This seems to be the Point of Recognition
Between the pandemic and the global warming and the deforestations and the wildfires it’s seeming like this is the historical moment of recognition that we just can’t keep living this way. It’s unnatural, as well as unjust and unsustainable.
Green Horizon Magazine focuses on these kinds of issues and suggested solutions. Our fall issue will appear next month. Here is the introductory editorial:
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Turning Point?
2020.
May saw the publication in Nature Scientific Reports of “Deforestation and world population sustainability” by Dr. Gerardo Aquino, a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute in London, and Prof. Mauro Bologna at the University of Tarapacá in Chile. These two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems concluded that global deforestation is on track to trigger an “irreversible collapse” of human civilization within the next two to four decades. They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, “all the forests would disappear in approximately 100–200 years.”
Then in July former German Green Party leader Joschka Fischer circulated an opinion piece (“A Turning Point for Humanity”) in which he advised: “There is no playbook for a scenario in which a high-tech world economy interconnected by global supply chains is brought to its knees by a microscopic pathogen … The crisis will have consequences that last far beyond the coming months and years. This could be the moment when, having realized the consequences of how we have organized our economic systems and engaged with nature, we finally commit to a decisive shift toward sustainability. But if we fail to make the necessary changes, the pandemic of 2020 will mark the beginning of an unprecedented human catastrophe … We can either assume responsibility and muster the courage and vision to undertake a Great Transformation, or we can wait, with eyes wide open, for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. With COVID-19, the first rider has already appeared.”
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So: Are we at a turning point … or on a runway toward collapse?
There is widespread agreement that, after the pandemic dissipates, we must not go back to the “old normal.” But. American society seems immobilized, unable to respond in a way that Aquino, Bologna, and Fischer indicate is absolutely imperative. One might be encouraged by the fact that this is a major electoral year, a year that could conceivably offer hope for the start of transformative change. But. To the contrary, unfortunately, people are expressing an unusual degree of dissatisfaction with the presidential offerings of the establishment parties this year.
So, then, where is hope to be found?
A gratifying response to our last issue was how many readers commented on the inspiration engendered by John Rensenbrink’s vision and his orientation to social change. I remember having that thought myself when I read The Greens and the Politics of Transformation all the way back in 1992.
Green Horizon prides itself on offering solutions and suggestions for pathways forward. Such can be the basis for hope. We believe that a Green future can be just over the horizon. After all, the “greening” movement has come far since the first Earth Day fifty years ago. Many of us took encouragement from the overview of the ensuing decades, the recounting of the developments and breakthroughs John participated in, evident in the tributes and testaments of Issue №40. In acknowledgment, John submitted the following to convey his own sense of encouragement and appreciation:
A huge Thank You to Steve and all who wrote about me in the last Issue, Winter/Spring #40. It was and remains for me an amazing experience, making me by turns humble, proud, refreshed, renewed, instructed, and abundantly eager to live and contribute as much as I can, in various ways as seems possible, in my few remaining years. You are my brothers and sisters and I treasure each one of you.
— John Rensenbrink
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2020.
Business-as-usual is a dismal prospect; politics-as-usual is nothing short of disheartening. But the message from the Green movement is: Yes, a turning point is possible, and the beginnings of such may be at hand. The inevitable crises consequent to misguided praxis — deforestation, climate disruption, trajectories of overshoot in myriad spheres — are serving to jolt human consciousness, hopefully toward a higher level of ecological wisdom and social enlightenment. Perhaps our memory of this anything-but-ordinary year will turn out more sanguine than the immediate discomfiture, at this point, might lead us to believe . . . after all.
— SW
