The Importance of Connections

Global interdependence ties our environmental fate to others, but also creates a public store of good examples to follow.

In nature everything is connected to everything else. Aldo Leopold taught us that back in the 1950s. Twenty years after the first issue of World Watch was published, an ever larger segment of the population seems to understand the implications of our interconnectedness.

NASA scientist James Hansen warned us in 1988 that humans were changing the climate and the effects of that change were starting to become evident. Not many people outside of Washington paid attention. Many refused to believe it. Today, millions of people live in town centers to avoid driving to work. Consumers buy the hybrid Toyota Prius in record numbers. Venture capital floods into technologies that reduce energy use or generate power from renewable sources. Architects and engineers brag about who can design the greenest building.

Does this mean our society has figured out how to live in harmony with the Earth’s natural systems? Far from it. But we are certainly closer to, if not at, the “tipping point.” As Ray Anderson, chairman of Interface and a tireless evangelist for industrial ecology, explains it, An Inconvenient Truth caused the supersaturated solution of concern about climate change to precipitate into action. The movie came after Hurricane Katrina, high gasoline prices, and several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. An Inconvenient Truth galvanized people around the world to stand up and say “Enough! It’s time to get serious about climate change.”