On Grand child ren)s Bay · 19

to alleviate the ills of the earth. Here we are enjoying the cool of the
cottage, having escaped global warming in the city. But, as we shall
see later in this book, global warming and ozone depletion are only
two of the most urgent items on the earth's ecological list of
impending disasters. What will our grandchildren then think of our
generation, that slept so soundly and so selfishly through the present
time when we still had the chance to stave off the impending doom?
How will they find it in their hearts to forgive us our trespasses against
· Gaia, our earth, our home and theirs?
When I look into the eyes of my grandchildren, these are the
silent questions in my mind. Even in this paradise retreat, by what
we call "Grandchildren's Bay," these questions without answers
give me no peace. I have not done enough, and will not now have
time to do more than begin to join them in the monumental
challenge that they will soon inherit from my generation. And all
this beating of the breast will not ease my conscience. For only
when millions feel as I do will anything on a scale commensurate
with the problem have any hope of being accomplished.
So let us start mobilizing for radical change while we still can.
By "radical" I do not mean merely ideological or political
change, though that, too, will have to come. The change I am
talking about must come from a deeper level than that of the old
politics of right and left; it must spring from our values, from the
very roots of our being, ifit is to be effective on the scale that is
essential. Perhaps the symbol of the kind of change most needed is
right here, in front of the fireplace in our log cabin. It is an old
wagon-wheel from the last century, carefully made by hand, with
twelve wooden spokes (for the solar year) pointing in to the center,
the empty hub, where there is nothing. We have set it horizontally
into a metal stand to make a table, covered in clear plexiglass, so
we can always see the symbol of the wheel. It reminds us that we,
too, must be centered, in the present, not distracted by our
thoughts of the past or the future. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, the
cart-wheel is useful precisely because there is nothing at its center
-without that empty hub, it would be useless.
So, for a start, let us at least try to be more clear about what it is
that has gone wrong, for both person and planet, what the underly
ing causes are, and what can still be done about them.
2. Science and Ecology

T he word "ecology" has gained widespread cur

rency only in the past twenty-five years. In the
scientific community, many professional ecologists wish ecology
had not become so popularly attached to an environmental
movement that is apt to be far more emotional and committed than
any proper scientist, with a peer review looking over his or her
shoulder, should be. One of the pioneers in Arctic ecology, a
university professor who has taught at Oxford, is a dear friend for
whom I have great respect. But my activities in the environmental
movement have sometimes put a strain on our friendship.
From his point of view, retired ambassadors with little or no
scientific training should not meddle in serious scientific matters
that need professional attention from those academically trained to
deal with them; amateur outsiders can only muddy the waters. For
many years he has edited a technical journal for the international
community of "real" ecologists. Saving whales or tropical forests
are not prominent on his agenda, as they are on mine. Nor are the
scientifically unanswerable questions that concern me and my
friends in the environmental movement. What is wrong with the
earth? Why has it happened? What is our part, as humans, in
creating the conditions of imbalance in its life-support systems?
What can be done about it?
For us amateurs, these are the questions of our ecology. We need
his scientific rigor to keep our more romantic impulses in check. For
both of us, however, the word "ecology" (like the word "economy")
derives from the Greek word for house, oikos. It means the study,
in all its relationships and ecosystems, of our one and only home,
the earth. Itis indeed a body of knowledge about the body of our
planet.
The study of the world is, for me, inseparable from the study of
us - of me, myself. To know myself is the beginning of wisdom.
Whether I look outward or inward, the parts only make sense in
relation to the whole, and that whole in its relation to a greater
whole
- ultimately to the whole of reality which traditions have called
God
20
 Science and Ecology · 21

or the Tao or Truth. Here (Heaven help us!) we are treading on holy
ground, the territory of religion, certainly not of science.
Yet for both of us there is order in the world, there are laws. At
the same time, there is obviously disorder too. In our different
ways, both of us are doing what we can to bring more order into our
world and into our lives. Ifthe disorder affects the whole earth, it
must also affect its parts, including us, and our disorders must also
affect the earth. A human being is a microcosm of the
macrocosm. That we are in fact "made in God's image" is
probably one of the few remnants of true information that has
been handed down to us correctly by tradition.
It is therefore not only possible but mandatory to study what is
wrong with ourselves, at the same time as we seek to gain some
insight into what is wrong with the earth. The same disorders and
imbalances or disharmonies will show up on the micro and macro
levels. In this study of relationships, causal connections may appear.
We may even find that one of the basic reasons the earth is under
such stress today is because of how we are. If this is the case,
technological solutions for environmental problems will not address
the root cause. There are many radical changes that we need to
make to save the planet, but we are not likely to make them until we
have changed ourselves - our ways of thinking and feeling and
living that weigh so heavily on the earth today. We can tinker with
symptoms endlessly, only to acknowledge in the end that
technology has been part of the problem. If the earth is as it is
because we are as we are, then nothing less than the
transformation of human beings on this planet will begin to correct
it - a transformation of consciousness.
But how? It is no use prescribing human transformation unless
there is some way of getting the prescription filled and
accomplishing such a stupendous aim. We shall come to that
question later. Here I would only say this.
When we look around at the various fanatical fundamentalisms
now gaining ground in almost every culture, including our own, we
can see how the letter without the spirit can kill. In our cultural
wasteland, we desperately need that energy or spirit or mana, that
comes from above our desert. One of the hopeful signs of the times
is that so many are now aware of their thirst for that sort of higher
energy, without which their lives feel empty, lonely and
meaningless, and without which even the hope of transformation is
vain. For we cannot transform ourselves. We can only be
transformed, though not without our active participation. That is the
koan, the paradox of our times. On that knife edge each of us is
balanced, in constant danger
22 · Asking for the Earth .

