Dr David Korten (author of “Agenda for a New Economy” and “When Corporations Rule the World” , board chair of YES! magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, president of the Living Economies Forum, and a member of the Club of Rome) (2018): “When I ask an audience, “Who believes we are on a path to self-extinction?” nearly every hand goes up. It’s a sign of a growing awareness that humanity is on a path to self-imposed environmental and social collapse. For me, that awareness is a source of hope. I recently discovered an even deeper source of hope on a trip to South Korea. There I was involved in a remarkable series of international discussions on the transition to “ecological civilization"… The concept is gaining traction elsewhere as well. China has embedded its commitment to ecological civilization in its constitution… Together we need to achieve four conditions critical to the transition. 1. Earth balance… 2. Equitable distribution… 3. Life-serving technologies… 4. Living communities… It is time to unite as families, communities, and nations in our common identity as members of an ecological civilization, with a commitment to creating the possible world of our shared human dream” (David Korten, “Why I have hope in the face of extinction”, Yes!, 1 November 2018: https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/why-i-have-hope-in-the-face-of-human-extinction-20181101 ).
[Editor's note: Apropos of “Who believes we are on a path to self-extinction?” and “nearly every hand goes up”, mathematician Lily Serno wanted to “test a mathematical phenomenon called “the wisdom of the crowd” which suggests that if you have a large enough crowd, and a broad rage of people making estimates then all the errors cancel out and what you get is something surprisingly accurate” and set out to estimate “how heavy Uluru is” [Uluru being the huge rock in the centre of Australia]. The result: “My wisdom of the crowd answer of 1.6 billion tonnes , it’s within 15% of [geologist] Verity’s expert calculation of 1.425 billion tonnes” (Lily Serno “How to be lucky: the maths of chance”, ABC Catalyst, 11 September 2018: https://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/catalyst/transcripts/19_06_HowToBeLuckyTheMathsOfChance_Transcript.pdf )].