I just watched Greta Thunberg’s recent interview with the Financial Times. Greta seems not to be trapped by the past (in the ways that most of us are) in her calls to “treat the crisis as a crisis,” not as a call to improve and “do better.”
“We need to stop focusing on dates and numbers and actually accept and acknowledge the fact that we need to reduce our emissions right now. We can talk about 2030 or 2040 as much as we want. But it is what we are doing now that really matters.”
We don’t ask “where do we need to get to? By when?” And “What will it take to get there?”
We still need to implement in the world of now, but the profoundly different orientation of each of these questions produces—in each of us, and in our society—different listening, different actions, and different results.
“How then shall we live?” as Ram Dass asked a long while ago.
It’s a good question for now.