Summary of the Lesson

Palkhivala opens by praising the Green Movement, which he says has gripped the imagination of the whole human race more completely and rapidly than any other movement in history. It began about twenty-five years ago; in 1972 the world's first nationwide Green party was founded in New Zealand, and the movement has never looked back.

He describes a profound shift in human thinking — from a mechanistic view (the world as a machine of separate parts) to a holistic and ecological view (the world as one living whole). He compares this to the revolution Copernicus caused in the sixteenth century when he taught that the earth revolves round the sun. Humanity is beginning to see the earth itself as a living organism with its own needs that must be respected.

Using a medical image, he says the earth's vital signs reveal a patient in declining health. He introduces the idea of sustainable development, popularised in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development — development that meets today's needs without robbing future generations. The famous Lusaka-zoo cage labelled "the world's most dangerous animal" — which contains only a mirror — reminds us that we are that animal, though a new awareness is now dawning on us.

Palkhivala then piles up evidence of the planet's sickness: about 1.4 million species have been catalogued while millions more languish unnamed; the earth's four principal biological systems — fisheries, forests, grasslands and croplands — are being pushed to unsustainable limits; tropical forests, the "powerhouse of evolution," are eroding at forty to fifty million acres a year; and India is losing its forests far faster than official figures admit, despite Article 48A of the Constitution. He warns that runaway population growth is one of the strongest forces distorting humanity's future, arguing that "development is the best contraceptive" and that the real choice is between population control and perpetual poverty. …