Articles

I recently attended a conference “Israel 2021,” aimed at stimulating a process of long-term strategic thinking in Israel to achieve a vision of Israel as being among the top 15 in terms of quality of life for all its citizens. For Israeli leaders to endorse a meaningful long-term process reflects either a misguided confidence in a continuation of our strong economic performance or a real concern about worrisome trends, it is a refreshing change from the typical storm tossed crisis to crisis pattern of political and economic policy-making.

Extreme weather events in so many parts of the globe hint at what climate scientists have been reporting of late. Earlier predictions were too conservative and the pace of warming is more rapid than earlier evidence had led us to believe. While the local and regional disruptions from more severe storms, more intense heat or increased snowfall, are disturbing we somehow hide our heads in the sands that are being relentlessly covered by the rise in sea levels. Like a thin veneer of camouflage over the tar pits, we cling to the illusion that the future will be more or less like the past...

“Some of them were dreamers, and some of them were fools, who were making plans and thinking of the future…” Jackson Browne sang in the opening lines of his classic anti-nuclear hymn “Before the Deluge.” Like Browne, I grew up in a sunny southern California nuclear reality of back yard bomb shelters and the blockade of Cuba; so my knee-jerk anti-nuclear stance went hand in hand with an appreciation for the extent of the victorious modern economic paradigm continued to burgeon its power to adversely impact the natural environment. Avoiding the direct plea to awaken humanity to the danger of nuclear holocaust, Browne chose, prophetically to my mind, to sing of a flood; an overwhelming demonstration of nature’s power to which humanity still has no answer.

Stager’s glimpse into the Deep Future of life on earth helps us truly apprehend the enormity of modern industrialized global economy’s ability to alter the earth’s life sustaining systems.It is sobering to know that in the name of progress and economic development we are committing grave offenses in relation to countless innocent unborn generations...

All of us must choose a bold new course away from “business as usual” towards a new paradigm – Sustainability. Simply put, this demands that we act in concert with our environment, understanding its limits and carrying capacity – that in meeting our present needs we do not compromise the opportunities for future generations; so they too may enjoy all the progress and comfort to which we have become accustomed, yet seem still to take for granted in the modern world...