Sustainability Crisis," a project by Dr. Thomas Sawyer Hopkins exploring climate change

"Sustainability Crisis" is a scientific investigation concerning global sustainable development, a result of an ongoing research project by Dr. Thomas Sawyer Hopkins and collaboratos. We offer her the preface to the book soon to be published. Interested readers may ask the author for more information and subsequent chapters at the following email: tom_hopkins@ncsu.edu.

SUSTAINABILITY CRISIS,
Climate Change, and Sustainable Development
Citizens Climate Lobby Talking Points
Tom Sawyer Hopkins & Collaborators
Preface
This document advocates global sustainable development. It explores the dynamic
changes needed to transition global human society towards a sustainable future. Any proposal
for such an immense transformation of our political, economic, and technological
infrastructures must answer the questions of why, how, and when. Here we focus mostly on
why, with some discussion on how, and answer when with one word: NOW! We employ this
focus because neither the public nor our policy-­‐‑makers are responding adequately to the
worsening unsustainable conditions that are pushing the human ecosystem to the brink of a
cascade collapse. We cannot blindly use the same business-­‐‑as-­‐‑usual approach to resolve this
situation, because that approach is the one that generated it! By the same token, without a
thorough recognition of this situation and a comprehensive, science-­‐‑based understanding of the
dynamics causing the deterioration, we will not learn how to efficiently pursue sustainable
development on a global scale. Ironically however, we do know what needs to be changed.
We also have most of the knowledge, methods, and strategies to make the changes. But we still
lack an integration of this combined knowledge, packaged and available to sufficiently raise the
public awareness, to gain the commitment of governing bodies, and to secure the global
cooperation necessary to pursue global sustainable development.
With this initial distribution, we hope to stimulate comments that can update and correct
the document to render it both more factually accurate and more politically useful and effective.
Those who contribute constructive suggestions will be acknowledged as collaborating authors
in the web site version, www.sustainability.crisis.