Throughout this journal, we have talked about saving old growth forests, but not about plans to restore them ecosystematically, regionally or globally. We have talked about sustainability, but not about the endurance of all beings in a forest. We have talked about sustainable consumption, but not about reducing both demands and populations. We have talked about the use and abuse of corporate power to decimate forests, but not about strategies for revoking the charters of corporations and reforming them as the public service groups they were originally licensed to be. We have talked about rural community empowerment, but not about meaningful community anarchy. We have talked about national processes, but not about a second Jeffersonian revolution (in the US at least). We have addressed international trade and various political problems, but not the revitalization of the United Nations with the power to conduct immediate disarmaments, to guarantee equity in education, and to support for nations based on traditional cultures and values.
There is no doubt that we are tending towards global markets in a global society. The crucial thing is to have a global society composed of vital local societies. Without local energies, the global will become dull and rigid; without the global, the local will become dull and separate.
One way to integrate our concerns and the two levels would be in a Eutopian (the good interpretation from Thomas More's pun on Greek words meaning "good place" or "no place") structure. A Eutopian structure is a complete environmental protection and human survival package. Activists play for stands or forests. Industry plays for regions. Eutopias plays for the planet and the solar system. Ecoforestry, and other separate efforts, cannot work well without major shifts in economics and politics, and international relations. Why not try them all at once?
We do not know what will happen in the future. We are not sure whether we have passed some critical threshold with forest health or amphibian populations, with chemical waste or carbon dioxide. We cannot make long projects, nor can we seem to understand the complexity of a myriad of unknowable and unseen circumstances or to peer very far into any future.
There are things we can do every day, besides living and enjoying life, the first of which is to embrace inner and outer change in the present. We could challenge unsupportable greed and lifestyles now. We could learn how our life-support systems work, then become politically involved and push leaders in the right direction; and always protest racism, sexism, religious prejudice and gross economic inequity that make it so difficult to preserve and restore the natural services upon which we depend. We could keep good cultures, and make good places. We could do it without fear or guilt, and with love and peace.