The Time for Postponing Climate Action Is Over

In 1962, Rachael Carson warned us, with the publication of Silent Spring, that the indiscriminate use of pesticides was disrupting critical ecosystems and causing severe damage to human health.

"We are now awakening to the responsibilities that come
with our distinctive ability to consciously create our future."

Her message led to a ban on the use of DDT in the United States and eventual restrictions on its use in much of the world. Her warning also helped launch the environmental movement and its call to humanity to accept responsibility for the consequences of our impact on Earth.

Ten years later, in 1972, the book The Limits to Growth, by an MIT research team led by Donella and Dennis Meadows, again focused global attention on humanity’s environmental responsibility. Presented as a report to the Club of Rome, the book used computer modeling to demonstrate that sustained economic growth on a finite planet would lead to environmental and economic collapse in the early- to mid-21st century. It sold more than 3 million copies in some 35 languages.

The book stirred significant public debate at the time and had a defining influence in shaping the lives and thinking of many members of my generation. It came under withering critique, however, from a corporate establishment that profits from growth, and from neoliberal economists who provided intellectual cover for the establishment. To the detriment of people and planet, and unlike Carson’s book, The Limits to Growth had no discernible impact on public policy.

Yet, over the next 20 years, concern for the growing human threat to Earth’s essential living systems gained in status to become the dominant scientific consensus. In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a proclamation, “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” signed by more than 1,700 scientists, including a majority of the then-living Nobel Laureates in the sciences. Its message was clear and unambiguous:

“The earth is finite…. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.”

Read the story from Yes! Magazine by David Korten - “The Time for Postponing Climate Action Is Over.”