"WHERE WE ARE right now is literally unsustainable. We can't go on doing this. This isn't a matter of conjecture; it's a matter of arithmetic."

The speaker was Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally renowned economist, whom I heard recently discuss his new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin Press 2008). His is only one of the more impassioned voices arguing how human activity has put the natural environment under extreme stress.

For Sachs, the great need is for sustainable development—to reconcile "the felt need" for continuing economic development with the urgent need to preserve the earth from destruction.

He insisted that it would be "too easy" to give up hope for economic growth—which is, after all, essential if all people are to climb out of dire poverty. But it would also be "naive," he added, to think environmental challenges can go unaddressed.

Sachs's catalogue of human misbehavior was pretty grim; examples included the clear-cutting of forests, the overfishing of the seas, and the spilling of agricultural waste into rivers now depleted of oxygen and so rendered lifeless. He was optimistic about the prospect of new technology to reverse the troubling trends, though blunt in insisting that what now exists won't suffice.

As I listened, feeling more than a little daunted, I recalled something Abigail Adams wrote to son John Quincy, who had accompanied his father to Paris on the challenging assignment of negotiating a treaty with Britain after the Revolutionary War. "These are the times in which a genius would wish to live," she wrote. "It is not in the still calm of life that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties."

Yet how exactly do we take part in our times?

The words "habits of ...mind" particularly struck me.

Then I saw something. Our prayers for the planet can affirm the right of everyone in the human family to break free from unfruitful habits of thought—habits that would impede the intelligent cleansing and restoration of the earth.

Procrastination is one of those habits. It's an individual failing, but often a collective one, too. Legislatures, for instance, let their agendas fill up with items that, in retrospect, are seen not to have been the best use of everyone's time, energy, and finances. Communities lag behind in their implementation of recycling facilities or the planting of trees to bring greater balance to the atmosphere. Yet, as Mary Baker Eddy observed, "Tireless Being, patient of man's procrastination, affords him fresh opportunities every hour..." (Christian Healing, p. 19). God is here to help us. And it's encouraging to realize that each of us can avail ourselves of His opportunities to try again, and perhaps again, to set things right.

Shortsightedness is another bad habit. In his speech, Sachs made a pointed reference to "forethought" as "the most limiting factor on the planet." His remark was yet another reminder that environmental solutions begin in our own thoughts and not "out there somewhere." It was also a rebuke, I think, to a lack both of imagination and of trust in the power of good. Science and Health affirms that "the possibility of achieving all good," has been revealed and that everyone can "work to discover what God has already done." The sentence continues, "but distrust of one's ability to gain the goodness desired and to bring out better and higher results, often hampers the trial of one's wings and ensures failure at the outset" (p. 260). Certainly it's possible to cultivate the virtue of trusting in God, and in our God-given abilities—along with patience, humility, and a willingness to listen to others.

After the Sachs speech I remembered a couple of photographs I'd seen in The New York Times in 2005. They provided heartening testimony that effective action against environmental degradation is possible. The pictures showed Los Angeles City Hall—one in 1953, before serious efforts to clean up air pollution had begun, and the other in 2005. In the older photograph, City Hall is all but lost in the smog; in the more recent one, the building appears clear and distinct. The battle for clean air in Southern California is not yet won, but the progress that has been made cannot be gainsaid.

As we break the bonds of bad habits of thought, new solutions will present themselves, and we can perhaps reiterate enthusiastically Abigail Adams's words, "These are the times in which a genius would wish to live," as we collectively learn to walk more wisely upon the earth. css