"We are up against a problem [climate change] that may never have existed in the history of the universe. It may be that no other intelligent aliens exist or, if they do, that they have never evolved to collectively take over a planet the way we have. In which case, there is absolutely no telling what will happen as we approach the end of exponential growth here on Earth. There is no role model.

"How can our group behave respectfully but cautiously toward other groups that have their own aspirations, however bad those aspirations may seem to us?

"How can we individually expand our moral sense to care about our collective effects at size scales and timescales we are just beginning to grasp?

"God won't hand us a plan. No list of technologies and work orders for the world will descend full blown into our praying brains. But God draws big aspirations out of us and feeds us the spiritual oxygen to live them out. Every tiny detail of the rescue of our planet has been or will be contributed by some invaluable individual, but if we can extend cooperation enough, the whole of how it happens will be an emergent phenomenon. Like God.

"A moral shift can happen with a return to our god-capacity. When we are hopeless and powerless in an addiction – as the world is today, deep in its addiction to economic growth at any cost – the solution requires a greater vision. A new big picture. The industrial revolution gave people a new and powerful set of aspirations that changed the world and lifted many people out of poverty, but now we have to expand our aspirations in a very different direction, based on everything we have learned and seen since then. Now the challenge is to shape a materially sustainable world where most growth is in knowledge, justice, compassion, creativity, and spiritual connection."