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

68 S politics and governance
Looking back, the last few decades should teach us that democracy
is vulnerable to those, whether terrorists or ideologues of any
sort, who fl agrantly defy the rules of civility, tolerance, and public
order. The history of Greek democracy, again, stands both as a
beacon to the possibilities of self-governance and a warning about
its fragility. Looking to the future, ours will one day appear as an
oddly disoriented time. Many of the issues that fueled the passions
of our day will appear to them as merely vaporous diversions from
much larger issues. In particular, our obsession with consumption
and individual rights to the neglect of collective rights will appear
derelict, perhaps criminally so.
BEYOND LEFT AND RIGHT: THE CASE
FOR PROTECTING POSTERITY
We are at the end of an age of isms—socialism, Marxism, and
capitalism—all of which in varying ways held that economic
growth and technology could solve all of our problems. The
18th-century Enlightenment belief in the possibility of human
improvement has been whittled down to little more than the hope
for continual material betterment, which in turn is threatened by
ecological and demographic realities, and by our own psychology. 9
Only the true believers and a few neoclassical economists remain
on the crumbling ramparts of paradigms lost. But the need for orienting
principles, durable political ideas, and practical visions that
join us across old partisan divisions is greater than ever. I do not
think the prospect of following such principles is as unlikely as it
may fi rst seem, however, because we’ve done it before. In the late
1960s, for example, Republicans and Democrats assimilated the
evidence about environmental deterioration and joined to create
the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), the Clean Air
Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Endangered Species
Act (1973). Preserving and enhancing the environment was
widely regarded as central to the national interest, not dismissed