of falling off, falling and coming back, again and again. It is

nothing less than the effortless effort to be present in the moment,
now. There is no other time when the mana can fall on us, feed
us, renew and perhaps ultimately transform us. Only now. To
remember, now. As I see it, that is perhaps the only way to bring
harmony and order into our lives, and through that process to
correct our wildly aberrant behavior and restore the earth itself.
An impossible dream? Perhaps. Nothing so far visible to me
indicates assured success for this great enterprise. The reverse
seems more probable, looked at in the hard light of ordinary reason.
Again, we cannot do it, I cannot do it. I must start from an
acknowledgment of my incapacity, my helplessness. If my world-
view is not large enough to include the possibility of a higher
intelligence within (or above) us than that with which I am
normally connected, then what can possibly save us? But if there
are such higher parts of ourselves or higher beings, if
Consciousness or Conscience or Truth or God exist, then we can
give up the pretension that the outcome depends entirely on us.
However, this disclaimer will not allow us to evade our own
individual and collective responsibilities. We have to play our part.
It is a part we might never have the courage to attempt to play if
we thought we were alone in the attempt. It is an altogether
different picture though if, in a higher part of our mind, help is in
fact always present. The whole trouble is that I am absent, not
available, not connected, not here now. At my level of attention or
self-awareness, nothing of the higher energy can pierce the armor
of my self-cen teredness. I am too full of myself for it to enter.
Letting go of my egotism is hard work, long work. It would seem
that we have come a long way from ecology. What I have recently
come to see is that the future of human life on this earth - perhaps
the future of all life here - may depend on just that sort of inner
personal work. Nothing less, no easier solution, will do. A critical
mass of humanity will have to open to the higher force that most of
us today can only speak of hypothetically, and it must happen
before the earth's present disorders, feeding on themselves in a
spiral of destructive consequences which will gather momentum
exponen tially, become not only chronic but irreversible.
Surely it is not unscientific to propose that the negative feedback
between a dysfunctional planet and a dysfunctional humanity may
operate both ways. Stress is certainly obvious in our individual lives
and in the life of the earth. Environmental pollution (earth stress)
affects human health, both mental and physical. The air we all
 Science and Ecology · 23
breathe, the water we drink and the soil that gives us our food are
increasingly bad for us, sometimes toxic, especially in those parts of
the world where there are too many of us crowded together. And if
we are also bad for the earth, the negative feedback loop is
potentially devastating and self-reinforcing. "We have seen the
enemy," pro claims Pogo, "and it is us!" So, where can change
begin, ifnot with me? And when, ifnot now? These questions are
not rhetorical. They are real alarm bells. We need to wake up . . . or
else!
No one wants to hear this sort of doomsday exhortation,
especially when it is linked to a call for spiritual awakening. This
kind of talk is dismissed as alarmist twaddle. It does not sit well
with our scientific establishments and our political elite. So long as
the latter can still find one or two scientists to go on talk shows and
tell the pu blic that they "aren't sure yet," why buck the entire
inertial weight of our world civilization to change course as totally
as is in truth required? It is just too expensive, they say - and that
would cost them the next election. "Not on my watch" is becoming
the politicians' equivalent of the average community's answer to
where all the trash of our overflowing cities is going to go: "Not
in my back yard." Like the deficit, the environment can be the
worry of the next generation . . . if there is one.
Itis no laughing matter. Exhortations will not change anything
- we must see the situation, experience it ourselves. Everything
depends on that kind of seeing, which is both inner and outer. To
see, I have to open my eyes, to awaken; and to suffer in my own
heart the crisis of the earth.
The ecological crisis is a scientific fact. At the same time, we are
equally in a spiritual crisis. Both crises are calling to us in our sleep.
In a culture in which the scientific story is the generally accepted
world-view, there has, for most of this century, been a tendency to
discount the traditional religious perspective as unscientific if not
downright superstitious. It seems to me that this dichotomy is now
being healed at last, because so many of us no longer want to have
to choose between science and religion. We want both. We feel
instinctively that there is only one reality, and that by combining a
scientific and a religious approach we can get a better grasp of that
reality, a deeper understanding, than we could have through either
science or religion alone.
But at this point in our narrative we are primarily concerned with
science and ecology, the body of the earth, the outer rather than the
inner world. And it is enough to note with gratitude that some 1600
leading scientists from all over the world, including a majority of
the
24 · Asking for the Earth

living Nobel laureates in the sciences, have issued a Warning to

Humanity that "human beings and the natural world are on a
collision course." The full text of this remarkable declaration is
given in Appendix A. It was issued after the next chapter of this
book had been written. Please read it first and then compare it
with what follows.
3. The Environmental Crisis:
How Bad Is It?

L et us review, as objectively as we can, the evi

dence now generally accepted in scientific circles
concerning the present state of the world. If you are already per
suaded of the severity and scope of the ecological crisis, there may
be no need for you to read the first part of this chapter. The litany
of stresses on the planet's life support systems will sound all too
familiar to you. But ifyou have not considered the evidence before,
or ifyou have found what you have previously heard unconvincing,
I invite you to reconsider with me the consensus on what has been
scientifically proven or seriously suspected, because, if you choose
to ignore the warnings, you will later blame yourself for having
slept through the alarm bells now ringing from every corner of the
domain of the earth sciences.
I intend to keep this brief summary of highlights as simple as
possible, without overloading the text with footnotes and references.
Those looking for authorities or wishing to probe more deeply are
referred to the Warning to Humanity mentioned at the end of the
last chapter, and to the short list of sources in the Bibliography. Space
does not permit a more thorough examination here, since many
books have been written on each aspect of these questions, and my
purpose in this study is to convey a sense of the complexity and
enormity of the ecological crisis on which most of us have so far been
turning our backs. Scientific specialists, each seeing their own aspect
of the problem, may become seriously alarmed only when they
broaden their vision to gain a picture of what is happening to the
whole earth. In my experience, those scientists who know the most
about this synoptic trans-disciplinary view are now the most worried.
During the past decade, Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute in
Washington, D.C., has gained widespread international acceptance
for its State of the World annual environmental assessments. The
Institute's 1988 Report concluded somberly that if the planet were
to be regarded as a patient getting its annual medical check-up, it
would have to be put in intensive care. Its vital functions are nearly

25
26 · Asking for the Earth

all seriously compromised, or moving in that direction . All that we

can see currently being done to correct these alarming trends is
comparable to putting band-aids on the patient. "Ours is the first
generation faced with decisions that will determine whether the
earth our children will inherit is habitable."
Four years later, in the Institute's 1992 State of the World report,
Sandra Postel's lead article compares the attitude of the United
States government to the environmental crisis to that of the
alcoholic in denial before his or her family conclave: " What
problem?"
Denial takes the increasingly serious form of suppressing the
data that point to a problem of such scope and complexity that
the budget required to take effective remedial action might run
into hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the United States
alone -and for other industrial countries sums comparable to their
defense budgets during the Cold War. No wonder Admiral Truly,
the head of NASA, was asked for his resignation the day after he
released data on the severity of ozone depletion in the Arctic in
February 1992 -an election year! Ifthe polls are to guide the
conduct of elections, then voters in North America and Europe
are telling their politicians that they will get elected on mending
the economy quickly, not on long-term issues of ecology.
Following the polls, most leading politicians have been only too
happy to avoid environmental issues at present. One notable Amer
ican exception is Vice- President Al Gore. His 1988 campaign for
the United States Presidency and his lead role in organizing the
1990 Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment
(which I attended ) attest to his profound concern and courageous
leader ship, even before he became Vice-President. His best seller,
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, gives one
of the best concise overviews of what he calls "the earth at risk."
He does not mince his words:
Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding vio
lently with our planet's ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on
the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring
so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them, comprehend
their global implications and organize an appropriate and timely
response . . . . We must make the rescue of the environment the
central organizing principle for civilization. [This] means embarking
on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and
institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every
plan and course of action - to use, in short, every means to halt the
destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our
ecological system. Minor shifts in policy, in
 The Environmental Crisis: How Bad Is It? · 27
laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change -
these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public's
desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching
transformation of society will not be necessary.

