Sublime

Howard K. Smith, who fled Nazi Germany on the last train from Berlin before Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941; James Cameron, whose iconic 1946 report from the Bikini atom tests was perhaps the most literary and philosophical article ever published in a newspaper.

With that in mind, I want us to consider three great issues for our time as we use our backward gaze at history to gain insights for the future. First, can the world choose a path of shared prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability in this seventh age of globalization? We can call this the challenge of sustainable development.

First, change the goal. For over 70 years economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the twenty-first century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human

A variety of factors are driving the “land-loss crisis,” as it’s come to be called. But the essential one is a marvel of engineering. What leaping carp are to Chicagoland, sunken fields are to the parishes around New Orleans—evidence of a man-made natural disaster. Thousands of miles of levees, flood walls, and revetments have been erected to manag

scientist, author, Senior Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, and one of the foremost analysts of our energy future, explained it to me: In short, our rate of consumption is overshooting our planet’s sustainable sources of production. According to the Global Footprint Network, humanity is currently using the equivalent of 1.75 Earths to provide th