Everywhere I go, I meet people ready for change. People who are fed up with the exhaustion that comes from devoting one's life to the work-watch-spend treadmill. People who know in their hearts that it's wrong to treat the planet and whole groups of people as disposable. People who are challenging the bogus stories we've been fed for years and are writing their own about hope and love and working together to build a better future for everyone.

I think history has less of an impact on current times than the stories that we tell ourselves about that history [do].

Everywhere I go, I meet people ready for change. People who are fed up with the exhaustion that comes from devoting one's life to the work-watch-spend treadmill. People who know in their hearts that it's wrong to treat the planet and whole groups of people as disposable. People who are challenging the bogus stories we've been fed for years and are writing their own about hope and love and working together to build a better future for everyone.

Put simply, if we do not redirect our extraction and production systems and change the way we distribute, consume, and dispose of our stuff - what I sometimes call the take-make-waste model - the economy as it is will kill the planet.

I am afraid that I think both the near future environmental reality and political landscape are not looking good - and they are connected. The best tool we have for advancing environmental solutions is our democracy, and we can't currently access it because it has been so thoroughly hijacked by big corporate interests.

Shop smarter and shop less. But please don't let that dissuade you from engaging in campaigns to make real lasting change.

Just recognizing and naming that many of the things we treat as historical fact are stories can help erode their power over our sense of identity and thinking. If they are stories rather than "truth," we can write new stories that better represent the country we aspire to be. Our new stories can be about diverse people working together to overcome challenges and make life better for all, about figuring out how to live sustainably on this one planet we share, and on deep respect for cooperation, fairness, and equity instead of promoting hyper-competitive individualism.