Science, Sustainability, and the Human Prospect

World, ” we thought of the ways in which the fates of nations were intertwined as never before and of the role of science in shaping communication. I was mindful of the enormous challenges that faced a world that had grown so rapidly in population, individual consumption levels, and changing technologies. In the months that followed, the shock delivered by the September 11 th events brought home with unimagined force the ways in which our collective neglect of these relationships had helped to bring about the dangerous and unstable state of the world in which we find ourselves. The problems we face seem cruelly compounded, but their root causes remain unchanged. The challenges that we face are enormous and deeply rooted in relationships neglected for far too long. We must find new ways to provide for a human society that presently has outstripped the limits of global sustainability. New ways of thinking—an integrated multidimensional approach to the problems of global sustainability—have long been needed, and it is now up to us to decide whether the especially difficult challenges that we are facing today will jolt us into finding and accepting them.