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

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174 farther horizons
into an invitation to openness, catharsis, growth, and renewal—
but not to retreat back to the status quo. In each case, the solution
requires honesty, introspection, and the admission of hurt and vulnerability.
Similarly, the self-induced crisis of planetary destabilization
is an invitation for transformational leaders to help us rethink
our place in the world and the way we relate to each other and
to the larger web of life and radically reconsider our prospects.
In each case, the narrative includes the recognition that as some
things are ending, other possibilities are beginning. Americans in
conditions of climate instability and the end of the era of cheap
fossil fuels will witness the end of lots of things, some of which
will be of the good-riddance sort, while others will be more
painful. Transformational leaders will help us summon honesty
and courage to admit that we are the chief culprit in driving the
global changes now under way and to discard the belief that by
more drilling, mining, economic growth, heroic technology, or
military power we can keep the world as it once was. The world in
which those were useful or appropriate responses to our problems
is disappearing before our eyes.
Do we have grounds for optimism? In the near term, I do not
think so. We have yet to attain full awareness of our situation, let
alone what will be required of us to deal with it. But I believe
as well that the dawn of awareness is close at hand. When we do
settle down to work to stabilize climate, good possibilities will
take decades or longer to reach the scale of deployment necessary
to reverse the accumulation of carbon and defuse other crises. In
the mid to longer term, grounds for optimism depend on how
rapidly and creatively we make four fundamental changes.
The fi rst necessary change is a radical improvement of societal
resilience by reshaping the way we provision ourselves with
food, energy, water, and economic support. Resilience implies the
capacity to withstand and recover from disturbances, but critical
parts of our infrastructure, including the electric grid, energy systems,
food system, information technologies, and transportation