Toward an Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the 21st Century
By Christopher Bernard
I am no moral authority—am neither a rabbi nor an imam, a minister nor a pope. But, as an average straight older European American male, I am deeply concerned about a future I may see only the dark, leading edge of, but that will be affected in many small ways by the life I and others like me have lived, to say nothing of our material “afterlife”: our words and actions and their effects, which will last long after our physical existence is over. And so this is as much a personal statement as it is a call to thought and action.
I offer the following as a modest part of a debate we will, all of us, need to have about the long-term future of life, including the life of human beings, on earth. The phrase “ecological civilization” is not a new one; it has become current over the last several years in a number of environmental circles, though its first official use may have been by the Sino-German Environment Partnership, which in 2012 used the phrase to describe the heart of its mission.
That we need to create a way of life in better balance with nature if we as a species hope to have a tolerable future is something most of us, I suspect, would agree on. I will not waste time in describing and trying to justify the sense that we are in a plight that is indeed dire, possibly as great as the human race as a whole has ever faced. The question is how to achieve that new balance. I describe below several basic goals to keep in mind as we take thought on how to act to face a crisis that will drastically affect the future life of the human species, even its survival, and the fate of all of life on earth.
In the following I sometimes take a deliberately provocative tone; I do this to inspire response and engagement, not in mere comments on the internet, but in the analog world where we live, breathe and have our being—and where we will decide how, and if, we will live in the future.