We are close - very close - to a similar tipping point in the great moral cause that is the climate movement. As the late economist Rudi Dornbusch once observed, "Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could." The pattern is always the same: once the underbrush of obfuscation, straw men, and distractions are cleared away and the underlying issue is resolved into a binary choice between what is clearly right and what is clearly wrong, then the outcome becomes preordained - because of who we are as human beings. How long? Not long!"Ī mere five years ago, if someone had predicted that in the year 2017 gay marriage would be legal throughout the United States and would be not only supported but honored and celebrated by two-thirds of the American people, I would have responded by saying, "I hope so, but I'm afraid that is extremely wishful thinking." "How long?" he replied, "Not long! Because no lie can live forever.… How long? Not long! Because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. answered some of his followers who plaintively asked how long it would be before they won. civil rights struggle, Martin Luther King Jr. Each renewed call to do the right thing was met with a resounding "No!"Īnd in every one of these historic struggles, those fighting for justice, faced with a seemingly endless and implacable resistance, came to doubt that victory would ever come. As each of these moral causes gained more supporters, the changes they called for were met with increasingly fierce opposition. This aphorism is true for the abolition movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement in the United States, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and more recently, the gay rights movement in the United States and in nations around the world. As the late Nelson Mandela said, "It is always impossible until it is done." Every great moral cause in human history was initially launched at a time when the overwhelming majority of men and women believed that the change called for was not only impractical but completely implausible. We know it with certainty because we have made historic changes in our ways of thinking before. The good news - the exciting news - is that we already know that we can change the way we think. ![]() And it is now abundantly clear that if we continue to ignore the long-range consequences of our present actions and behaviors, we will put our future at dire risk. In particular, short-term decision-making is now commonplace in politics, culture, business, and industry. It is our way of thinking and the values on which we base the decisions we make. Global warming is the most threatening part of our ecological crisis because the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet is the most vulnerable part of the Earth's system.īut there is a third factor that has led to this crisis, one that is more consequential than either population or technology. In particular, any decision to continue relying on dirty and polluting carbon fuels threatens to massively disrupt the climate conditions that have given rise to the flourishing of civilization and have supported the rich and diverse web of life that is integral to our survival. This aspect of our relationship to the Earth is, in spite of the great challenges growing populations will pose in some regions, a success story unfolding in slow motion.īut the impact we have on the natural systems of the Earth is magnified enormously by the awesome power of the technologies that have become available to us since the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions. Population growth is slowly stabilizing as girls are educated, women are empowered, fertility management is made widely available and child mortality continues to decline. ![]() Our population has quadrupled in less than a century and is predicted to continue growing in the present century from 7.4 billion in 2017 to 9.7 billion in the next 33 years, and to 11 billion or more by 2100. The climate crisis is the most serious and threatening manifestation of an underlying collision between human civilization as it is presently organized and the ecological system of the Earth - upon which the fortunes and future prospects of our civilization, and our species, depend. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that the entire future of humanity depends upon whether or not we rise to the challenge before us. Those of us who are privileged to be alive in these early decades of the 21st century are called upon to make decisions of great consequence. ![]() ![]() Read an excerpt below - and don't miss Lee Cowan's interview with Al Gore on CBS' "Sunday Morning" July 16!
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