What, then, are the most important components of the present crisis?
My background is in philosophy and diplomacy, not science. But
even the scientists admit that they, like all of us, suffer from over
specialization and "tunnel vision." This makes it more likely that we
will fail to see the true dimensions of the ecological crisis as a
whole; and each partial aspect can more easily be downplayed. But
when we put as much of it together as we can comprehend, the
whole picture becomes much more alarming than any one
aspect, or group of aspects, taken separately.
The positive feedback loops that maintain the earth's homoeosta
sis in normal times, once upset and turned negative, are accelerating
the imbalance, without our being aware of it. This means that our
scientific worst-case scenarios are almost inevitably based on data
that are incomplete, and are therefore more likely to prove too
optimistic. When, in addition, we consider the enormous pressures
now being applied to scientists working within the U.S.
government agencies (which process most of the data on the global
environment coming in from satellite telemetry) to "avoid alarming
the public," the chances of the public getting an objective appraisal
of the situation from official sources are undoubtedly slim (though
better than they were under Presidents Reagan and Bush).
With that preamble, let us look at the planet' s stresses by
categor ies, from the center to outer space.
The core of Gaia is, we all assume, well coupled to the mantle.
Under the almost constant born bardment of record-shattering levels
of solar radiation in the past six years, the electromagnetic fields
around and within the earth have been repeatedly bent out of shape.
Whether because of this or for other reasons we do not fully
understand, some scientists have observed a worrying tendency for
the core to become very briefly decoupled from the mantle, so that
the rotation of the earth (the earth's twenty-four-hour cycle) has
been slightly slowed on several occasions. In addition, the magnetic
pole has been observed to wobble far more than has been the normal
pattern in the past. Migrations of the magnetic pole of more than
1000 kilometers have been noted as recently as January 1992. Polar
shifts and polar reversals have been known from the geological
record to have occurred several times; it seems not impossible
that these
28 · Asking for the Earth

polar wobbles may presage a relatively imminent shift of the earth's

magnetic pole. In any case, the signs of stress are clear, though the
causes are not.
Earthquakes, probably for some of the same reasons just men-
tioned, and because of the cumulative effects of the testing of
nuclear weapons, have been increasing remarkably in recent years,
as resi dents of California, for example, know all too well. So have
volcanic activity and hurricanes, changing weather patterns over
wide areas of both land and sea. Scientists tell us that the earth's
crustal activity is hotter and its atmosphere more disturbed than
most of them can remember. Desertification is on the rise again
globally. In Asia and Africa, two huge lakes comparable to the
Great Lakes of North America, the Aral Sea and Lake Chad, are
now almost dry most of the year.
The destruction of tropical forests and other forests continues
unabated, wiping out entire cultures of indigenous peoples, and
putting at risk of extinction in the next two decades half the species
of flora and fauna on the entire planet - an outcome unprecedented
since the catastrophic extinctions of the dinosaurs and other species
about 65 million years ago.
Nor are the oceans faring any better. Captain J. Y. Cousteau thinks
that, if present rates of sea pollution continue, plankton will
disappear by about 2010, with disastrous consequences for world
fisheries and for our supply of oxygen. Both the Pacific Nino
current and the Atlantic Gulf Stream have been dislocated, with
consequences al ready showing up in unusual weather for
California and Europe. If the disruption of the Gulf Stream's
pattern (of turning under itself off Iceland for the return journey
to the south-west) continues, there is considerable anxiety among
European scientists that Europe might be deprived of the heat of
the Gulf Stream in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, in
tropical waters, the white ghosts of formerly living coral reefs
signal the onset of global warming and the advance of ozone
depletion not only at the poles but globally.
Global warming and ozone depletion are without doubt the two
most serious ecological challenges we now face. It is around these
two issues that there has been the most controversy, suppression and
denial, not only because of the cost of remediation but because the
kinds of remedial action needed would most deeply threaten our
convenient Western life-style, based as it is to such a large extent on
the consumption of fossil fuels and chlorine products.
Already in this century we have seen carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere rise by 25 percent on an ascending curve to levels never
 The Environmental Crisis: How Bad Is It? · 29

before known since human life began. Not surprisingly, seven of

the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1980,
with 1990 setting an all-time high. It is the considered view of
more than 700 mem bers of the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences, and fifty-five American Nobel laureates, that global
warming has begun and must be addressed seriously without
further procrastination, even while we intensify our scientific
research on the nature of the problem and how best to rectify it,
or how to slow it down before it becomes unstoppable. Their
1990 appeal to President Bush said, in part, "uncertainty is no
excuse for complacency. Only by taking action now can we
assure that future generations will not be put at risk."
Atmospheric scientists of the caliber of Dr. Stephen Schneider
are warning that their forecasts are only working estimates -more
likely to be too optimistic than too pessimistic, because of the
probability that current models do not take into account all
relevant factors and interactions which generate negative feedback
loops.
As for the ozone shield, it is thinning more than three times as
fast as scientists thought possible just a few years ago. After the
NASA announcement in February 1992, Al Gore called the deple
tion of the ozone layer "an immediate, acute emergency threat . . .
the single most important issue facing this country and this earth."
The pu blic has been led to believe that CFCs are the culprit, and
we have only to find substitutes for these ozone scavengers and all
will be well. To halt CFC production globally is a tremendous and
necessary task, but any scientist knows that chlorine monoxide
molecules, which are the true scavengers, come from the use of all
chlorine products, not just CFCs which may account for no more
than half of the problem. A highly toxic pesticide that is forty times
more destructive of ozone than CFCs, methyl bromide is less
controlled internationally than CFCs. However, it is encouraging
that the phaseout of CFCs, carbon tetrachloride and methyl chlo
roform is now set for 1996.
The Montreal Protocol of 1989, and the subsequent advances on
that historic document, show what can be done by diplomacy to
slow the use of CFCs in the main industrial countries, but that
achieve ment is only the beginning of what is really required to save
humans and other species from skin cancers and cataracts, not only
in the far north and south but just about anywhere in a few more
years. At high altitudes in the United States skiers are suddenly
getting badly burned and trees are budding in January instead of
March, probably because of the much higher levels of ultraviolet
radiation due to the thinning ozone layer. UV warnings are now
a daily feature of
30 · Asking for the Earth

