We Only Have One Earth Hive. We Have To Protect Her. So She Can Protect Us
The pace of ecological decline is proceeding faster than our ability to physically adapt. We must evolve our culture.
A question we must ask
Should a species smart enough to foresee its own demise be able to consciously evolve in order to overcome threats to its existence?
a Burning Platform threatens our species
The damage humans have done to our environment is exceeding our capacity to undo what we have done. Extreme heat, biodiversity loss, air pollution, species loss, droughts and floods, rising seas, and other growing ecological disasters are happening in real time and are predicted to result in 50 to 100 catastrophic ecological and social events by the year 2050. American needs to invest and grow a Sustainability Industrial Complex, or Sustainability Economy to head off the threats. The scope of our response to these challenges is required to be at the scale and immensity of the Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution, or Information Age in response to the Burning Platform of ecological decline, Americans must participate in the creation of a Sustainability Revolution. Without a dramatic and disruptive social change strategy, we will not evolve as a culture to prevent our demise.
Climate Crisis
Loss of drinkable water, breathable air, rising seas and sustainable economies will result in economic upheaval, and mass migrations where the poor will suffer the most. Species loss, droughts and floods, and loss of global Gross Domestic Product taken together threaten not just our ways of life in the West, but our very existence.
Most Americans express alarm at these facts, but apathy in their personal response. People do not know what to do, or what consequential actions they can undertake to make a difference, given the scale of the Climate Crisis problem.
Conceptual Failures
- Scientists fear we do not currently have the Intellectual Capacity to understand the dynamics of climate change.
- We do not yet possess the Scientific Knowledge to implement solutions, even if they were known.
- We lack the Governance Structure to facilitate the decisions we must make.
- Most importantly, humanity has created a Failure of Empathy and Imagination in the face of the Climate Crisis.
Results We Can Expect
Already, many ecological tipping points have created Uninhabitable Zones, Widespread Famine, Mass Displacement, Social Instability, Wars, Social Collapse, Disease, and intense pressures on the Environmental Ecosystems that support human life.
The combined impact of these events
limits the continued probability of human existence.
As a species, we only have three options:
- Physical evolution, for which there is not sufficient biological time to evolve and adapt.
- Extinction of our species.
- Cultural Evolution where society undergoes a strategic social change process.
About PACEM 2050
This is the only home we have and Mom is really unhappy with the way we've been mistreating her and each other. She's about to ask us to leave.
PACEM 2050 is a long-term, uncharacteristic and disruptive social change strategy that changes the structure of how we share the realities of sustainability, social polarization, and approaching ecological tipping points. It is a strategic response to the broad array of ecological challenges currently facing humanity. Due to the dramatic pace of ecological decline, both physical and social scientists project we have little time left to undertake the required corrective measures to prevent extinction.
PACEM 2050 is a prescriptive process roadmap to inspire the systemic changes required - at the scale required - to preserve and protect our species from extinction. We are already at the pivotal nexus of evolutionary biology, sustainability and human cooperation. The existential survivability of our species is endangered and questionable.
Many scientists have asserted that humans may become one of the shortest lived species to have inhabited our planet. A confluence of self-made ecological and social tipping points threaten not just our life styles, but our existence. Scientists view the year 2050 as the pivotal turning point of the Burning Platform of environmental events threatening humanity. Setting metric goals alone will not result in the level of systemic change required to impact the problem.
We read about such threats everyday, but without the lens of evolutionary change, most Americans see no urgent need to act because they feel there is not anything they can do. This leaves us feeling despondent or helpless in the face of shared, enormous challenges.
But we do have a choice. Charles Darwin envisioned conscious evolution as part of our human cultural development. If we fail in our human biological evolution to make the necessary physical changes, we can endure as a species by making the necessary cultural change to survive. But no government action, no corporate solutions or temporary changes in citizen behavior will resolve the challenges we face. A principle of evolution is that only the system can change the system. We have little time to act.
PACEM 2050 is a social mechanism to accelerate our human progress toward the change necessary to create a Sustainability Industrial Economy, capable of off-setting the threat. Not unlike the global changes brought about by the scale of the Industrial Revolution, humanity is on the brink of a Sustainability Revolution, or sadly on the edge of an ecological precipice.
What We Do
PACEM 2050 is a consortium of environmental and social justice activists that identify and engage Innovators and Early Adopters across eight regions of America to collaboratively problem solve and influence other citizens shown in the Bell Curve (left). This social dynamic is a social change mechanism theorized by the American communication theorist and sociologist, Everett Rogers in the early 1960's.
This strategic model is applied in PACEM 2050 to engage Innovators and Early Adopters to drive American culture toward a more sustainable future characterized by greater social consensus and cooperation and less social polarization.
While our work is non-partisan, we are not value neutral. PACEM 2050 has a scientific point of view that our species is endangered and a strategic social change process to catalyze cultural change must be understood and undertaken.
IDENTIFY AND TARGET REGIONAL INNOVATORS AND EARLY ADOPTERS TO INFLUENCE THE EARLY AND LATE MAJORITY OF CITIZENS
The PACEM 2050 social change mechanism targets 50 million Americans across eight regions of the country.
TAP INTO LOCAL INTERESTS, NEEDS AND ECONOMIES TO FOCUS ON LOWERING SOCIAL POLARIZATION AND PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY
Each of the eight regions contain 5-7 million influencers who in turn influence the remaining citizenry represented in the Bell Curve.
ADVANCE A SUSTAINABILITY INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY AND COMPLEX CAPABLE OF MITIGATING THE IMPACT OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The scale and result of this social mechanism is not unlike the societal progress exemplified by the Industrial Revolution.
for more information
More information about PACEM 2050 can be found in the book, EVOLVE, The Journey to PACEM 2050, authored by William Spencer.
About the author
Will Spencer has led a multi-disciplinary life as a biologist, peace and social justice advocate and Fortune 500 business consultant facilitating large-scale change in global companies.
Will led the National Peace Academy Campaign and Federal Commission that created the United States Institute of Peace and served as a mediator in four civil wars. His previous book, Political Will, Bending the Arc of History, documents these efforts.
He draws on all of those experiences in designing PACEM 2050, a plan for our species to confront the greatest challenges to our survival. Will currently serves as the lead architect of PACEM 2050.
