MAPPING THE 21ST CENTURY

We are in a period of suspension between an old era (yet to be named) and a new era (also nameless) of fresh hope and opportunity for our nation and the world. So although we cannot predict the future it may be a good time to reflect on the forces that may shape our 21st century.

Who would have predicted two world wars, the splitting of the atom, computer technology, the discovery of antibiotics or modern literature, abstract painting or contemporary music in 1900? The only thing we know for sure is that there will be surprises, perhaps happening at a faster rate than ever before, impacting more lives globally than ever before. But that is all the more reason it is important to anticipate those larger forces that may shape our century.

One place to start is with the recent publication of the Atlantic Council report: Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The report begins with the following:

The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of non state actors. By 2025, the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries. Concurrent with the shift in power among nation-states, the relative power of various non state actors—including businesses, tribes, religious organizations, and criminal networks—is increasing. The players are changing, but so too are the scope and breadth of transnational issues important for continued global prosperity. Potentially slowing global economic growth; aging populations in the developed world; growing energy, food, and water constraints; and worries about climate change will limit and diminish what will still be an historically unprecedented age of prosperity.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf

(For a PDF version of the report click link below):
http://www.acus.org/publication/global-trends-2025-transformed-world


FORCES OF CHANGE


1. CLIMATE

Climate change is perpetual on our dynamic planet. The last 400M years have seen several periods of near total species extinction, global heating and cooling, ice ages, rising and falling oceans, atmospheric change, etc., as our tectonic plates shift. Adapting our expanding (several additional billion) population to global/weather changes will require a high level of intense interdisciplinary/international research and public policy based on science, technology and economics.

2. DEMOGRAPHY

The demographic profile of our world, at least for the next 25 years, is much more knowable and will present few surprises. While Western Europe and Russia continue to grow older, lose their work forces and net populations, Asia, Africa and Latin America will account for most of the population growth of 1.4B persons. These areas of the world are also among the most economically challenged. So with a high percentage of their populations 18 or younger, political instability is highly probable. Those states most susceptible to conflict are in a great arc of instability stretching from Sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa, into the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, South and Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. The United States will be counter to the shrinking size of most developed nations with a rising population due to higher birth rates and immigration.

3. ENERGY

The quest for new energy forms will move beyond fossil fuel as we reach “peak oil”, perhaps before the mid point of this century. We will be on a tight race between our expanding populations, new levels of urban concentration and diminishing fissile fuel resources. Economic development, critical for the reduction of poverty, production of food, etc., will place energy as our top priority. It will drive virtually every element of our social, economic and political future, transforming the map of our political alignments and create the paradigm that will name our new century.

4. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Ironically we live at a time when science and technology have a greater effect on our personal lives and political future than at any time in our 200,000 year history as Homo sapiens, yet the average person knows little about science or the logic of its inquiry. While physics plays a dominant role in providing the theoretical basis for the other sciences, its future may well depend on man’s ability to find the missing piece (Higgs bosom) in the puzzle of what makes our world (mass) hold together. Should this final piece elude us will be have to return to square one? In biology we have already begun a journey to better understand life itself and the workings of the human brain. The applications of pure science to the technology of energy, food production and the management of our natural environment and resources present both a great risk as well as amazing opportunity. It is estimated that by 2030 our demand for food will increase by 50 percent and 36 countries (1.4B people) will be without adequate water resources. Sudden breakthroughs in energy production alone could change the quality of life for every person (will be about 9 billion by the end of the century) on the planet. On the other hand, science mismanaged could be a terrible weapon of mass destruction, especially in the hands of non-state terrorists.

5. NATIONALISM AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

While it will maintain its economic and military primacy, at least through the next 25 years, we will experience “the rise of the rest” as noted in the work of Fareed Zakaria. (See http://www.newsweek.com/id/171249 and The Post-American World, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2008) The projected growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China will collectively match the original G-7’s contribution to the global GDP by mid century. China will be a dominant economic force and major player. India will become a major force as well, making it important for the U.S. to see itself as part of a tripolar economic reality.

6. A SHRINKING PLANET

There will be a concentration of new populations in economically and environmentally stressed countries. A potential for failed states, the interconnections of our economic/financial systems and the proliferation of technologically advanced weapons of mass destruction, diminishing fossil fuel resource, and environmental changes all point to the reality of a planet that is fragile. We are interconnected and vulnerable. A sneeze in Iceland can produce a pandemic in Africa.

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

1. A WORLD OF MIXED ECONOMIES

The current world economic crisis, which has underscored the inter connectedness of every national economy, makes it clear that HOW economies work is quite different from their ideologies. There is no pure free market, communist system or socialist state. We are all mixed economies that are inter dependent for ideas, technology, trade and culture. This may be an ideal time to face the facts and overcome rigid outdated ideologies. In the United States we have a chance to get over the myth of our being a “free market” system. We have been regulating our system for years with import quotas, subsidies, price supports, etc. One might be a democracy without the mythology of capitalism, especially when its “unseen guiding hand” has been greed. This may be a time to become adults and celebrate a world of mixed economies. We in the U.S. may learn to match our wants more with our needs.

2. COMMUNICATIONS

Our technical capability for communicating with one another is growing, virtually daily, out of proportion to our ability to process and meaningfully respond to events. Sound bites and video clips have replaced careful analysis and thoughtful dialogue. Bloggers are displacing journalists. Media increasingly makes, not just reports, our news by how it frames events. Our positive challenge is to find ways of using the iphone-ipod-blogisphere as a meaningful source for information based knowledge and decision making. It will require neural networks that can sift and sort in nanoseconds but the potential is there for expanding the network of talent and human creativity of a much higher percentage of the 9B persons who will not only inhabit but contribute to the enrichment of our planet.

3. BEYOND NATION STATES

The concept of the “nation state” and national sovereignty attributed to Hugo Grotius’ On the Laws of War and Peace, four centuries ago, may be ready for a major revision. Regional “states” (E.U.) and alliances have proved far more effective than imagined. Most important, as pointed out by John C. Reppert in a recent (12-03-08) address at Eckerd College:

If economies, security, businesses, communications, environment, and health issues are borderless, what is it we expect borders to provide us? Are the UN Declaration of human Rights and the World Health Organization suitable models for the future? If not, what do we have to propose? Is the concept of inter ‘national’ relations a quaint concept of a time gone by and are our leaders capable or willing to offer options that preserve our values, our democracy, and our freedoms.


ON THE CUSP OR THE BRINK?

As Fareed Zakaria pointed out in the article cited above (Newsweek, December 8, 2008, p. 37):

This is a rare moment in history. A more responsive America, better attuned to the rest of the world, could help create a new set of ideas and institutions – an architecture of peace for the 21st century that would bring stability, prosperity and dignity to the lives of billions of people. Ten years from now, the world will have moved on; the rising powers will have become unwilling to accept an agenda conceived in Washington or London or Brussels. But at this time . . . there is a unique opportunity to use American power to reshape the world.

It is critical for the U.S. to use its resources carefully, aware that we live in a multi-polar world. We may be living on the cusp of major advances for our species or on the brink of a precipice of decline. Learning to make sense of it all will not be easy, but it will be essential if we want to make-a-difference in a century that will allow us to participate in the future, as never before.


Merle F. Allshouse

The First Day On the Journey Ahead - Nov. 5th 2008

On November 5th images rush in our minds’ eyes: the victory speech to 100,000 Chicagoans in Grant Park welcoming back their victorious hero from a two year historic battle - http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGx3Kc ; celebrations of pride and praise in Obama's ancestral Kenyan village with his paternal grandmother dancing; joyful demonstrations of hope and joy in virtually every corner of the world; and the ringing antiphonal responses, Yes we can – Yes we did

But what did we do?

• We opened a new chapter in American history, and closed one our most shameful. We have opened the way to finally healing the dreadful cancer of race that has so divided our nation, before and after the Civil War. The new chapter is open for us to write.
  
• We invested our faith in a man with a vision of America that is “exceptional”, not because we are better than others, but because we have the power to reach out and make this a more peaceful and prosperous world. The President can inspire and lead, but we must be strong enough to feel compassion for and bond with the rest of the world.
  
• We broke old customs of how elections should be organized, managed, and funded. The roles of the parties and lobbies may never be the same. It now depends on us to become involved at every level of our civil society.
  
• We cried tears of joy and began to feel were truly the United States. We felt we were home again with a larger family. We felt the change from despair to hope.
  
• We are involved and believe again. Our sense of the future changed from alienation to deep pride in our nation. We know the Constitution and Bill of Rights are alive and well.
  
• We changed the nature of American politics and successfully challenged old assumptions, like “the Bradley effect.” Many aspects of the old culture-wars can be confined to the history books. The political/social landscape down to our day-to-day relationships are now different. Change has begun.
  