Canadian and American weather reports each summer, as they have

been for several years in more severely affected parts of the world,
like north-eastern Australia, where three-quarters of the senior citi
zens now have some form of skin cancer, and school children must
routinely wear broad-brimmed hats to shade their faces and eyes. In
a dozen years, the sun has gone from being our friend to being our
enemy; and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Then there are all those toxic chemicals and nuclear wastes. In
this century, millions of new chemical compounds have been devel
oped. Although testing for toxicity has recently become more
rigorous, the list of Love Canals, Rocky Flats and Chernobyls
around the planet is lengthening, and funding for the clean-ups,
which is pitifully inadequate even in the richest countries, is non-
existent in the poorest. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that
there are dozens of Chernobyls waiting to happen. Fifty years into
the nuclear age, a safe way to dispose of nuclear wastes has yet to
be found. Chemical pesticides and fertilizers, through our over-use
of them for agricul ture, are not only entering our food supply but
are contaminating our aquifers and drinking water. Yet we are
growing daily more dependent on just those seeds that require such
chemicals, for many of those seeds have been developed and
marketed by the companies that make the chemicals needed to
grow them.
So much damage has been done to top-soil world wide by poor
agricultural strategies that high-tech methods of increasing yields
have now to contend with waterlogging, salinization and erosion on
a scale that probably makes it impossible to keep up with population
growth, unless most of us are prepared to stop eating meat. Now 25
percent of all grains go to raising beef. Maybe feeding hungry
people in the Third World is more important; but they have no
lobby in the congresses and parliaments of the world.
Looming like a dark shadow over all these ecological issues is the
exponential growth of the human population of the planet. Yet the
Earth Summit at Rio did not have this issue on its agenda. In the
next two decades, we can expect an increase of two billion people -
more than the entire population of the planet when I was born. As
we reluctantly begin to admit to ourselves that all these horrendous
threats to our earth, water and air are largely the creation of human
intervention, we can hardly be oblivious to the fact that the
ecological crisis can only grow worse as the number of humans
doubles again
- as it has already in my lifetime. About 93 percent of the growth
is now taking place in the developing countries where
environmental
 The Environmental Crisis: How Bad Is It? · 31

restraints are weakest, but where consumption and waste are fortu
nately twenty to thirty times less than they are in our part of the
world. When the North criticizes the South for laxity in controlling
environmental pollution, we should remember that it is we who are
responsible for most of the problem. We may have better laws on
the books, but we have far more damaging life-styles. Only by
more genuine, practical co-operation between North and South will
global population be stabilized soon enough to save us all.
Ithas been estimated that more people have been born during the
past century than in all the rest of human history. This simply
cannot continue if we do not wish to emulate the lemmings. They,
at least, can expect to start a new cycle. This time, we could not.
We desperately need to find another way, not just of behaving,
but of being, because our ecologically injurious behavior comes
from how most of us are most of the time - from our being.
The scientists whom I respect the most, for their objectivity and
knowledge, think we probably have about ten years in which to
change.
To many people it is not self-evident that our institutions and our
behavior come from how we are, from our being. We can see that
we may be acting selfishly if we vote to reduce ta.xes, rather than to
reduce the deficits we are passing on to future generations, or if we
do not do our part in making sure that toxic substances are cleaned
up, whether we put them there ourselves or passively allow a
corpo ration or government to get away with it -plutonium disposal
is the worst case example. We use too much plastic and generate
too much garbage for landfills in our communities to dispose of; we
drive cars that produce twice as much pollution and use twice as
much gas as models we could have chosen if we had been more
ecologically responsible; and we use a car when we could have
used a bicycle or walked, with benefits to our healtR as well as to
air quality. When we invest in companies like Union Carbide, or
buy their products (and who does not? ), we become accessories in
disasters such as the one at their plant in Bhopal, India. In so many
ways we are all, for the most part unconsciously, implicated in the
chain of causation that is driving the ecological crisis.
Multiply our individual choices that affect our environment five
billion times and we can begin to see that every time we just do
what all the others are doing we are contributing to the stress of
the planet in ways that are cumulatively dangerous. And it all starts
from how I am at every moment of choice - in other words, from
my state, or my being, which in turn is influenced by my society,
my culture, how I think about the world and about my place in it.
32 · Asking for the Earth

Being ignorant or unaware does not relieve me of my individual

responsibility.
Our decisions at the national level are, of course, no more likely
to be conscious and responsible than those taken at the
individual level. The United States has a unique capability to
lead - or to stall
- new global environmental actions. The dilemma for other
govern ments is that they cannot make effective international
environmental agreements without the United States, and when the
United States is included (as at the UNCED Summit in Rio) it has
sometimes been at the price of watering down commitments that
the others would have been prepared to undertake.
Already in 1989, seventeen heads of government (not including
the United States) had noted in the Hague Declaration, "Today the
very conditions of life on our planet are threatened by the severe
attacks to which the earth's atmosphere is subjected." And according
to the Council of Europe, as stated in the Final Declaration of the
1990 Vienna Conference: "In several sectors the deterioration of the
environment has reached a threshold beyond which damage is
irreversible." Yet according to one recent study, Defending the
Future, co-authored by a United Nations Bruntland Commission
member, "No government in the world has made any major change
in policy designed to convert the unsustainable to the sustainable."
Unlike our profligate deficits, environmental borrowings cannot be
simply rescheduled or repudiated.
The changes that are going to be needed go far beyond changing
the priorities of the United States or of any other government. It is
a current cliche that you can't change human nature. But, at the very
least, human consciousness must shift. We must begin to see our
selves as stewards or servants of nature - not as its Lord.
About twenty years ago, Dr. Sherwood Rowlands was beginning
to plot the rapid rise of carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmo
sphere in his University of California laboratory. When he came
home one evening, his wife asked him how his work was going. Dr.
Rowlands replied ruefully, "The work is going fine; but it may
mean the end of the world."
Itwas not until 1990 that the World Meteorological Organization
brought together some of the world's top scientists to evaluate the
seriousness of global warming. They concluded that global warming
had begun over the past century, and that the risk of further warming
was significant and might be catastrophic. That is pretty strong
language for an international panel of scientists to use. But what did
the media do with the story? They put a skeptical spin on it, varying
 The Environmental Crisis: How Bad Is It? · 33

