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

the upshot: what is to be done? S 205
perceive threats, was honed over the ages to respond to direct
physical threats posed by predators animal or human. It did not
equip us very well to perceive and respond to threats measured
in parts per billion that play out over decades, centuries, and millennia.
We respond, as noted above, with alacrity to threats that
are big, fast, and hairy, and not so quickly or ingeniously to those
that are slow, small, subtle, and self-generated. Our understanding
of economics was developed in the industrial age and imperfectly
accounts for the damage caused to ecosystems and the biosphere,
and not at all for the destabilization of climate. Had it been otherwise,
we would have known that we were not nearly as rich as
we presumed ourselves to be and not nearly as invulnerable as we
thought. Our politics are a product of the European Enlightenment
and rest on the belief in progress and human improvement,
which we now know are not as simple or as unambiguous as we
once thought. The political forms of democracy refl ect a bedrock
commitment to individual rights but exclude the rights of other
species and generations unborn. And it is in the political realm
that we must fi nd the necessary leverage to begin the considerable
task of escaping the trap we’ve set for ourselves.
The challenge before the president and his successors, accordingly,
is fi rst and foremost political, not economic. Our situation
calls for the transformation of governance and politics in ways
that are somewhat comparable to that in U.S. history between the
years of 1776 and 1800. In that time Americans forged the case
for independence, fought a revolutionary war, crafted a distinctive
political philosophy, established an enduring Constitution, created
a nation, organized the fi rst modern democratic government, and
invented political parties to make the machinery of governance
and democracy work tolerably well. Despite its imperfections
regarding slavery and inclusiveness, it stands nonetheless as a stunning
historical achievement. The task now is no less daunting,
and even more crucial to our prospects. We need a systematic
calibration of governance with how the world works as a physical