We are deeply concerned about our environmental legacy and the way that people and the environment are exploited today. We believe that only with a change in human consciousness can society truly alter the perilous path we are on, because our consciousness is not in synchrony with where we need to go. Society’s desire for instant gratification instead of long-term commitment has resulted in human disregard for natural laws, which is having disastrous consequences for life on Earth. There are a number of irrefutable truths about the present manner in which the natural world functions that are being seriously tested by the activities and ways humans live. Thus, the real call for leadership in bringing about actions that will:

• enhance relationships among people to enable their collective work toward community sustainable development;
• inform communities regarding the alternatives they have to achieve more sustainable lifestyles;
• remediate global climate change that will otherwise increase the frequency and severity of food and water shortages, storms, ecosystem damage, and disease;
• secure the sustainable supply of freshwater;
• better protect our oceans and watersheds
• contribute to poverty reduction without further degrading natural resources; and
• address the disproportionate rate of opportunities available to people around the world.

Reputable and reasonable scientific projections suggest that changes in these global concerns represent an urgent call for action since many global trends like climate change, peak oil, and resource depletion will dramatically affect all life on the planet for many years to come. The only real question is whether these changes will occur in pleasant ways of our own choice – through solidarity and the taking of stewardship for Earth’s systems – or in unpleasant ways not of our choosing – inhumane and natural earthly phenomena taking over and doing it for us at severe human detriment, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, epidemics, or failure of societies.

We believe humanity has the capacity to make the change necessary to create a more sustainable future and achieve community-wide sustainability. Real change, however, will require a significant adaptive transformation that begins with the grassroots efforts of local communities and matures into holistic change informed by the interconnection of issues enabled by system’s thinking. Sustainability Now! uses the framework of system’s thinking to integrate important knowledge that can be gained from application of sustainability science to support a community’s work on problem-solving, decision-making, and policy-setting for sustainability.

But will community-by-community change be timely enough and reach enough of the population to address the amount of change required? The alternative to transition happening one community at a time can be found in the coming together of communities who have common culture, geography, and economy, such as those encompassed in a bioregion. Sustainability Now! works at the single community scale, but promotes the development of sustainability strategies at the bioregional scale. We advance the idea that awareness and care for one’s bioregional home and its ecosystem patterns is fundamental to a place-based, community stewardship process for achieving sustainability.

Get involved and let us help you take your own first steps. Contact us about your community participating in a Community Sustainability Assessment (CSA) at no cost to you. Then you can further evaluate for yourself the opportunities and challenges that face you in developing a more sustainable community strategy that can engage all stakeholders.