Yet such visions are also widely regarded as unrealistic. We know we're in for tough times. Expectations have dropped. The future is regarded not as a friend, but a threat through which we hope to squeeze with minimum possible agony. Many of us hardly seem able to conceive of the common good, or even to locate the commons, except in a sense of the tragic.
Dreams seem a luxury, a vanity.
The most truly realistic observers view a systemic condition, with a number of exponential curves that move toward overshoot and collapse if their direction is not altered. In that same chill eye, our response seems hardly adequate. This is the time to look deeply and re-imagine systems from the ground up, quite literally to reconsider the whole pattern of human activities as they are arrayed on the landscape. A limited form of this is happening as the Northwest moves toward ecosystem management of forests and rivers. The vision of ecosystem management is coming as much as anywhere from advanced biologists and ecologists with a background in federal public lands agencies.