from: "US data fail to show warming trend" ( New York Times) to
"The global warming panic: a classic case of over-reaction" ( Forbes).
Why the cover-up? In whose interests? Those who would have to pay
dearly to clean up their corporate acts?
Environmentalists have often been accused of doomsday talk, of
spreading fear by exaggerating the seriousness of the ecological
crisis. But most of the leading scientists (who almost invariably
understate their concerns) from all over the world have now issued
a collective Warning to Humanity in as somber terms as any
environmental organization has dared to use. The Union of
Concerned Scientists (USA) prepared the Warning and it was
issued in Washington D.C. on 18 November 1992, two weeks
after Al Gore was elected Vice-President and two months after
this chapter was written. I referred to it at the end of the last
chapter, and the full text is given in Appendix A. From this
forthright document, unencumbered by references and footnotes,
you can judge whether either Vice-Presi dent Gore or I have been
exaggerating the crisis. Over 1600 scientists, including a majority
of the living Nobel laureates in the sciences, have signed the
Warning. When reading it, remember that world-class scientists
are careful about what they agree to, and a warning of this sort
must necessarily represent the lowest common denominator of
their concerns.
Their Warning begins with this somber assessment:
Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . that
may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in
the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent ifwe are to
avoid the collision.

Shortly before the opening of the great United Nations Conference

on Environment and Development, held in Rio in June 1992, the
Secretary General of the Conference, Maurice Strong, had this to
say:
If we wish to achieve something within this century, far-reaching de
cisions have to be taken. Mother Earth suffers from an incurable illness.
Only if new medicines are found in time can the process be stopped.

Comparing Rio to the Stockholm Conference of 1972, which he

also organized as its Secretary General, Strong warned, "We don't
have another twenty years now. I believe we are on the road to
tragedy." It would indeed be a tragedy ifthe fine words of Rio are
not soon translated into a global North-South compact, since
environment and development are both necessary for the rich and
for the poor.
34 · Asking for the Earth

Annals of Earth, 1993, includes these wise words from Donella

Meadows, author of Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits to
Growth:
A world that is cruelly divided into rich and poor cannot be sustained. .
. . Both the rich and the poor, for different reasons, waste and
abuse resources, human resources as well as natural ones. The keys to
environ ment and development lie not only in technology and
production but in lifestyles and equity. MIT economist Lester
Thurow has said, "If the world's population had the productivity of
the Swiss, the consumption habits of the Chinese, the egalitarian
instincts of the Swedes, and the social discipline of the Japanese, then
the planet could support many times its current population."
One reason why the rich refuse to deal seriously with the plight of the
poor is that they think they can separate themselves from the conse
quences of poverty. That may have been true in a less populated time; it
is true no longer. Another reason for.inaction is that the rich don't think
they know how to help end poverty. Once they have a real intention of
doing it, of course, they will find out how, primarily by listening to the
poor. A third reason, probably the most telling, is the fear that economic
justice would mean not enough of anything to go around.
For awhile yet that is not true. But every year of population growth and
resource destruction makes environmental collapse more likely. By view
ing a healthy environment and equitable development as separate and
competing concerns, we can destroy the possibility of attaining either.
By seeing them as intertwined and equally important, we can achieve
both.

Yes, indeed; but there is something even more important than

either development and environment, affecting, if not determining,
both. Let me give Al Gore the last word:
The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental
crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an
inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual.
4. What Can Be Done?

H elping Nature is not at the top of the political

agenda anywhere I have heard about, nor very
high on most of our personal agendas either. But, in the psyche of
traditional peoples for most of human history, this has been a top
priority, a universally accepted assumption. In the words of popular
wisdom which Gurdjieff (about whom I shall have more to say in
Parts Three and Four of this book) attributes to the legendary
Anatolian folk hero, Mullah Nassr Eddin, "Better pull ten hairs a
day out of your mother's head than not help Nature!"
But how can we help Nature? Is it clear that human actions -
rather than solar flares, volcanoes or other planetary or cosmic
influences not attributable to us - are mainly responsible for
destabilizing the planet and thus creating the ecological crisis in the
first place? And, ifit is our fault, are we convinced that there is
anything effective that we can really do about it?
If the world is as interconnected as everyone from quantum
physicists to Tibetan and Zen Buddhists say it is, then it becomes
extremely difficult to disentangle the relative importance of human
and non-human interventions in creating our present state of dis
equilibrium on earth. But clearly, two of the prime suspects, global
warming and ozone depletion, are being triggered by human behav
ior. Without the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere would not have reached anything like their present
levels. Our use of fossil fuels has quadrupled since 1950. Our
industrial infrastructure depends on power and transportation which
are dependent on the burning of coal and oil which produce carbon
dioxide in vast quantities. There are other greenhouse gasses, like
methane, being generated in the intestines of termites and animals,
but even these sources have been multiplied by human activity,
since the termites feed on the debris from tropical forests we cut
down, and we raise billions oflivestock for human consumption that
would not naturally exist without our intervention. Moreover,
natural carbon sinks, such as forests, that store vast quantities of
carbon, are
35
36 · Asking for the Earth

being destroyed by us much faster than they are being replenished -

in the tropics at a rate of one Pennsylvania, or one Austria, a year.
Ozone depletion, as we have already seen, is linked to our massive
use of chlorine products, with no other contributing factors from
natural causes.
The eco-industrial revolution that Maurice Strong has been advo
cating since before the Rio Conference is not one that he thinks need
necessarily lead to a decline in the standard of living of Western
countries. It means a more intelligent and frugal use of resources so
as to make them sustainable. As he points out, "The Japanese have
a higher per capita income than Americans or Canadians, but the
average Japanese puts only 40 percent as much carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere as the average American or Canadian."
Since cars put almost a quarter of the carbon dioxide contributed
by human activity into the atmosphere, the reinvention of the
automobile could make a substantial difference. Amory Lovins'
Rocky Mountain Institute recently calculated that it was well within
the practical limits of present technology to design a supercar that
would get 200 miles a gallon, rather than the current North
American average ofless than thirty; and some companies are
already working on it. When it arrives, it could help delay global
warming, proving that technology can be part of the solution, not
just part of the problem.
From global warming, the trail of interactions leads directly to
major changes in weather patterns, the hydrological cycle, hurri
canes, flooding and the disruption of ocean currents. Warmer
temperatures melt polar ice, changing the salinity on which the
currents depend. An astronaut circling the earth can see it all
happening: 1000-mile smoke plumes over the Amazon forest, great
algae blooms blotching the oceans, the whitened corpses of coral
reefs, dust storms over Africa that extend haze across the Atlantic as
far as the Caribbean, deserts which now comprise 35 percent of the
earth's land surface, swirling typhoons inundating Bangladesh, red
rivers of Madagascar topsoil leeching into the Indian Ocean, and
dirty brown smog over most of the major cities in the world.
Yes, something is being done by the international community to
pay for what was so easily promised at Rio. The World Bank's
Global Environment Facility was finally set up in March 1994 -
almost two years after Rio - with pledges of just over $2 billion,
which can be used to support the objectives of the Climate Change,
Desertification and Biodiversity Conventions. It is much less than
the $125 billion that Rio had estimated would be needed to
implement its objectives; but it is a start.
 What Can Be Done? · 37

