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

preface S xv
breach between humankind and the rest of nature, and lead on
to sunnier uplands. There is considerable evidence for what Paul
Hawken calls “blessed unrest.” Clearly something is astir in the
world, and perhaps it will eventually transform our manner of
living and relating to the world and to each other. But it has
not done so yet. In the meantime, carbon is accumulating in the
atmosphere faster than ever before while inequality, violence, economic
stress, and ecological degradation grow. How blessed unrest
amplifi ed by the Internet will fare in an increasingly destabilized
world is anyone’s guess, but to get through the bottleneck more or
less intact we will need lots more of it, well organized, creatively
applied, and allied with leadership in all sectors of society. But
there is no adequate substitute for better leadership at all levels,
including those who are engaged in the conduct of the public
business, which is to say politics.
A second view holds that we ought to focus only on solutions,
not problems and dilemmas. But the solutions most talked
about are technological and so neither require nor result in any
particular improvement in our behavior, politics, or economics
that brought us to our present situation in the fi rst place. And
neither do they call us to rethink the rationality of our underlying
motives and objectives or become aware of the political and social
choices hidden in our technologies (Winner, 1986, pp. 19–39).
The aim, merely, is to do what we are already doing more effi -
ciently and effectively without asking whether it is worth doing
at all. We ought, it is said, to make hope possible, not despair
plausible. I believe that to be a good rule until wishful thinking
masquerades as hope and avoidance of despair becomes evasion
of reality. Those who focus exclusively on solutions are rather like
doctors who only prescribe and never diagnose. In the real world
an effective prescription depends a great deal on an accurate diagnosis
of the nature and source of the problem. After decades of
hyperconsumerism and worship of commerce, a dose of reality,
with or without despair, would lay the foundation for a more