All have the same origin and impact: the economic structures created to support human well-being degenerate life on Earth, creating loss, suffering, and a heating planet.

The proximate causes of the climate crisis are cars, buildings, wars, deforestation, poverty, oil, corruption, coal, industrial agriculture, overconsumption, and fracking, among others. Nature and humanity are composed of exquisitely complex networks of relationships, without which forests, lands, oceans, peoples, countries, and cultures perish. It applies to all of creation-grasslands, farms, people, forests, fish, wetlands, coastlands, and oceans-and it applies equally to family, communities, cities, schools, religion, cultures, commerce, and governments. Regeneration means putting life at the center of every action and decision. If putting the future of life at the heart of everything we do is not central to our purpose and destiny, why are we here? The earth will come back to life no matter what. The earth’s biological decline is how it adapts to what we are doing.

We live on a dying planet-a phrase that may have sounded inflated or over the top not long ago. This disconnection is the origin of the climate crisis it is the very root-and it is where we discover solutions and actions that can engage all people, regardless of income, race, gender, or belief. Vital connections have been severed between human beings and nature, within nature itself, and between people, religions, governments, and commerce.

Regeneration book paul hawken