Rio aroused unparalleled public interest in the environment and

the need to protect it. But global issues compete with difficulty with
local concerns, and it has been easy for governments to rest on their
rhetorical laurels and do little to redeem their pledges of money and
action. Unless the issue can be kept alive in every parliament,
nothing much is going to happen. That is where the
environmental move ment as a whole - not just the political
Greens and the Deep Ecologists, but the extended family of
concerned scientists, church and labor groups -must work together
internationally to ensure that the future of our planet has a
powerful constituency that demands action on a scale comparable
to the struggle to contain communism in the past fifty years.
To oversee the actions that were intended to follow the Rio
Conference, the United Nations set up a Commission on Sustainable
Development ( CSD). To ensure that governments would not be the
only a djudicators of their own perfor mance, the 1420 non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) which had, for the first time
at Rio, played such an important role, were supposed to be given
equal prominence in the work of the CSD, but the NGOs are still
fighting that battle with the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC). Unless governments feel the heat of criticism
from the NGOs of the international environmental movement, they
will have little incentive to take the difficult and expensive decisions
that are required to turn Rio's Agenda 21 into meaningful actions
to create a sustainable world order. To this end, it is also essential
that all national NGOs (from both North and South) learn to work
together more harmoniously towards international objectives.
To monitor, complement and support the work of the CSD, Rio
had set up a privately funded Earth Council of twenty-one members
appointed to be representative of the principal regions of the world
and the various sectors of civil society, under the chairmanship of
the UNCED Secretary General, Maurice Strong. Conceived as a
power ful independent voice to represent the interests of those who
had no voice, the Earth Council has aspired to bridge the gap
between governments and NGOs, and to serve as a global
ombudsman for environment and development issues, investigating
and reporting on critical issues that affect people or violate their
rights as outlined in the Rio agreements.
Initially, it has been difficult for the Earth Council to gain the full
acceptance of the international NGO community who, although
consulted, had had no way of more directly participating in the
selection of the twenty-one members of the Council or in its
38 · Asking for the Earth

decisions. Some NGOs feared that the Council would not be as

independent and forthright in its critique of the CSD as they would
wish, and refused to be co-opted. Others have chosen to focus on
their national ( rather than international) agendas. Still others have
cautiously co-operated with the Council, gaining in confidence as
the Council has begun to justify their trust that it would fearlessly
criticize governments and United Nations institutions when it
needed to do so. In any case, NGOs are widely participating in the
annual sessions of the CSD, and many are finding that they can be
more effective using the information and communication services
1
of the Council, including a bi-monthly newsletter.
The Earth Council held its inaugural meeting in November 1993,
and issued its first critical assessment of post-UN CED negotiations in
the spring of 1994. In his foreword to this report, Maurice Strong
says:
The record is mixed at best, as only a few countries have yet taken
decisive action to translate the agreements they made at Rio into the
measures required to implement them at the national level. Developing
countries have particular reason to be disappointed in the response of
the more developed countries to their need for the additional
financial flows required to enable them to make the transition to
sustainable develop ment called for at Rio.
In short, he found a "general lack of commitment, in terms of
real political will" - hardly a complacent assessment.
However, a critique of the present state of play in international
negotiations to implement the Conventions and agreements of Rio
is not exactly an "Earth Audit." The Council plans to prepare such
an audit annually in future. Meantime, we have the well-researched
State of the World and Vital Trends published by the Washington,
D.C., Worldwatch Institute; but these respected reports are not
specifically related to Rio. Their good news for 1994 is:
Nuclear reactor construction starts have dropped from thirty-one in
1974 to two in 1994.
World wind-generating capacity has risen from near zero to nearly
3000 megawatts since 1980.
Almost three times more bicycles are now being made than cars.
CFC production has been cut by half in just four years.
Paper recycling is up
worldwide. Coal and fertilizer
use is down.
And their bad news is:
Earth shows a net increase of 87 million people in 1993.
 What Can Be Done? · 39
Grain stocks are down globally .
Third World debt and refugee flows continue to rise.
So does the number of pesticide-resistant species of insects.
Sulphur emissions and traffic deaths are also rising.
Of all 9600 species of birds, 6500 are in decline and 1000 of these are
in danger of extinction.

In addition, several national NGOs have issued detailed report cards

criticizing the failures of their own governments to do what they
had promised at Rio. But the problem is global, and the critique
should be global in scope. At Rio, a global awareness was, for a
time, created. It needs to be kept alive and given forceful
expression.
While we need to recognize the data, it is the pattern of the data
that is significant. The pattern, the writing on the wall of the
ecological crisis, is that we can expect not only more environmental
refugees but more wars and internal violence in those areas of the
planet where environmental degradation confronts exploding popu
lations. - Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon (Peace and Conflict
Studies at the University of Toronto) has documented case studies
that bode ill for the future, especially of Africa. As food and other
natural resources decline, he sees that the violence can only grow
worse, unless the environment is stabilized and made sustainable.
In the previous chapter, we identified the population explosion
(which was not even on the agenda at Rio) as perhaps the most
important factor pushing the ecological crisis towards a catastrophic
outcome. What could be done on this issue to change course? When
we come to look at it practically, there is much that could be done
at a relatively modest cost ifthe world community began to take the
problem seriously. As we have noted, 93 percent of population
growth is taking place in the developing world, where most families
would plan their births if the means of contraception were given to
them. Technology today is giving us more options. But the most
important lever of change is the education of women. Studies show
that women in traditional societies who have completed at least
primary school marry four years later, and have about three fewer
children than less educated women. The ways of turning the tide are
known. The task is immense, but not impossible. What we don't
have is the allocation of international resources to implement such
pro grams. Less than 1percent of official development assistance
goes to population, and that is obviously not enough. But ifwe have
the will, there is a way.
Seeing our human responsibility for what is happening, and seeing
40 · Asking for the Earth

