Foreword: The Need to Prepare to Act
Only one year has passed since I wrote the Foreword to Volume I of these interviews, but in this puny lapse of time the winds of change have blown human fortunes into still stormier seas.
Although not yet fully felt, the discovery that the life of nations, nay, the very foundations of industrial civilization, cannot rest on abundant, cheap oil - as we had always dreamed - has produced a new wave of shocks, tensions, and fears throughout society. At the same time, grave worries have surged up in people's minds as to the possibility of providing enough food for the world population - not the six or seven thousand million of the fabulous year 2000, but already today's less than four thousand million. Gone are the halcyon days of the Green Revolution coming to the rescue with its miracle hybrids. The stark reality to face up to nowadays is food stockpiles reduced to a minimum, and fertilizers and tractors and water increasingly hard to get, while the world climates seem to be on a changing trend for the worse. The specter of famine is thus rising again on the planet - but for the first time so huge as to be called megafamine.
These developments have deepened the human predicament, further widening the existing gaps, and separating friends. The cry for more sharing and justice in the world is mounting thunderously, and the time is approaching when it will have to be heeded. The fact that the UN General Assembly convened in a special session to declare the establishment of a ‘new international economic order’ reflects this mood. Hundreds of millions of citizens everywhere want society itself to change, to become better. For a while the human spirit, becoming awake and aware, will hope that solidarity and cooperation can do the job. This hope cannot be thwarted. We must indeed, all of us, try to devise the modes of solidarity and
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