The Bridge at the Edge of the World

Q: What is the main premise you examine in The Bridge at the Edge of the World?
A: My point of departure in this book is the momentous environmental challenge we face. But today's environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. I have tried to show in the book how these three seemingly separate areas of public concern come together and how we as citizens must now mobilize our spiritual and political resources for transformative change on all three fronts.

Q: Why is there such an urgent need for a new approach on the environment?
A: Something is badly wrong. Here’s the paradox:  The environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to deteriorate. The mounting threats reported in the book point to an environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions. Most of us with environmental concerns have worked within the system, but the system has not delivered. Time once called me the “ultimate insider,” but the mainstream environmental community as a whole has been “ultimate insiders.” But it is time for the environmental community--indeed, everyone--to step outside the system and develop a deeper critique of what is going on.
    We all live lives powerfully shaped by a complex system that rewards as well as destroys. That system is now giving rise to an undesirable reality--environmentally, socially and politically. If we want to transform that system for the better, we should stop being predictable and become agents of change.

Q: What poses the greatest threat, and what do we need to change in a meaningful way?
A: The largest and most threatening impacts stem from the economic activity of those of us participating in the modern, increasingly prosperous world economy. This activity is consuming vast quantities of resources from the environment and returning to the environment vast quantities of waste products. The damages are already huge and are on a path to be ruinous in the future. So, a fundamental question facing societies today--perhaps the fundamental question--is how can the operating instructions for the modern world economy be changed so that economic activity both protects and restores the natural world. That requires much deeper and more systemic change than the environmental approaches we use today.  We’ve got to change the system itself, soon.

Q: What does that mean?
A: My conclusion, after much searching and considerable reluctance, is that most environmental deterioration is a result of systemic failures of the capitalism that we have today and that long-term solutions must seek transformative change in the key features of this contemporary capitalism. The book addresses these basic features of the capitalism that we know, in each case seeking to identify the transformative changes needed.
The good news is that impressive thinking and some exemplary action have occurred on the issues at hand. Proposals abound, many of them very promising, and new movements for change, often driven by young people, are emerging. These developments offer genuine hope and begin to outline a bridge to the future. The market can be transformed into an instrument for environmental restoration; humanity’s ecological footprint can be reduced to what can be sustained environmentally; the incentives that govern corporate behavior can be rewritten; growth can be focused on things that truly need to grow and consumption on having enough, not always more; the rights of future generations and other species can be respected.  But we haven’t got much time.

Q: What are the greatest barriers to making significant change?
A: There are only three barriers: corporations, governments, and us!  We’re trapped in a self-reinforcing system that once was doing more good than harm but now does the opposite.  The book is actually a guide to stepping outside this system – I call it modern capitalism – and to seeing how it can be changed into something genuinely restorative of us, of community, and of nature.  In the end what will be required is both a new consciousness and a new politics driven by a powerful citizen’s movement.

Q: It sounds as if each of us should be making decisions for changes in behavior and lifestyle immediately…have you made any that you would care to share with us?
A:  The issues addressed in the book are far more matters of collective responsibility than individual responsibility.  I’m certainly not saying “don’t recycle,” but I am saying (in chapter 12) “build the movement” and “confront consumption with a new ethic of sufficiency” (in chapter 7).  That said, I’ve been working on cleaning up my own act.  I’ve purchased two hybrids (gave one to my son); when my wife and I had a house, we invested a lot in its energy efficiency and added a 3 kw photovoltaic power source; we’ve now moved into a modest apartment on the Yale campus; we recycle and we’ve offset our greenhouse gas emissions online through Native Energy. But, lord knows, we’re not perfect.