Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [5]
It’s worth saying again: they have found the antidote for despair in participation.
The authors’ work “on the ground” gives testimony that responsible engagement reconnects us to the world of which we are a part. In this book you will also encounter a Malaysian hairy rhino, many birds, including red tail hawks, trogons, and rose-throated becards. You will find green rat snakes, gila monsters, javelinas, and spider monkeys. We can thrive on the body of this earth only when we stop seeing the earth and its inhabitants as separate from ourselves and our survival. Every living being is part of the remedy.
None of us knows for sure which side of the tipping point we are on. But I imagine that you share with me the desire to look back at the end of our lives and feel that we have lived each moment fully engaged, knowing that we’ve each contributed our small share. To do this, we need the humility to recognize that we are not going to figure this out alone. So much of what we face is unfathomable. We need to develop the capacity to reach out to one another, and to call on something intangible beyond ourselves.
I invite you to read on—and to create your own Hope Beneath Our Feet project. In ways you cannot even imagine, what you do matters and makes a difference for us all.
CHAPTER ONE
What’s at Stake
Commencement Address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland
PAUL HAWKEN
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple, short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.
Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation … but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules—like don’t poison the water, soil, or air; don’t let the earth get overcrowded; and don’t touch the thermostat—have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that “spaceship earth” was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seat-belts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: you are brilliant, and the earth is hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night-blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne