Self-consciousness and the future of the earth.

• Author: Ayres, Ed

Ten years ago, in a speech assessing where things stood in the defense of Planet Earth, Denis Hayes asked a rueful question that has been quoted by rueful environmentalists ever since. "How could we have fought so hard and won so many battles," he asked, "only to find ourselves now on the verge of losing the war?" Hayes, as you may recall, was the co-founder (with Gaylord Nelson) of Earth Day. His speech, on the 20th anniversary of that seminal event, noted that great progress had been made in fighting off thousands of specific degradations, yet the overall decline of the planet had continued. A few years later, Hayes spent several years with Lester Brown at Worldwatch, working on the kinds of policy solutions intended to shift the momentum the other way. He's now the chairman of the forthcoming Earth Day 2000 campaign, and a good many reporters will be waiting to hear what he has to say. Are there any signs yet that the momentum is shifting?

Lester Brown thinks there are. But the problem now, as Brown suggests, is that time is getting short. As things have transpired since Hayes' speech, we have continued to win battles - and to fall further behind in the war. But that doesn't yet mean it's too late. From time to time, over the millennia, our species has made great leaps in a very short time - undergoing fundamental transformations not just in how we live but in what kind of world-view we have, and even what kind of species we are. Brown acknowledges that we need another such leap now, and he suggests that we may well be headed for one. Not everyone who reads this magazine will agree, but I think few will dispute that such a leap - a miracle, if you want to call it that - may now be necessary.

As an example of the kind of rapid transformation of world-view that can precipitate revolutionary changes in civilization at large, Brown mentions the shift that took place when science moved from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican view of the universe. But that raises intriguing questions about what such a sudden shift might entail now. We know what we want it to mean in terms of economic principles and behavior, as Brown's essay in this issue makes clear. But what would it mean - what would it feel like - in terms of our changed consciousness or cognition? Would we continue to covet material wealth, celebrity, and personal security as we do now - altered only by pragmatic recognition that the services providing these rewards must now be achieved with far...