the daunting scale of the global challenges, do we accept the

challenge, or do we plunge from denial to despair, protesting our
helplessness to change the downward spiral of disaster? Are we
collectively in a situation rather like that of terminally ill patients
who would rather not be told the truth of their hopeless
condition? If nothing can be done about it, can we not sleep on
and die as peacefully as possible?
Fortunately, scientists are not giving us the option of sleeping in
peace. Most of them agree that it is not yet too late. There are
corrective measures we can take during the next decade that will still
probably turn around the downward spiral and give this beautiful
planet a second chance for life to go on and evolve here. It will not
be easy or cheap; but it is still possible. Will we make the necessary
effort, in time?
In the previous chapter, we have looked rapidly at some of the
ecological challenges facing us worldwide. In an interconnected
world, we may have priorities, but we cannot afford to choose only
one or two aspects to try to fix. Sooner or later, we have to tackle
the whole job, everything we have mentioned so far, and probably
much more before we are done.
Because the scale of such an undertaking so far transcends what
can possibly be accomplished at the individual, family, community
or even national level, we tend - mistakenly, I believe - to shrug
off our responsibility for local actions that we could begin to carry
out, putting our hopes instead on governments and international
institu tions such as the United Nations, and its environmental
agencies, like the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
We need to get on with our own recycling, energy and water
conservation, composting, diet and life-style changes - as listed in
Jeremy Rifkin's Green Lifestyle Handbook , 50 Waysto Save the
Planet and many similar publications. Without individual, local
action there is no steam to drive the great United Nations Earth
Summits. They will stop generating rhetoric and start negotiating
real commitments to ex pensive, basic and difficult changes only
when millions of citizens around the world are working on the
practical little things at home, in business and at the office, "helping
Nature" by living "more lightly on the earth," as the American
poet Gary Snyder puts it. "For all sentient beings," as the Tibetans
say so rightly.
I have just mentioned business. Ifthe earth were ru.n as a
business, we would have depreciation, amortization and
maintenance ac counts, as the books of Paul Hawkens and Hazel
Henderson have forcefully demonstrated. A business that
accumulates pollution debts
 What Can Be Done? · 41

and uses up its resources faster than they are replenished soon goes
bankrupt . National governments and international institutions such
as the World Bank and the GATT should change the rules of the
road according to which we all do business so as to give both
positive and negative incentives to encourage ecologically
sustainable prac tices. Too often the current rules encourage just
the opposite. Any future definition of Gross National Product must
factor in environ mental costs, and the pollutors should pay the
ecological cost of production, passing this cost on to consumers.
This would have the added advantage of slowing down our
ravenous consumption.
One way in which the application of these business principles
could also help Third World development is in the area of energy
transfers. To reduce, or even stabilize, carbon dioxide (and other
greenhouse gas) emissions in the next decade, in accordance with
existing international commitments, many public utilities (in devel
oped countries especially) will have to find ways of offsetting some
of their emissions, perhaps by purchasing tropical rain forests that
would otherwise be cut down, so that they could continue to absorb
carbon. Globally, this would be a step towards balancing emissions.
These transfers could, at the same time, contribute to reducing Third
World debt and leveling the North-South playing field. Ontario
Hydro, one of North America's largest public utilities, is coura
geously exploring this option; but the storm of political opposition
created does not augur well for the sophistication of public opinion
in recognizing that measures to promote greater energy efficiency
may not, by themselves, suffice to make it possible to keep our
commitments under the Climate Change Convention.
On a small scale, in a few countries, including Norway and the
Netherlands, progress towards a sustainable economy is beginning
to be made. Japan has already shown that energy efficiency is the
key to international competition in the future. But I do not see
how a critical mass of change is going to be built up in time
without a parallel revolution, not only in business and economics,
but in the values of our whole culture. We need to understand that
living as we all do amounts to pulling hairs out of Mother Nature's
head every day. We do not think and feel like that now. Quite
unconsciously, we put ourselves, not Nature, first. Our entire
culture supports our unspoken assumption that we humans have
the God-given right to take whatever we want -from the earth, from
other species and even from one another.
The ecological revolution, in our minds and hearts, of seeing that
we belong to the earth (and that the earth does not belong to us),
42 · Asking for the Earth

has hardly begun to happen yet. Until a criticaJ. mass put serving
Nature ahead of serving ourselves - seeing that the two are
insepa rable -we cannot expect our institutions, national and
international, to take even the most obvious and urgent remedial
actions.
As Japan and Germany have already demonstrated, North
America could cut its consumption of energy in half by using it
more efficiently. As California and Denmark have shown, wind
power and solar power could become substitutes for most fossil fuel
generation of power without our having to face all the waste
disposal problems and other hazards inherent in nuclear power
technology. Globally, the production of ozone-depleting CFCs is
down by half. In the United States, sales of compact fluorescent
light bulbs in 1993 cut electricity demand equivalent to the output
of eight large coal-fired plants.
Just over the horizon is power from the zero point background
vacuum flux: that Nikola Tesla was experimenting with when he
died mysteriously in New York in 1943. Without debating the
controver sial physics of this technology, it is sufficient to mention
here the fact that a small prototype zero-point electric power
plant is already operating in India, using a DC homopolar genrator
patented by an American inventor, Adam Trombly, in 1981. A full-
scale zero-point power station was designed for Kaiga, in
Karnatak:a, south India; but just before breaking ground for its
construction Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, and the
project has since been on hold.
Today Trombly's former collaborator, David Farnsworth, has far
more efficient AC solid-state, zero-point generating devices under
development, but it remains to be seen whether the vested interests
represented by fossil fuel generation are still too strong to give zero
point a chance to prove itselfin the United States. Meanwhile,
Japan, Germany and Russia (among others) are secretly working
on the development of this energy of the future - a future that
could be a lot closer than the future of nuclear fusion in which
billions of dollars of public and private money are being invested.
Instead of investing in promising avenues of research for a clean-
energy power base, the United States has, from 1980 to 1992,
been slashing its public and private budgets for such research and
development. With the Clinton Administration, United States
policy is changing - at last.
In the next century, fresh water may be as strategically vital a
resource as oil has been in this one. Here, too, there are hopeful
technical developments that are still little known but may soon be
generally available . In New England at Cape Cod, the New
Alchem ists (now Ocean Arks), under the inspired leadership of
Dr. John
 What Can Be Done? · 43

