I’m still figuring out some of the features, so if feels barebones right now, that’s because it is. I’ve posted a couple of think pieces, and added a couple of contributors to the site, but so far there’s no rush on the part of members to sign up. If you don’t think this is the most useful tool, just let me know. We’ve also had offers to create Yahoo or Google groups, or form a group in LinkedIn, or join the Sustainable Business Network on Ning, or try another form of social networking.

Leave a comment, and let me know what you think.

In particular, I want to invite us to form a more robust, multi-faceted community, interlinked with others, and having a way to stay in touch, share ideas, collaborate, and conspire to bring about significant ecological, economic, and social change. The Sustainable Leadership Forum is, in reality, a network of leaders; a vehicle for dialogue and conversation; and an instrument for collaboration. It therefore seems a good time to inaugurate our Sustainable Leadership Network site, as a medium not only for us to communicate with each other but indeed to bring others into the discussion, and to share our own views in a larger, more open, and more public way.

Certainly, if the conversation on Saturday is to mean something it should lead to action, to connection and collaboration, to innovation and empowerment in a tangible form. Whether we choose to focus on the key economic actors—like Jason Clay of the WWF and his roundtables aimed at the top 100 companies who together control more than 25% of all major global commodities—or on reaching 50 million “social change agents,” or fostering a new “billion acts of green,” we need to speak out, to communicate with one another, to build relationships, structures, vehicles, and tools to change the world.

We can begin by acknowledging what we already know:

• Sustainability involves a shift in consciousness and in our intellectual and conceptual paradigm—how we organize knowledge and what we think about
• We are amongst the growing number of those who “get it,” who are working to reconnect ourselves and others with nature, who have rediscovered our kinship with everything that is
• That we need to adapt to and seek to mitigate climate change, loss of biodiversity, depletion of resources, and the cumulative human impact on the environment, because the “business as usual” scenario is leading us over a cliff—it has become unsustainable and, for many of us, simply untenable
• That we need to create a different sort of community, with new economic, political, and social institutions built on restoring and replenishing the systems of life, health, and human meaning
• That each of us has a piece of the truth, and that we need to bring these pieces together into a more coherent whole (to, in the words of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, “form a more perfect union,” which recognizes our differences yet celebrates our collaboration)
• Humanity faces a common set of threats, which bring us together in a common cause and a common endeavor; we can choose to disregard this for a while, and exploit as many resources as possible—or we can choose to recognize that we live in a world with finite limits, a world that we share with other humans and other life forms, a world in which there is enough for everyone unless we make things scarce
• That each of us is only passing through; individually we are mortal beings, and only achieve immortality (on this plane anyway) through the perpetuation of the species
• That the very possibility of life as we know it is at stake, and along with it the possibility of a human future in which we are remembered and acknowledged, in which our lives counted for something
• And that our greatest accomplishment is to bring new insight, new understanding, new wisdom concerning the human condition to our shared existence.

I could easily go on, but my point is that there is a bedrock philosophy that self-aware humans share. It is beyond political ideologies, beyond economic homilies such as “faith in the free market,” beyond religious affiliations, beyond the weapons of mass distraction that dominate what we call “the media.” It is to this intrinsic shared knowledge and wisdom of life, this intrinsic coexistence with the forces of natures, that we must turn in order to give our species and our planet a future. Without this, all that we have done, all that humans have created in art and science and culture, will turn to dust; it will not have been worth living and dying for.

I therefore want to invite us to this common effort in a way that gives everyone an opportunity to contribute however they prefer, whether privately within the group or publicly through this web site or others. (This is a special kind of WordPress site, called BuddyPress, designed for group collaboration, and is very easy to use.)

What I invite us to explore is where we stand, what we choose as our commitment in the face of what our species has done and is doing to the planet. I invite us to step up to history, and to the future, by recognizing that it is our individual actions today shape our common future, our shared tomorrow; that what we think and believe matters; and that how we engage with others will determine our planet’s destiny.

P.S. On July 10th, a day after our conversation, Christiane Amanpour of ABC’s This Week began a segment by saying “Markets around the world are bracing for the unthinkable, the possibility that for the first time in history the United States will go into default.”

