| The energy crisis, which is being felt
around the world, has dramatized how the careless use of the earth's resources
has brought the whole world to the brink of disaster. The over-development
of motor transport, with its increase of more cars, more highways, more
pollution, more suburbs, more commuting, has contributed to the near-destruction
of our cities, the broke up of the family, and the pollution not only of local
air but also of the earth's atmosphere. The disaster has arrived in the form of
the energy crisis. Our present situation is unlike war, revolution or depression. It is also unlike the great natural disasters of the past. Worldwide resources exploitation and energy use have brought us to a state where long-range planning is essential. What we need is not a continuation of our present serious state, which endangers the future of our country, our children, and our earth, but a movement forward to a new norm in order to work rapidly and effectively on planetary problems. This country has been falling back under the continuing exposures of loss morality and the revelation that lawbreaking has reached into the highest places in the land. There is a strong demand for moral revival and for some devotion that is vast enough and yet personal enough to enlist the devotion of all. In the past it has been only in a way in defense of their own country and their own ideals that and people have been able to devote themselves wholeheartedly. This is the first time that we have been asked to defend ourselves and what we hold dear in cooperation with all the other inhabitants of this planet, who share with us the same endangered air and the same endangered oceans. There is a common need to reassess our present course, to change that course and to devise new methods through which the world can survive. This is a priceless opportunity. To grasp it we need a widespread understanding of nature in the crisis confronting us—and the world—a crisis that is no passing inconvenience, no byproduct of the ambitions of the oil-producing countries, no environmentalists' mere fears, no by-product of any present system of government. What we face is the outcome of the invention of the last four hundred years. What we need is a transformed life style. This new life style can flow directly from science and technology, but its acceptance depends on a sincere devotion to finding a higher quality of life for the world' s children and future generation. |