What’s At Stake

We are confronted with a time of great peril as a human species. The overwhelming majority of peer reviewed scientific scenarios warn that we are rapidly approaching perilous tipping points, after which life as we have known it will change irreversibly.

The extent of mounting crises is daunting—profound climate disruption, wide and deep poverty, global water shortages, loss of topsoil, depletion of fisheries, erosion of democracy, unsustainable population growth, mass extinction of plant and animal species, economic breakdown. And these crises are in fact completely inter-related.

More and more people are recognizing the urgency of the situation but seem unable to muster the vision and commitment needed to cause a change in course. Unless we break free of this gridlock, we will, tragically, end up where we are headed.

A Unique Moment In History

We are living at a time of unparalleled opportunity. Yes, there are tremendous dangers but it is now clear that we already possess all the technologies and practical solutions required to resolve the crises confronting us.

And at the same time, powerful transformative trends are emerging, shaping a world ripe with new possibilities.

• Global communication technology is connecting people together around the globe, creating the beginnings of a global consciousness
• The paradigm of a living universe is challenging our mindset of separation and re-establishing humanity’s deep inter-connection with all of nature
• The concept and image of Spaceship Earth is restructuring our sense of self interest and has elevated sustainability to an everyday concern

These trends fundamentally change the playing field and open up endless options for the future.

What’s Missing

What is missing is a collective sense of possibility and the political and popular will to act—urgently, globally, collaboratively.

There is a limited window of opportunity, maybe just four years, to execute our great turning; four years for people to get motivated and involved; four years to apply the solutions we already know; four years that can determine the quality of life on this planet for the next 1,000; four years to get it right. And we need to start now, on a worldwide scale.

Conventional wisdom, however, is that you can’t expect humanity to wake up until it is shocked into action by some global catastrophe or massively painful systemic breakdown. But by the time that happens it will almost certainly be too late.

FOUR YEARS. GO. is a campaign for humanity to take its future into its own hands, to wake itself up, and to motivate itself into action. And to do it now.

What Needs To Get Done

The goal of FOUR YEARS. GO. is to cause a positive tipping point in unleashing humanity’s collective will, and to do it in the next four years.

The evidence for this tipping point will be that by 14 February 2014, the probable future for humanity (i.e. the most likely case scenario forecast by the majority of global futures modelers) will be one of environmental sustainability, spiritual fulfillment, social justice—an evolutionary leap forward, a new future.

This will be achieved through millions of individuals and thousands of organizations around the world becoming partners in, and creators of, the FOUR YEARS. GO. campaign.

Individuals will declare themselves, for this period, as “change agents” for a new future. And they will begin a personal hero’s, or she-ro’s, journey that will start by taking the simple steps right in front of them … and then a next… and a next…

Organizations will be encouraged to explore and commit to the most exciting and impactful social/environmental improvement projects that they can imagine and fulfill within the next four years—trimtab projects that will, collectively, cause a positive tipping point in humanity’s trajectory.

What’s The Plan

The plan is to foster a self-organizing, emerging open-space of collaboration and creativity among individuals, NGOs, companies and communities.

The idea is to incite a movement. And, for that movement to catalyze a newly vibrant world of wildly diverse and inspired initiatives to co-create a transformed human future.

However, so that we don’t rely on self-organization alone, FOUR YEARS. GO. does plan to provide tools and resources that will genuinely empower an authentic global conversation and catalyze the prevailing sense of urgency into creative, effective action. FOUR YEARS. GO. promises to be a clearinghouse for:

• Research and recommendations on best actions for individuals
• Research and recommendations of highest leverage initiatives for organizations
• Metrics for measuring progress and success
• Technology, both hard (digital information exchange) and soft (transformative social methodologies), that fosters large-scale interactive communication and that manages collaboration to produce synergistic outcomes.