One of my personal heroes is Gus Speth. He’s the author of a recently published book, They Knew: The US Federal Government’s Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis, and was recently interviewed in Orion magazine about the book and its background. We suggest you read the whole interview, followed by the whole book. As a teaser, here’s Speth’s optimistic response at the interview’s conclusion:
MMB: Looking at all this increasing urgency, where do you advise Orion readers to find hope?
GS: I see hope coming from three possibilities. One is from a massive outpouring of civic action and activism, an unprecedented popular mobilization, strong and unrelenting. Definitely not the comfortable advocacy of the past. Bring it on! Second, we have witnessed continuing failure from the executive and legislative branches of our government, and the situation now demands judicial intervention. In particular, it demands a constitutional remedy that persists throughout coming administrations. That is what Our Children’s Trust is seeking in its litigation. And third, if we have learned anything, it is that our current political economy is not up to the climate challenge. Indeed, it is the source of the problem. What we have here is a fifty-year system failure. If we want fifty years of sustained solution, we are going to have to change the system, including its priorities. As the popular banner at climate marches says, “System change, not climate change!” There is hope, I find, in the number of people coming to see this imperative after all these years.
Our Children’s Trust has a web site that summarizes the background and current status of Juliana V. United States.
Orion magazine provides access to some of Speth’s other writing, which they’ve previously published:
- America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I
- America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part II, and
- Change Everything Now
Thinking Like a Mountain
By Gus Speth
Aldo Leopold knew nature
like few before or after.
He urged those who listened
“to think like a mountain.”
Well, hell, I say, I am a mountain!
I am Storm King, here beside the Hudson,
a sentinel with which to reckon.
From my shining east flank I
often heard Pete Seeger singing,
notes forming tunes and rising
from the bow of the sloop Clearwater
as it tacked the Highland’s wind gate.
From far on my top I’ve seen
many times, way past when,
Clearwater and Pete were strongest
sailing upstream against the wind.
Pete sang to all the parts of me,
not just my verdant slopes rising steep
from the fast-flowing river, but the parts that
move around, rub brown fur against
the parts that sink deep in me and share
my waters and my nourishment.
I give it freely, as do critters too small to see.
They too are part of me.
My leaves shimmer in chartreuse,
for spring I am bringing back.
I want to hear the ovenbird again,
to help the goldfinch find its gold,
to see soon the evening grosbeak
dancing among my limbs and leaves.
If you want to think like a mountain,
you must come to see me whole.
Energy flows coursing through me;
life each day from entropy stole.
Can you come to see me sacred,
all the beauty consecrated?
I am alive and fertile and fecund,
providing sustenance and refuge.
I know then what I am,
what I do in this world,
how to weather many threats,
how yet to sing back to the river,
how I am old, yes also that.
But even now I, Storm King,
am not clear on all that we
mountains are supposed to think.
I have told what Aldo meant.
Perhaps that is enough.
But there may be other thoughts,
thoughts waiting to be remembered.
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