  So we are now in the early morning hours between the election yesterday and the Inauguration. Full daylight will come with the State of the Union address. Then we must face the realities of global crises in economics and the environment, coupled with growing political instability and a proliferation of nuclear weapons. Our President believes that America can become a major leader in bringing peace and justice to a larger part of our nation and the world. But he made it clear last night that he does not have the power or strength to accomplish this vision alone; it is now up to us, We the People…
  
  Yes we can and Yes we will…!
  
  
  M.F.A.
  11-05-08

Which Way Now America?

As we have watched the U.S. and world economy over the past two weeks we have alternated among stunned silence, quiet panic, and repressed apprehension. It is no wonder since neither of our presidential candidates seems to be getting at the core of our political/economic crisis. Perhaps the reality of our crisis is too shocking for the general public to grasp, especially before an election, so it is best to take the safer road.

Perhaps after the election and certainly by the “state of the union” speech we should be able to face our future more honestly. By then we should be past tinkering-type programs that only put band aids on very serious wounds.

Meanwhile there is no excuse for the rest of us to run in neutral. Like many, I have been trying to think through where we are and our destiny as a political/economic nation. I am trying to encourage others to do the same and share their thoughts. Here are mine, begun in the previous blog, and now updated.

How did it all begin?

Since its founding our democracy has struggled with the issue of how to create simultaneously a political and economic system that would both encourage the human desire for freedom and meet the quest for personal security and well being. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights reveal the psychological recognition that our most noble and creative natures can thrive only if our social/political system will protect us from ourselves – the reptilian drives for domination and power. We call it the “balances of powers” or “checks and balances.” Today we are still living out the debates between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The issues have never been clearly resolved. One thing is for sure, we fell short on the “checks and balances.”

Where are we now?

It is time to take off the emperor’s clothes and admit that the “free market” has not been “free” for decades. The real market is a byzantine mix of tax incentives, subsidies, price supports, import tariffs, etc., all fueled by special interest lobbies. We need to confess that for many years we have been operating much like the rest of our European democratic allies since the end of W.W.II. “Socialism” is not an evil term when it means a system that advances our social good, abhors poverty and seeks justice (fairness) in our economic life. Remember John Kenneth Galbraith’s remark that the only type of respectable socialism in America was socialism for the wealthy. Fifty years ago, in his The Affluent Society he argued that we were a nation living in abundance and had created excess with little public purpose. He urged the U.S., with its great capacity, to spend more of its capital serving the public good by pouring resources into education, health care and public parks.

As Christopher Jenks put it in Reinventing the American Dream, Chronicle Review, October 17, 2008:

. . . Both the Democratic and Republican versions of the American Dream will have to be rethought. They both focus heavily on income and material consumption. The idea that we can keep raising our material standard of living without making most of the planet too hot for human habitation is, I think, mistaken. Even the idea that we have 20 or 30 years to make the necessary adjustments appears wrongheaded.

So I'm afraid reinventing the American Dream really means trying to wean ourselves from the illusion that we all need and deserve more stuff. If we are to survive, we need a different definition of progress. That definition will need to focus on human needs like physical health, material security, individual freedom, and time to play with our children and smell the roses.

I'm not saying that material goods are unimportant. People need food to sustain them, a home in which they can afford to live until they die, and medical advice when they are sick. . . . . And I am quite sure that most of us could live without 85 percent of the stuff we buy in places other than grocery stores and gas stations.

An American Dream that doesn't destroy the planet will have to involve a more-equal distribution of basic material goods. It will also have to involve more emphasis on the quality of the services we consume than on the quality of our possessions. Perhaps most important, it will have to involve more emphasis on what we can do for others and less emphasis on what we can get for ourselves.

So where do we go from here?

1. Elect Senator Obama as our 44^th President since he can exercise the kind of leadership and command the national and international respect required to restore confidence in our democratic political system. As the editorial endorsement of The New Yorker (October 13, 2008) put it so well:

The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country's image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks.

2. Prime the pump gradually with stringent government oversight and appropriate tightening of credit and encouragement to live more simply and trim our wants more to our needs. And then stop priming the pump as confidence returns. This first step has already been taken with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and federal investments in our banking institutions.

3. Establish a reincarnation of the Resolution Trust Corporation, as we did in the 1980s with the S&L failures. At the same time institute the most effective aspects of the Glass-Steagall act. (The new version might be given the ironic title, the Greenspan Memorial Act.) We must not wait for the market to somehow magically tell us what the real values of our ponzied paper assets really are. We may never know. But we need to open the avenues of credit for legitimate and well regulated enterprises, those seeking mortgages within their ability to pay, and entrepreneurial innovative ideas that have genuine merit.

Tinkering with the present system will not be enough.

4. Create a major public jobs program as well as incentives for the creation of jobs from the private sector. BOTH (public & private) approaches are needed since the private sector will not be able to do it alone. Implement a major investment in our physical infrastructure including public forms of transport in our urban areas, upgrading of our energy grids, developments of practical alternatives to fossil fuels, and renovation of our schools and hospitals.

5. Invest in an upgrading of our human and social infrastructure with a national service program with a fresh emphasis on the education of teachers and health care professionals.

6. Admit to Americans now that we have a "hybrid" and not a "free" market economy. Make it clear that we will no longer reward or give social status to greed and avarice. We will no longer be proud to let 4% of the world's population consume 24% of its energy resources.

7. Encourage mergers and consolidations of corporations, large and small, to improve efficiency and productivity. For example, one or two major auto firms might concentrate on a hand full of models to meet the real needs of individuals and families. We certainly do not need the myriad of models now on the market, with their duplications. Such mergers of talent and innovation might speed our innovative capacities to produce one or two truly fuel efficient vehicles for mass consumption.

8. Recognize we will be balancing a recession with elements of inflation. We will need to tolerate an unemployment rate of between 12% and 15% with interest rates that do not exceed 10% and a GDP growth rates between 1% and 3%. The guiding hand will have to be very visible. We may well need to establish both wage and price controls.

9. Learn that our strength internationally is not measured by the tonnage of our weapons of mass destruction but by our ability to lead in the quest for social and economic justice at home and abroad. The overextension of our military presence and footprints world wide must cease. We must admit that our military domination and budget far exceed our national self interest.

10. We will learn to be proud of a nation that invests its resources in education, health care and improving the quality of life for all of its citizens. We will strive to be known again as the land of opportunity for all.

That is what change should be all about.

M.F.A.

Which Way To the Future?

In this fiscal environment fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But since there are so few angels among the major players, the fools are prescribing everything from faith healing to major surgery. My foolish muse says it is time for a little demythologizing.

* Our democracy, since its founding, has struggled with the issue of how to create simultaneously a political and economic system that would both encourage the human desire for freedom and meet the quest for personal security and well being. Our Constitution and bill of Rights are case studies in the psychological recognition that our most noble and creative natures can thrive only if our social/political system will protect us from self destruction by our reptilian drives for domination and power. We call it "checks and balances." In many ways we are reliving today the debates between Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The issues have never been clearly resolved.

* For some, our economic system (free market capitalism) is viewed as independent of our social contract. For others, our economic system has evolved as a hybrid to meet the changing needs of our social contract. For the former folks, the Paulson "clean" plan makes sense. For the latter, it seems clear that this is a time to adjust the hybrid so that it is more transparent, promotes the public trust and produces an economy that is less skewed to reward the few at the expense of the many.

* In short, it is time to admit that the "free market" has not been "free" for many decades. The actual hybrid market is a byzantine mix of tax incentives, subsidies, price supports, import tariffs, etc., all fueled by special interest lobbies. We need to confess that for many years we have been operating much like the rest of our European democratic allies since W.W. II. "Socialism" is not an evil term if it means a system which advances our social good, abhors poverty and seeks justice (fairness) in our economic life. Remember John Kenneth Galbraith's remark that the only type of respectable socialism in America was socialism for the wealthy.


So what does this all have to do with the current crisis?

* If we provide billions (maybe trillions) to rescue our monetary system, ala the Paulson "clean" plan:

a. The bail out will be subsidized by Federal bonds, a large percentage of which will be purchased by China, giving hem a larger claim on America's destiny.

b. The interest on the bonds will be added to the interest on the federal debt and paid in large part by our tax revenues.

c. The treasury Department will perform a symbolic wink and lease our economic system back to the same institutions (persons) that over sold our credit in the past, leveraged our assets and expanded our credit. We will do it all over again.

d. Most Americans will continue to play the game by consuming more than they need and maxing out their credit lines, while complaining about taxes.

e. The economic leaders will praise the "free" market and fund the political campaigns of these enablers.

* If we do nothing, just let the system blood-let itself and trust the invisible hand of the free market:

a. We would set off an economic earth quake the after shocks of which would be felt in most of the world's economies.

