government regulation of the atrocious prices the pharmaceutical complex demands for drugs hawked more and more to a feared-of-dying/ED/incontinence/etc. etc. etc. public.

4. Public Education. Not enough skilled teachers of math and science in our high schools. Not enough inducement to teens to break out of the "math sucks" mold, and to excel in it and in the sciences. This of course isn’t a world problem. As America becomes stupider and stupider, other nations like Japan and an emerging giant called China will be only too pleased to take up the slack.

5. Nuclear/Thermonuclear Weapons. Probably not as serious a threat to human life as global warming, but clearly needs to be dealt with. How long can the nations who have these Pandora boxes claim exclusive dibs to them? Should they be dismantled entirely? No. We might need some to nudge an asteroid off a collision course with earth. What is needed is to put them under the control of an international consortium/authority, manned with representatives from many nations and cultures, and with clear rules about how they can (and cannot) be used. Bottom line: the nations that have the nukes must give them up. (There are adequate, non-nuclear means to destroy all the enemies any developed country could conceive of in its wildest dreams.)

6. Energy. See global warming above. The most feasible, near term fix is nuclear energy. The problem is how to dispose of the "hot" byproducts. Had ancient Egypt produced this stuff and posted guards at the portals of a nuclear waste dump, does anyone really think they’d still be on the job today? One possible solution is to package the material in a manner that would contain it in the event of a rocket malfunction (should one occur) and to fire the stuff off into the sun.

7. Over Population. The seas are being ravaged, desertification of arable land through mismanagement and climate change is accelerating, particularly in so-called third world nations. The braver citizens of these nations are risking death to get out. It’s a ticking time bomb.

8. Substance Abuse. Every citizen who fries his/her brain on meth, cocaine, heroine, etc. robs his/her nation of a productive life. The irony is that many of the abusers are educated, privileged, and ought to know better. But … the herd instinct is alive and well, and it’s considered "in" to toke up and to "recreate" with the crowd. More hard core images and testimonials of what this stuff can do to an individual need to be disseminated. But ban booze? Forget it. Humans will always need some crutch occasionally. And banning alcohol has already been tried.

9. Greed. America is hooked on mammon. Far too many are delusional, thinking that if they get their hands on enough money their problems are over. Governments’ recent exploitation of this delusion, in the form of lotteries etc., is a dereliction of leadership. The atrocious annual incomes reaped by those who climb to the top rungs of corporate ladders should be curtailed by law. Frankly, I don’t think any corporate CEO should make more than the nation’s President does. I truly believe they’d adjust quite nicely (provided of course their underlings were making less than they were). It all boils down to relative amounts, and not absolute amounts. Executives in Japan are compensated much more modestly than their American counterparts, yet by all accounts are quite happy.

10. Disaster Response. The governmental response is too much "Well, we’ll deal with the next Katrina if and when. Meanwhile, we’ll spend all of these tax dollars on pork and other stuff." Have the victims of Katrina done enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Hardly. The whole welfare mindset that it’s up to somebody else to clean up the yards, repair the houses, etc. is one of stagnation and irresponsibility. But the victims of such disasters can’t be expected to fix the roads and bridges and other devastated infrastructure. I don’t see any government movement to speak of in the wake of Katrina, while billions (and billions and …) are being spent to "save" people halfway around the world who despise us. (Newt got this one right.) No one can accurately predict Nature’s wrath. But there is reason to believe that Katrina may be only the first in what will turn out to be a long wave train of smack downs, fueled by global warming, loss of productive land, etc. Stay tuned.