[...]... on the manuscript A special thanks to Peter Prescott for his encouragement, diligence, editorial skill, and friendship And to Elaine, Mike, and Dan for more than words can say Down to the Wire Down to the Wire This page intentionally left blank Introduction There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn’t fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too... “bought” up to the point at which the level of all heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is stabilized and trending downward The book focuses on three challenges of transformational leadership in the decades and centuries ahead The first is to prepare the public to understand the scope, scale, and duration of climate destabilization and to grasp the fact that it is first and foremost a challenge to our system... of the largest political failure in history The U.S government and elected officials, particularly in recent years: • Ignored the increasingly urgent and rigorous warnings of danger, and thereby • Failed to anticipate ecological and climate trends, and so • Made little or no effort to alert the public to the dangers ahead; • Were oblivious to the security implications of rapid climate change; • Took... casting themselves as “optimists” underestimate the capacity of people to respond while misleading them about the severity of what lies ahead and the adjustments that will have to be made This book is written in the belief that people want to be told the truth and that with intrepid and competent leadership and encouragement most will rise to meet the realities ahead And that is the best chance we have to. .. that they recognize the difference between the structure of problems and their coefficients the rate at which they get worse In other words, they need to understand the difference between Band-Aids and authentic cures, and that requires that we better understand otherwise obscure concepts like feedback loops, leads, and lags, which is to say how the world works as a unified system (Meadows, 2008) They... their preindustrial levels, stopped the hemorrhaging of life on Earth, restored the chemical balance of the oceans, and created governments and economies calibrated to the realities of the biosphere and to the diminished ecologies of the postcarbon world The change in our perspective from the nearer to the longer term is, I think, the most difficult challenge we will face We have become a culture predicated... improved due to the efforts of Milton Friedman and his free-market disciples until the economic collapse of 2008 The appeal to economic self-interest as the engine of human progress has its origins in the writings of Adam Smith, and there is much to be said on its behalf Forgotten in the euphoria, however, are Smith’s own misgivings about the results of unalloyed self-interest, evident in both The Wealth... years That’s the basic outlook” (Archer, 2009, p 45) Even in the near term it is already too late, however, to avert significant disasters, and that is a difficult message to convey without inducing paralysis or denial even among those willing to listen It is a great deal easier for all of us to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock, go back to sleep, and hope that it all goes away, or to pretend that... changes the things the next U.S president and the government would have to do quickly to respond to the challenge of climate destabilization This book, by contrast, addresses the larger issues behind the immediate policy choices and headlines It is a meditation on the leadership we will need to eventually surmount the largest challenges we’ve ever experienced My focus is what historian James MacGregor... across the boundaries of geography, circumstance, and time The news about climate, oceans, species, and all of the collateral human consequences will get a great deal worse for a long time before it gets better The reasons for authentic hope are on a farther horizon, centuries ahead when we have managed to stabilize the carbon cycle and reduce carbon levels close to their preindustrial levels, stopped the . calibrated to the realities of the biosphere and to the diminished ecologies of the postcarbon world. The change in our perspective from the nearer to the longer term is, I think, the most diffi. revert back to the ‘old’ climate (2009, p. 29). The few remaining climate skeptics aside, there are two general positions that bear on my own views. The fi rst is the belief that there is a. alt="" Down to the Wire Other Books by David W. Orr Ecological Literacy (1992) Earth in Mind (1994/2004) The Nature of Design (2002) The Last Refuge (2004) Design on the Edge (2006) The Global