Stay the Course?

Last night I went back and watched the first episode of John Adams on HBO which I had recorded but not seen before watching the rest of the series.

I also took a long hike yesterday in Marin County and thought about how beautiful the spaces where I was walking were and how quickly they will continue to disappear from the earth if man kind continues to pollute the world at its current pace.  I especially worry about developing countries where there are fewer strong state and local leaders like those of California and Marin to defend long-standing green spaces.

The sacred Yamuna river which runs through New Delhi is now toxic and unusable, as are major parts of China's seven largest rivers, two of which (the Yangtze and the Huang He or Yellow River) are among the largest in the world. Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro will soon be reduced to dry rocks.

As I thought about the enormity of this task; trying to stop and reverse this pace of environmental destruction, I saw parallels to the story I was watching about old white men in the late 1700's. 

The American Revolution was essentially guided and launched by popular, good-timing, successful and wealthy businessmen, doctors, lawyers and plantation owners in the colonies.

These men were not poor. They had great fortunes to risk, and were better-suited to overcome or wait out dire British economic policies, including taxes and port blockades than the average American. Simply put, although their money-making endeavors were being impacted by the worsening status quo, they had a lot to lose by challenging it, a LOT more than the average colonial commoner.  So why were they willing to give it all up to wage revolution, with a British navy anchored in New York harbor no less, ready to hunt them down?

I'm less interested in trying to answer that question than I am in trying to answer whether today's wealthy Americans are as up to the task of halting the environmental destruction and related climate that threatens the fate of our planet, and indeed that of the humans in general.

I don't know why each of the Americans who originally signed the Declaration of Independence decided to wage "[their] lives, [their] fortunes and [their] sacred honor."  But they did, and they forever changed the world.  And they did this with no certainty of victory and almost certain death upon failure. 

Do we Americans, the modern day privileged of the world, have it in us to lead the change demanded by our current course?