The question is simply this: Who are we? As individuals, as families, as nations, and as a combined human civilization, our answer to this deceptively simple question creates the lens through which we see ourselves, our world, and make the choices of our lives, our future, and our survival. How can we possibly know what to choose – what policies to create, what laws to pass, or how to build sustainable economies and bridge the issues that are tearing at the fabric of our relationships and society – until we’ve answered the single question that lies at the very core of our existence. Will chart the greatest destiny, or seal the darkest fate, of our global family that is estimated to reach a staggering 8 billion people by 2025.įor the first time in human history the future of our entire species rests upon the choices of a single generation – us – and the choices are being made within a small window of time – now. the growing chasm between extreme wealth and extreme poverty the growing shortages of food and fresh the unsustainable and growing levels of The way we solve the simultaneous crises that include: The title, Crossroads for Planet Earth, says it all. 3, September 2005) to inform the world of the critical situation we find ourselves in today.

The journal Scientific American released a special edition (vol. This fact is vital to us all right now for one simple reason: The best minds of today tell us clearly that we’re facing the greatest number and magnitude of crises in recorded history, and that if left unresolved, each crisis threatens our very existence! So while we no longer face the nuclear threat that we did in the 1980s, the thinking that made the wars and suffering of the 20th Century and the crises of the 21st Century possible is still in place. They’re based in the false scientific assumptions that suggest we’re somehow separate from the Earth, separate from one another, and that the nature that gives us life is based upon violent competition and survival of the strongest. They all stem from a way of thinking that has dominated much of the modern world since the beginning of the scientific era about 300 years ago. There is a common thread that links the rationale that led to the cold war and many of the crises that face us today. They spent the time, energy, and human resources to develop and stockpile somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 nuclear weapons – a combined arsenal with the power to microwave the Earth, and everything on it, many During the 44 years of the Cold War, the super powers of the United States and the former Soviet Union did something that seems unthinkable to any rationally minded person today.

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