Should Sapiens Survive? (Pro Point #5)

The UN and the Grassroots Step Up

“Only very recently in human did people realize that , and everything it finds meaningful, might permanently disappear. [This discovery] is perhaps one of our crowning achievements. Why? Because we can only become truly responsible for ourselves when we fully realize what is at stake.”

– Thomas Moynihan, Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, via MIT Press Reader

During the winter holiday, local electronic violinist Geoffrey Castle tells a story. When he busked in New York City, the homeless on his street appreciated the music, and each found a way to give him a gift. They had no home, but they had a sense of community, a spirit of generosity. Watching the UN lead global restoration reminds me of that story, and of the modern hoarding disease that prevents Americans from protecting and nourishing our precious, living patrimony, which is beyond all earning, an irreplaceable gift for which we show no appreciation, no gratitude.

Fortunately, those who have less are showing that they value life over money—over material culture of the most self-destructive kinds. While Ratan Tata envisions an India in which each person has a car, which would finish the species, the UN envisions a living planet where each person can have a good life without spending the future of life. This is the decade for ecosystem restoration, and the Society for Ecological Restoration is also stepping up.

Scott Freeman and his family tell a wonderful success story of restoring a salmon creek that passes through their land in Saving Tarboo Creek. This is not policy; it is not high tech. It is commitment. It is blood, sweat, and tears. Aldo Leopold, the grandfather of Scott’s wife Susan Leopold Freeman, effected a similar success, as described in . For four generations, this family has repaired the land.

In Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest, we see global evidence of problem-solving for sustainability, including the appropriate technologies that people have been talking about during the last half-century of more-is-better proliferation of inessential technologies. The grassroots can prevail, and rescue life on earth from the many to the few.