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

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40 politics and governance
of our time. But we know that they would not have wanted us
to end the bold experiment they launched in self-governance or
jeopardize the rights and liberties of posterity. And they certainly
would not have wished us to risk the future of life on Earth for
any reason at all. But they gave us no formula for governance,
only the example of an intrepid, ingenious, pragmatic, and partial
experiment in democracy.
The founders responded courageously and brilliantly to the
challenges of their time, but those pale beside what we can anticipate
in the century ahead. They could presume a stable climate
and the resources of a mostly untouched continent to meet the
needs of a vastly smaller population that lived predominantly
on current sunlight, albeit often carelessly. We, by contrast, are a
population of more than 300 million and will grow perhaps by
another 100 million before our population peaks. We are an island
of affl uence in a world of 6.8 billion that will peak, perhaps, at
9 billion. We live on the remainders of once vast natural stores
of minerals, soils, and forests. We are powered mostly by ancient
sunlight in the form of coal and imported oil. We have technology
that the founders could not imagine, but that prowess carries risks
that would have given them reasons to act more cautiously than
we do. All of this is to say that the challenges ahead differ in scale,
complexity, velocity, and duration from any we have faced before.
Our response, accordingly, must be at least as ingenious, wise, and
adaptable as theirs was to the challenges of creating a republic in
their time.
Like the founding generation, we need a substantial rethinking
and reordering of systems of governance that increase public
engagement and create the capacities for foresight to avoid future
crises and rapid response to deal with those that are unavoidable
(Grant, 2006, pp. 221–237). In the duress ahead, accountability,
coordination, fairness, and transparency will be more important
than ever. We will have no slack left for corruption, cronyism,