I count myself among these ranks, and that was one reason I spent four days at the Vatican in May, 2014, lured by the title of a meeting organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences: Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature, Our Responsibility.
Pope Francis addressed the General Assembly on Friday. It was only the fifth time that a pope had addressed the United Nations.
I think I found the answer on Monday, while running a panel on climate and civilization at the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit.
Heriberto Cabezas, a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency on sustainable technology, had talked at length about a remarkable model of human and earth systems projecting possible outcomes 100 and 200 years in the future.
He saw promising prospects for a smooth path to 2300, but with this caveat: "The coordinated manipulation of at least six variables is necessary to maintain stability for 200 years or so."
I asked him how he thought that might be remotely possible, given evidence that we're not good at top-down policies on a planetary scale. Here's his answer:
Why isn’t this happening? We lack a cultural narrative that says sustainability is really important. We have a cultural narrative that says murder is wrong. We don’t have a cultural narrative that says managing our planet in a way that allows us to live on it as long as we can is probably the most important thing.The first image that popped into my mind was that of Pope Francis, the ultimate top-down leader of a hierarchical organization -- the Roman Catholic Church -- who has spent the past year speaking about diversity, inclusion, "integral ecology" and "integral human development."
He is sketching a cultural narrative.
Read more at The Root of Pope Francis's Appeal Among Secular Sustainability Seekers
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