Go Light

"Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for." - Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace

Last June, while visiting with Wes Jackson and his wife at the Land Institute, in Salina, Kansas, Wes said something, almost casually, over a lunch of salad and ham sandwiches that has been on mind ever since. He said: "We live at the most important moment in human history."

I assumed that Wes meant we live at a decisive moment of action. That the various challenges confronting humanity - climate change, species extinction, energy depletion, soil erosion, ecosystem service decline, global poverty, population pressure, water and food shortages, plus many more - now require, like a long line of airplanes waiting to land at an overbusy airport, attention - immediate attention. Time is short. Hurry up.

I wasn’t surprised, therefore, when Wes told us that after a commencement address he had given the previous month at Washington College, in Maryland, in which he told the students they were "the children of depletion" and warned them of the inevitable contraction of American society upcoming, the president of the college came rushing up to him after his speech sputtering: "You can’t say those things!"

Indeed. That’s the trouble with calls to action these days - they can’t avoid the umbra of doom-and-gloom. I’ve been there myself.

In fact, I’ve heard the  mantra  of  'Trouble  Coming'  so  often