Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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one estimate, the human footprint exceeds the capacity of the
Earth by 25 percent, and the defi cit of carrying capacity continues
to grow. Were everyone to live like Americans, humankind would
require the resources of three additional Earths. After a quarter of
a century of “sustainable development,” virtually no indicator of
planetary health is moving in a positive direction, and we should
ask why (Speth, 2008).
It is clear by now that we have seriously underestimated the
magnitude and speed of the human destruction of nature, but we
seem powerless to stop it. The rapid destabilization of climate and
the destruction of the web of life are just symptoms of larger issues
the understanding of which runs hard against our national psyche
and the Western worldview generally. Americans, the largest users
of Prozac, proudly think of themselves as an optimistic, “can-do”
people not easily given to doubt or despair. That is mostly a useful
outlook, until it is not. According to Evan Connell, George
Armstrong Custer’s last recorded words just before the opening
shots at the battle of Little Big Horn were a stirring: “Hurrah
boys, now we have them” (Connell, 1985, p. 279). Optimistic bravado
in the face of long odds is a much-admired American trait in
some quarters, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
Unfortunately for Custer, that day Sitting Bull and the Sioux were
not much amused and apparently not particularly awed by the
chutzpah of the 7th Calvary. In our own time, the pronouncement
by George Herbert Walker Bush that “The American way
of life is not negotiable” came only a decade before Osama bin
Laden negotiated it downward several trillion dollars, depending
on how much you care to include. The end of cheap oil will take
it down several more notches.
It is easier, I think, to understand the reality of dilemmas in
places that have historic ruins and are overlaid with memories of
tragedies and misfortunes that testify to human fallibility, ignorance,
arrogance, pride, overreach, and sometimes evil. Amidst
shopping malls, bustling freeways, and all of the accoutrements,