Todd, have pioneered aquaculture (to expand our dwindling fish

supplies) and waste water treatment, by organizing microbial com
munities or "living machines" which will help our cities to deal
with sewage far more efficiently than by conventional methods.
His principles of ecological design are as significant as his
technological breakthroughs. Where most technology is designed
to master Na ture, Todd's diversified cellular systems are opening
an avenue in the opposite direction. As he expressed it, in Annals
of Earth, 1994, his hypothesis is that "the workings of complex
natural systems offer a blueprint for technological design." He is,
let us hope, the prototype of the ecological engineer of the next
century, learning design directly from Nature, finding ingenious
ways to help Nature do what it does best.
At last, through the brilliant innovations of Todd's team and
others, technology may be going beyond the intention of mastering
Nature for profit, with all the destruction which that usually entails,
and coming to practical, efficient and non-polluting ways of
serving intelligently as Nature's stewards. This indicates a big
change in human attitudes and an evolutionary step for our species.
And in the end it will prove to be the most cost effective.
But, of course, there is much more that is not so encouraging.
Since we know that cutting down tropical rain forests is contribut
ing to global warming, why do we not stop doing it? Can the North
not reach a compact with the South that would fairly balance
developmental and environmental considerations for the long-term
benefit of both? Some progress was made at the United Nations
Conference at Rio, but it was mostly on paper. The rhetoric of
sustainable development is in place; but the fact remains that less
than 1 percent of tropical forests are protected or sustainably
managed, and their destruction continues unabated. The rhetoric
of a North-South compact relating environment to development is
accepted; but the gap in living standards between North and South
continues to widen.
As for ozone depletion, cutting CFC production in half is a
diplomatic accomplishment, but we should swear off using all
CFCs and chlorine products and find substitutes, since we
know, for example, that chlorine monoxide molecules scavenge
ozone. In stead, we are content to pledge to phase out CFCs in
the more industrialized countries in the next ten years, while
China goes on making millions of refrigerators that use CFCs, and
while we con tinue to drive our cars with air conditioners that
leak CFCs. Does someone in my own family have to develop skin
cancer or a cataract
44 · Asking for the Earth

or a damaged immune system from the increasing levels of

ultraviolet radiation due to ozone depletion before I am motivated
to stop using chlorine and to demand that its use be strictly
regulated by govern ment in accordance with international treaties?
If I were at Lloyd's of London, assessing insurance risks, I would
not underwrite policies assuming that environmental risks would
remain stable in the future. Looking at how we are, I would have to
bet on their getting worse. Even when we know what could be done
technologically to remedy the ills of the environment, we do not
seem very likely to make the hard political choices needed to get on
with it, at least until there has been a much bigger change in our
consciousness and life-style. The fundamental issue, then, is can we
change ourselves? To solve the ecological crisis, we must resolve
the spiritual crisis too; and I think there can be no doubt that it is
the spiritual crisis that will have to be .solved first, for only when we
have begun the inner transformation towards which the spiritual
crisis is leading us will we be able to change our outer behavior on
a scale that will permit the earth to recover.
Perhaps our best hope is that the ecological crisis is beginning to
awaken us to the less obvious spiritual crisis, reinforcing our sense
of unease, of something terribly wrong, that is everywhere
permeating at least the fringes of contemporary culture. Behind the
anti-estab lishment, anti-elitist thrust of the current movement for
change is the gnawing fear that not only the family, but society and
civilization are falling apart.
One indicator of social collapse is the ubiquitous problem of
addiction. When in the U.S.A. one hospitalization in five is now
due, directly or indirectly, to alcohol; when nearly one person in
ten is taking drugs at least sometimes; when the wealthiest 1percent
of the population owns more than the bottom 90 percent; when the
safety net of health care, unemployment benefits, affordable
housing and social services is full of holes -little wonder that Dean
Morton of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City
feels compelled to charge that we are "trashing people," treating
them like garbage. In our individual, family, national and
international life, we have grown deaf to conscience. Gurdjieff says
we lie all the time, and in his essays on life in different Western
countries he does not spare us in his criticisms. How can we any
longer close our eyes to the fact
that behind every other crisis we face a spiritual crisis?
In 1990, a group of thirty-four concerned scietists, including
Carl Sagan, wrote an open letter to the world's religious leaders
asking for their help in rescuing the planet from human abuse. The
 What Can Be Done? · 45

response was immediate. In the United States, Catholic, Protestant

and Jewish groups banded together to form the National Religious
Partnership for the Environment. Ecumenical conferences were held
in Washington, Moscow and Oxford, as Christian, Jewish, Muslim,
Buddhist, Hindu and other spiritual leaders rallied to the call of the
scientists.
When Heads of State arrived in Rio in June 1992 for the United
Nations Earth Summit, they could read in the New York Times a
poignant Declaration by more than forty of the world's spiritual
leaders from all the great traditions assem bled in what was called
the "Sacred Earth Gathering" at Rio. Secretary General Boutros-
Ghali transmitted the Declaration to the UNCED Conference, and
in opening the Conference its Secretary General, Maurice Strong,
noted:
We are reminded by the Declaration . . . that the changes in behavior
and direction called for here must be rooted in our deepest spiritual,
moral, and ethical values. We must reinstate in our lives the ethic oflove
and respect for the earth, which traditional peoples have retained as
central to their value systems. This must be accompanied by a revitaliza
tion of the values common to all our principal religious and philosophical
traditions.

This is how the Sacred Earth Declaration begins:

The planet Earth is in peril as never before. With arrogance and presump
tion, humankind has disobeyed the laws of the Creator which are
manifest in the divine natural order. The crisis is global. It transcends all
national, religious, cultural, social, political and economic boundaries.
The ecological crisis is a symptom of the spiritual crisis of the human
being, arising from ignorance.

The full text of this unique ecumenical appeal is given in Appendix

B. From my point of view, the most elegant and pithy expression of
the essentially spiritual nature of the ecological crisis was made at
Rio by the UN Secretary General himself. This is what Dr. Boutros-
Ghali said: "To the Ancients, nature was the dwelling place of the
gods. The Earth had a soul. To find that soul and restore it, this
is the essence of Rio." But he also warned that the success of this
great enterprise was far from assured: "The current level of
commitment is not comparable to the size and the gravity of the
problems." Two
years after Rio, this judgment still holds.
The old-fashioned term for such a strong commitment, at the
level of the individual, was "conversion." Perhaps it is time that I
told the story of what marked, for me, if not a conversion, at least
a sharp
46 · Asking for the Earth

departure from the world of diplomacy (that had been my life as an

ambassador) and a turning towards another kind of life dedicated to
quite different inner and outer goals.