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

introduction S 9
the leadership that will be necessary for us to respond politically
and morally to what we will have already “bought” up to the
point at which the level of all heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere
is stabilized and trending downward.
The book focuses on three challenges of transformational
leadership in the decades and centuries ahead. The fi rst is to prepare
the public to understand the scope, scale, and duration of
climate destabilization and to grasp the fact that it is fi rst and
foremost a challenge to our system of politics and governance.
The second is to help us understand the connections between our
energy choices and ecological consequences, including those of a
deeper sort that we commonly assign to religion. The third is to
help forge an honest vision of the future and lay the foundation
for authentic hope.
Some believe that we are approaching our “fi nal hour,” others
that we’ve arrived at the “singularity,” a point at which our
minds and bodies will be merged with our machines whether we
like it or not. By whatever name, however, we live in paradoxical
and perilous times rendered more so by a defi cit of vision. If our
future were made into a movie and fast-forwarded a few decades,
it would have no good ending. But trend is not destiny, as economist
Herman Daly pointed out long ago. Destiny is the sum total
of the choices we make, and we have the power to make different
choices and hence to create a destiny better than that in prospect.
The challenge to those intending to lead is to help create a vision
of a decent human future within the bounds of ecological possibility.
We must honestly face the forces we’ve set in motion and
look to a farther horizon. My subject is hope of the millennial
kind.