During the early part of the decade i spent a long time working toward creating a media platform that was candidly biased toward futures that work. Toward that end, we elected a Global Vision statement:

In fifty years we hope to have a stable, peaceful, prosperous, diverse global civilization, which honours freedom of personal belief, and in which democratic political processes dominate, with a high level of universal education and health care, and a genuinely impartial and accessible system of justice, and in which both advanced and basic technology is applied in ways that are in balance with the natural environment, and produce an equitable distribution of social benefits. - Hardin Tibbs

That global vision was then divided into several, more manageable categories each with it’s own mission statement and to-do lists so that, as a global community, we would know the things we were working toward on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and millenial basis. Two of those categories were Environmental Sustainability and Space Exploration (which was really a hidden pointer towards space migration).

If we’re going to actually survive and prosper as a species, we need to get beyond the myopic habits and rigid reality tunnels most of us hold so that we can recognize the possibilities for catastrophe and for success.

Howard Bloom, one of the smartest men i know, does both of these things in what is the most astute and sensible assessment of where we need to start sustainability from.  Check it out.