To me, it's like a blinding flash of the obvious that we must totally reinvent, or reengineer, the way we live on this planet. Tweaking what we have is not going to work.

It's time to go back to the drawing board and figure out exactly how we must live in order to survive. And it's not a matter of just pleading with everyone to choose a more sustainable lifestyle; it's a matter of a well-designed systemic fix to replace our current civilization that has evolved willy-nilly for the last 200,000 years of our existence as a species. 

Since  Lovelock's body of work suggests that humanity is living nowhere near a sustainable level, he is obviously implying (in the above statement) that without some HUGE changes, or reinvention of our civilization, that we're doomed as a species. He adds:

When you see the whole picture, it is really fearsomely bad...I fear that not many of us will survive, at best about a billion - possibly a lot less than that.

What about the environmental groups? What are they saying? What are their plans? I have heard none of them say anything remotely close to articulating a global need to totally re-engineer our entire civilization in the developed world? 

I also feel that their work actually leads to complacency among their donors, who are also doing lots of recycling, and a host of other "sustainability" initiatives that have zero chance of saving us. 

All of which begs the question: What exactly are they doing that will result in the "Earth improving because of our presence?" Do they have a "big picture" plan?

A revealing anecdote. Less than ten years ago, I found myself in a relatively small meeting (less than thirty people) that was attended by leaders of two of the environmental NGOs shown above: the CEO of one and an EVP of the other. Someone asked them both a question: 

Knowing that it takes far more land, water and energy (per calorie) to produce animal based foods, why is there no information on either of your websites about humanity's environmentally disastrous habit of eating meat, dairy, eggs and fish?

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Within minutes, they both admitted that if their NGO was identified as being "anti-meat" that it would seriously hurt their fundraising efforts. 

To me, that speaks volumes!

If they've not got the courage and integrity to tackle a simple issue like promoting plant-based eating for their members, how could they ever come up with a comprehensive sustainability PLAN for our planet - one that would certainly require many drastic lifestyle changes, in addition to the relatively painless adoption of an eco-friendly diet?

The simple answer is that they won't. Now I'm not saying that some of them aren't doing some good work, but it would a giant stretch of the imagination to suggest that the ongoing combined efforts of all such organizations would even scratch the surface when it comes to making our civilization GREEN ENOUGH for us to live in harmony with nature.

So if they're not tackling the most important task in the history of humanity because it might hurt their funding, why are they even in existence? All of which leads to these two questions:

• If the world's environmental groups are not even attempting to develop a comprehensive, workable PLAN for how we can save ourselves, then who will? 

• First we must answer this question:

    

The Bottom Line. What we need is an urgent, global conversation about tackling the mission described in the above slide from my latest presentation that I will deliver at Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Health Getaway in California next week.