Choosing Earth

The title of my review comes from the film corresponding to the book and which reflects our collective evolutionary challenge on which Duane has been working since the 1970s when he was a senior staff member of the Presidential Commission on the American Future. Already at that time, he thought that the 2020s would represent the beginning of the crunch point, and here indeed we are facing the implications of systems and trends that we ourselves have co-created as a planetary emergency: 'we have reached the limits of the Earth's capacity to sustain our current trajectory of growth' and are confronted with and ecological and evolutionary wall that demands a conscious choice for regenerative living on the Earth. This book provides both a vision of a possible Great Transition towards a mature planetary civilisation as well as a warning of what is highly likely to happen if we fail to choose this in a timely manner by developing a new sense of species identity. For this, we need to go long, wide and deep, looking squarely at prospects for breakdown and collapse due to ecological overshoot and the relentless momentum of business as usual devoted to further consumption and economic growth.

I think Duane is right when he envisages three possible scenarios: 1) chaos, crash and collapse; 2) authoritarian control with artificial intelligence (the WEF Great Reset); and 3) great transition and transformation. Clearly, the third scenario is the most desirable and corresponds to the more decentralised vision of the World Social Forum. The next part analyses probable stages for the Great Transition based on eight drivers: global warming and climate disruption, water scarcity, food scarcity, climate refugees, species extinction, world population, economic growth/breakdown, and economic inequities. He sees the 2020s as the recognition of crisis involving a great unravelling, the 2030s as collapsing civilisations, the 2040s as a fire of initiation involving extinction and upheaval that create the necessary pressure to foster a great awakening during the 2050s and beyond – this all makes for grim but realistic reading that extrapolates existing trends and demands radical collective action, perhaps coordinated by extensive electronic town meetings. The reality is that the sustainable carrying capacity of the Earth is between 2 and 4 billion people with European lifestyles. I felt an anticipatory grief at these prospects and a residual hope that we can change from inspiration rather than desperation. One technology held out for the 2060s is large-scale geo-engineering to limit global warming, but this kind of weather modification is already illicitly in place – see www.geoengineeringwatch.org and their new film The Great Dimming.

These scenarios closely match the visions of Chris Bache in his LSD and the Cosmic Mind where the evolutionary pressure has to ramp up before we achieve a breakthrough involving healing, reconciliation, restoration and creative adaptation. This is in fact what we need to do now, as Vandana Shiva and others have been arguing for decades. Duane presents seven foundations of the great transition: turning towards aliveness and drawing on indigenous wisdom, waking up, growing up, reconciling, communicating, building community, and choosing simplicity. This begins with a radical overhaul of the idea that we are separate beings living in a dead and meaningless universe towards 'a relational world infused with aliveness' and realised in immediate experience. Quantum physics and holistic science are filling out this picture of an interconnected universe becoming conscious of itself as a learning system. This gives rise to kinship, empathy and compassion with a wider and deeper understanding of mutual responsibility rather than passive acquiescence in relation to the status quo. Reconciliation and community will be important at every level within a circular economics based on aliveness and well-being rather than consumption and growth. Duane makes specific suggestions for individual action based on the question: 'what can we do to bring our collective lives into alignment with the regenerative needs of the Earth?' An important component is to hold our institutions accountable in also working towards this goal.

As things stand at present, the immediate future seems to be going in the direction of authoritarianism and control as represented by the Great Reset, which see Covid as a huge window of opportunity to accelerate this process involving 5G smart city technocracy and biodigital convergence, as I have written elsewhere. Huge financial power and resources are driving this agenda, and our profound challenge is to reimagine and implement the great transition envisaged here. The same AI technology is being applied by the military to warfare, while there remains the ever-present danger of nuclear weapons. This book along with many others shows that analytical diagnosis is easier than formulating the specifics of a collective way forward, especially when current world institutions are not taking on these existential challenges as a planetary emergency, dominated as they are by vested national interests and outdated ways of thinking. Another key element, in my view, is a re-orientation of the agricultural and food systems towards health and regeneration, biodiversity rather than monoculture. Being fully informed is a crucial first step, and you can go to www.choosingearth.org to download a PDF copy and become part of this essential creative process of reimagining and implementing a truly humane and sustainable future.