The reality is that, just as a major ecological collapse can cause an economic one, so a major economic collapse can cause serious environmental damage, as well as untold human misery.

The relationship between ecology and economics is a fundamental clash of values, of understandings, and of historical consequences. The monetarily-successful development of the modern global economy is largely responsible for the explosion of human population, of unsustainable levels of consumption and resource exploitation, and of huge and growing inequities around the world. At the same time, it controls the wealth and other resources needed to change course and begin to fix the problems. If it falls apart as a result of greed, incompetence, mismanagement, or political disagreement, it may temporarily reduce the immediate pressure on resources (by reducing demand) and the escalating levels of CO2, pollution, and loss of biodiversity, but it also robs us of many of the tools needed to address these issues.

The only way to restore “economic growth,” to get the economy growing again, is to aim for and achieve sustainable growth, which is not the oxymoron some have made it out to be. It is clear that we cannot have unlimited material consumption on a finite planet, but since economics deals with nonmaterial goods as well as material ones, we can have a high level of prosperity coupled with a regenerative agro-industrial production system; without such a system we will continue to outrun our planet’s carrying capacity until, one by one, essential systems such as food, water, transportation, and habitat will begin to falter and collapse. We have an opportunity to build an alternative, nurturing, life-supporting economy, either alongside the old ailing economy or else eventually  and after much damage and pain rising from its ashes.

As we continue to think about the role and the mission of the Sustainable Leadership Forum, it seems increasingly clear to me that, as a society, we are not moving fast enough or broadly enough to address the multiple challenges we face in the 21st century.

The most recent analysis of the evidence for this is Lester R. Brown’s World on the Edge (2011), the latest in his annual series of reports from the Earth Policy Institute. The first half book is a reasoned, thoroughly-researched, and compelling argument for recognizing that a worldwide environmental, ecological, and social collapse could occur at almost any moment. The second revisits the EPI’s prescription for preventing this, which Brown calls “Plan B” (currently in version 4.0, available free in digital format at the Institute’s web site).

To begin with, we know that—as extensively documented in Jared Diamond’s Collapse, 2004—many previous civilizations have failed because of their poor ecosystem choices, and that in many respects we are repeating and even compounding these colossal failures. We have overshot the Earth’s capacity to restore itself by at least 50%, and at any time the world’s food and water systems may simply collapse, bringing down the global economy. Sea level rise, which no matter what we do is likely to continue for decades to come, will create hundreds of millions of climate refugees, destroy as much as a third of the world’s wealth, and shrink the available habitable and arable land at a time when the world’s population is projected at over 9 billion. The mass extinction of species is reducing biodiversity and furthering weakening the earth’s natural capacity for regeneration.

If we allow these and other trends to continue, the outcome must be a disaster of global proportions, in which large numbers of individuals will be affected, governments will collapse, and societies will crumble. There is an alternative, but it requires a massive shift to an alternative, sustainable, and regenerative economy. There are huge risks if we do not change; yet there are also huge opportunities for those who recognize and respond to these changes in a profitable manner. (Actually, this is what business is supposed to be good at: identifying the points of greatest pain, and profiting from impending disasters. And if we’re smart we’ll fund this transition to the new economy and reap huge rewards from it. But that’s another essay.)

The crux of the matter, however, is that we cannot rely on business or government to alter our ecological trajectory in time. Previous civilizations failed because their leaders could not foresee the outcomes of their own actions (or inaction). Individuals must increasingly recognize the peril to society, and take action to meet the historical challenge. This means coming together as “the greatest movement in history,” as Paul Hawken describes it in Blessed Unrest (2010?) and taking a stand for a truly sustainable future for all.

As Hawken puts it,

“If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”

We are therefore issuing a call for people to “step up to history” and take a stand for what they will do for the future. If each of us declares our contribution to the preservation of all life, to continuing the human journey of stewardship and exploration, and to the protection of the rights of all creatures to continue to thrive on this small blue planet—in this declaration, I believe, we will discover a symphony of human voices that can lead us, democratically, to a more sustainable world.

It’s this concept, and its implications, that we’d like to explore on Saturday.