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

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190 farther horizons
lazy—is capable of great dedication and heroism if wisely led”
(Greenleaf, 1977, p. 21).
Genuine leaders, including those in the media, must summon
the people with all of their fl aws to a level of extraordinary
achievement appropriate to an extraordinarily dangerous time.
They must ask people, otherwise highly knowledgeable about the
latest foibles of celebrities, to be active citizens again, to know
more, think more deeply, take responsibility, participate publicly,
and, from time to time sacrifi ce. Leaders must help the public see
the connections between climate, environmental quality, security,
energy use, equity, and prosperity. We must relearn how to be creative
in adversity. As quaint and naïve as that may sound, people
have done it before, and it’s worked.
Telling the truth requires leaders at all levels to speak clearly
about the causes of our failures that have led us to the brink of
disaster. If we fail to treat the underlying causes, no small remedies
will save us for long. The problems can in one way or another be
traced to the irresponsible exercise of power that has excluded
the rights of the poor, the disenfranchised, and every generation
after our own. This is in no small way a direct result of money in
politics, which has aided and abetted the theft of the public commons,
including the airwaves, where deliberate misinformation
and distraction of the public is a growth industry. The right of
free speech, as Lincoln said in his address to the Cooper Union in
1860, should not be used “to mislead others, who have less access
to history, and less leisure to study it.” But the rights of capital over
the media now trump those of honesty and fair public dialogue,
and will continue to do so until the public reasserts its legitimate
control over the public commons, including the airwaves.
Transformational leadership in the largest crisis humankind
has ever faced means summoning people to a higher vision than
that of the affl uent consumer society. Consider the well-studied
but little-noted gap between the stagnant or falling trend line
of American happiness in the last half century and that of rising