Moment of Truth

And so suddenly what had seemed to many Americans as an abstract and remote danger took on the foreboding aspect of an existential threat. The extinction of entire ecosystems and the species they harbor would be hard on biologists, but for everyone else there would still be plenty of animals left. How many Americans have ever seen a polar bear anywhere but in a zoo or on television? People feel differently, though, about their own children. "I sensed a shift about 24 months ago," says Hawken, who is an environmental consultant to corporations as well as an author. "Suddenly CEOs were expressing genuine concern about this issue, not just, 'Can you get these people off our back?' " Over and over he heard a variation on the same story: CEO's daughter comes home from college and says, Dad, we can't be that stupid.

Of course, CEOs of public companies are supposed to represent the interests of their stockholders, not their children. And so they do. A certain amount of what is billed as environmental awareness by American business might be more accurately described as cost-cutting. The prospect of $60-a-barrel oil for the foreseeable future concentrates the minds of America's corporate managers powerfully on the goal of reducing the consumption of energy and raw materials, as forward-looking companies like Wal-Mart and UPS have discovered that General Electric's commitment to building energy-efficient engines and other products is paying off in sales, not just good will. Utilities have to answer to state regulators, who are increasingly demanding conservation and strategies for carbon reduction. But more important, the corporations that have taken the lead on environmental issues recognize that they cannot be bigger than the economy as a whole. The quest for new social and technological systems that don't require endless and increasing inputs of finite resources goes by the term "sustainability." Who has a greater stake in sustainability than the world's biggest corporations?

No one, and everyone: we are all in this together, even the oil and coal companies, whether they recognize it or not. As the following pages show, cities and states across America, companies large and small, religious leaders and educators are all rising to the challenge of building a sustainable future. They are coming to understand that the impending crisis transcends their individual agendas, because if civilization itself is at stake, it isn't going to matter what the capital-gains tax rate is, or whether 10th graders are taught intelligent design or evolution. The time to act is now, if we don't want our children someday to wonder, how could we have been so stupid?

© 2007