Fast-forward thirteen months. The above statement and question now appear on the cover of OUTCRY, a new book - in which we address humanity's underlying sustainability problem - along with an envisioned solution. 

I began writing  Outcry in the late summer of 2019 - a book that focuses on the urgent alarms that we have been hearing from nature for the last fifty years and how those alarming sustainability issues will likely lead to the extinction of our species if we fail to take decisive action. 

Even though I am typically an optimist, I must admit that, up until the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed to be extremely unlikely that we humans would ever get ultra-serious about transforming our consumption-heavy civilization into one that can be sustained by nature indefinitely. But then, as we were about to finish  Outcry  a few months ago, Covid-19 exploded into our lives with a vengeance. 

It was that enormous, global disruption (that has been so terribly painful for millions of people) that prompted an idea. This just might be the much-needed, wake-up call that could jolt us into seriously embracing the ultimate challenge of our 300,000-year presence on this planet - one of re-inventing the unsustainable way we are now living in the developed world.  

Frankly speaking, up until the beginning of the pandemic, I would've estimated that there was less than a five percent chance that our band of eight billion humans would ever get serious enough about sustainable living to prevent the extinction of our species before the end of this century. But now, I believe that the odds are much greater that we will somehow figure it all out before it's too late. 

And that, my friend, is the  silver lining of Covid-19  that is mentioned on the cover of our new book.

My primary fear is that we will not  ever figure it out, or that we won't figure it out until five or six billion people have died. Our new book is aimed at jolting enough of us into action - soon enough - to enable this story to have a happy ending. In  Outcry, we report on the ear-piercing alarms we're hearing from nature - along with a wake-up call that consists of extensive, summarized, environmental data and conclusions from eleven "big picture" scientists. Our entire book is aimed at  sparking a robust global conversation about  what we must do to have a chance of surviving and thriving in harmony with nature - indefinitely. 

In order to help our readers get their "big picture" thought processes going, we included in the book our own "vision" of how that totally sustainable human civilization might look, how it might be managed, how the economy might work and why that envisioned future way of life might someday be preferred by most people over what we have today.

Also, in the book, we do our best to answer this question:

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