Our busy cities fall as silent as Tikal. I hope I am wrong. What is certain is that we have one last chance, at best, to get the balance right. There is no more room for mistakes, no room even to do nothing. If we fail to limit our numbers and our impact, if we do not replace our gold-rush economics with a rational sharing of what the earth can yield, this new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all dark ages in our past.
History shows that such a reformation is unlikely.
So do current events. According to United Nations figures, the three richest individuals have a net worth equal to the poorest 48 countries. The typical response of the mighty is to go on building higher pyramids while the storm clouds gather, like those long-dead Maya kings. Ronald Wright's books include Time Among the Maya and Stolen Continents. His latest, the novel A Scientific Romance, won Britain's David Higham Prize for Fiction.