* So what should we do? Take some hard medicine.

a. If we do not "prime the pump" we would face a serious economic recession from which may take several years to recover.

b. If we fully "prime the pump" (maybe over one $Trillion)with tight oversight, we would fuel inflation and risk another cycle of leveraging/deleverging with potential serious political instability and loss of international credit.

c. So the solution is a political compromise:

1. Prime he pump gradually with stringent government oversight and appropriate tightening of credit and encouragement to live more simply and trim our wants more to our needs. And then stop priming the pump as confidence returns. This first step has already been taken with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

2. Establish a reincarnation of the Resolution Trust Corporation, as we did in the 1980s with the S&L failures. At the same time institute the most effective aspects of the Glass-Steagall act. (The new version might be given the ironic title, the Greenspan Memorial Act.)

3. Admit to Americans now that we have a "hybrid"and not a "free" market economy. Make it clear that we will n longer reward or give social status to greed and avarice. We will n longer be proud to let 4% of the world's population consume 24% of its energy resources.

4. We will be balancing a recession with elements of inflation. We will need to tolerate an unemployment rate of between 12% and 15% with interest rates that do not exceed 10% and a GDP between 2% and 4%. The guiding hand will have to be very visible.

5. We will learn to be proud of a nation that invests its resources in education, health care and improving the quality of life for all of its citizens. We will strive to be known again as the land of opportunity for all.

M.F.A.

Why I Don’t Wear a Flag Lapel Pin

There is a crucial distinction between our nation’s flag when used as a sign vs. a symbol. It is this difference that leads many, including me not to wear the flag pin out of respect, not lack of patriotism.

A sign is designed to attract attention, to be noticed as a publicity artifact. Our visual world is virtually polluted with signs targeting consumers of a myriad of products. Signs urge us to vote for a stream of eager candidates and have become an important part of any media and propaganda campaigns. Our clothing and accessories have become transmitters of sign messages. And so too have our jewelry and our pins.

A symbol is not a sign reduced to a jewelry accessory to be worn for public display. Symbols are those signs that have been elevated to inspire and communicate an emotion about those values and emotions we feel most deeply. Symbols are not worn on the outside, they are felt from within. Tell me what a person is willing to die for, and you will reveal the deepest symbols of life. They cannot be reduced to signs without cheapening their ultimate significances.

My America is a symbol that cannot be reduced to a mere sign, a pin. America is the symbol of hope for a nation that can truly aspire to help create a world that is more just, tolerant and peaceful. We are a work in progress and a vision of what might become. That symbol should live deeply in our hearts and souls, not as a pin on our lapels.

Perhaps we need to know others more by their inner selves and less by their pins.

Bitterness???

What is the negativity toward “bitterness”? Yes, bitterness can be a negative personality characteristic, especially among the classes of gifted and well endowed who don’t make it, but he is referring to the kind of bitterness that comes when we are victims of circumstances over which we have no control. It is when we are held accountable but are not responsible. That is the condition of many Americans today. So “bitterness” of this kind is a very appropriate emotion.

The context is important. My ancestors settled in PA in the early 1700s and were involved in the founding of Easton. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and taught at Dickinson College in Carlisle during the decade of the 60s. A week there early this month revealed that not much has changed over the past forty years. They are a proud independent stock. Remember they created the Whiskey Rebellion and never forgave General Washington for marking west to stamp it out. This past April 1 it was the truckers in PA who protested the rise in fuel prices.

Do you remember the movie, “Network,” and the cry from the open apartment window, “I’m damn mad and not going to take it anymore?” He might have said I am “bitter” since he was exhausted by a system over which he had no control, yet suffered. So what do Pennsylvanian, and all thinking Americans, deserve to be bitter (angry) about? You know:

A war that we should have never started and were systematically lied to about, and still are from our own government;

The death of our youth who are recruited primarily from the under economic and social classes of our society;

The economy in which for the average worker the purchasing power is about what it was the in the mid 1970s, although they are working harder and longer;

An educational system that is not delivering quality education;

A health system that fails to cover far too many working class people;

Etc.

But more to the point: Obama is giving US the opportunity to realize that we do have more control than we realize. We should be bitterly disappointed in OURSEVLES. ALL Americans have the right to be bitterly disappointed with themselves. We continue to live the illusion that we have the highest standard of living, the best educational system, the finest health care, are the most innovative people and for more generous than any others. This is the rhetoric that feeds a myth perpetuated by our own historical/political amnesia.

Deep down we know that being honest will be difficult. It is time to tell the truth, but we prefer to pull back. We are bitter because we fear the truth will reveal that we have only ourselves to blame. Anger with ourselves may be the only bitter-sweet therapy for our own future as a nation. Then we can emerge perhaps with a new vision and energy to live and work for greater justice and pace in the world and move beyond our own national curse of race.

Merle F. Allshouse

p.s. Isn’t it ironic that a nation that believes it is “the best” is afraid of an elitist?

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”