Declaration of Conscience

A Declaration of Conscience Concerning the Necessity of Working Toward A Sustainable Future

Lake Tahoe
Summer 2000

There are times in the course of human affairs when people of conscience feel an overwhelming ethical responsibility to speak out about that which must change. We believe such a time has come. We believe it is time to transform the way we, the human species, think and act in relation to the planet and each other.

We who make this declaration of conscience comprise a small but concerned group of the human family that wishes to divest itself of old labels. For purposes of this statement, we are neither conservative nor liberal, left nor right, republican nor democrat, green nor libertarian. We are simply fellow human beings deeply troubled by what we see and by what we have come to understand about the present condition of the human family and its future as an extrapolation of the present. We happen to be primarily Americans, and thus we offer this declaration from the perspective of what we believe to be our nation's responsibility to itself and others. Most significantly, however, we are people of conscience, spirit, and learning who are deeply unsettled by the current path of human endeavors and what they represent for our common future. We believe it is time, and we believe it is urgent, that new conceptions of economic, environmental and social systems balancing individual opportunity and the common good, most especially but not exclusively within the United States, enter the mainstream of political discourse, social action, and institutional policy.

We believe the current path to the future represents an unacceptable risk to future generations of humanity, and must be immediately corrected. With this in mind we must:

Stop depleting natural resources at unprecedented and unsustainable rates, in the process destroying biodiversity and the Web of Life that has evolved over millions of years on Earth;
Learn from natural systems and the innate wisdom they contain;
Emphasize what natural and social sciences are discovering about the fundamental importance and commonality of ecological principles for human and economic systems.
Develop and evolve a model of society that goes beyond the present emphasis on extreme consumerism,
Develop and implement economic principles that replace those of unlimited growth and scarcity with ones of fairness and abundance.
Prevent serious inequities in income, wealth, and access to education and healthcare opportunities within the richest nations, especially the U.S., where the top 1% of Americans now own more of the net assets of the country than the BOTTOM 94% combined, and policies to further concentrate wealth and power are still being proposed.
Understand that technology alone is not the singular answer to future human well-being and that certain technologies like "genetic engineering," nanotechnology and robotics present real and significant downside risks to the future of human life as we know it.
Acknowledge and integrate into our policies the serious concerns of the international community about the future, from: the World Commission on the Environment and Development (1987), the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the Union of Concerned Scientists "Warning to Humanity" in 1992 (signed by over 1,600 scientists, including over half of living Nobel Laureates), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others.

We hold the following articles of faith to be a self-evident basis for working toward a more just and sustainable future for all people:

Humanity has within itself the genius for transformation;
A new constellation of common human ethics, principles, and values, emerging through every institution and field of endeavor, can and should inspire future action and relationships, with each other, our technologies, and our environment.
Elegant and important actions, processes and policies are already emerging into global systems which, once fully evolved and networked into a web of intelligence, can and will help us create a future in which humanity thrives;
Better information about economic, environmental, and social conditions made widely accessible can and will support wiser decisions at all levels of society as all processes become more transparent and open;
Emerging capacities for transforming human interaction will lead to new and effective approaches for addressing urgent problems;
The reclamation and creation of metaphors, myths, symbols, visual imagery, and language that enables meaningful, heartfelt communication among individuals and communities will be essential to human transformation; and
A new vision of individuality and the common good in which we help each other succeed (capturing the best of individual creativity and one's devotion to the common good) can provide the will and inspiration to transform our thinking, our institutions and our relationships.

We believe a different future for human life on Earth must evolve, and quickly. And we believe that this future must be sustainable and just for all human life and honor the contributions of all living beings. We, therefore, urgently invite others to join with us in their own communities in helping to build the capacities, processes, policies, institutions, and networks for transformation that will support a future of health, equity, and balance. And we, the undersigned, dedicate our spirits, our time, our intellects, and our purposes in life toward that end.

Peter Alexander
Executive Director
San Cristobal Ranch Foundation

Sandra Babb
President, HumanForce Consulting
Raleigh, NC

Kathy Barry
Individual & Organizational Consultant
Berkeley, CA

Sherrin Bennett
President, Interactive Learning Systems
Pt. Richmond, CA

David Berry
Executive Director, Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators
Washington, D.C.

Bob Burnett
Activist/a founder of Cisco Systems
Berkeley, CA

Gordon Davidson
President, Center for Visionary Leadership
Washington, D.C.

Dee Dickinson,
CEO New Horizons for Learning,
Seattle, Washington

Duane Elgin,
Author,
San Rafael, CA

Madilyn Fletcher, Ph.D.
Director, Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine Biology and Coastal Research at the University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC

Sally J. Goerner Ph.D.
Director, Triangle Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Chapel Hill, NC

Andrei Gostev Ph. D.
Vice President Russian Transpersonal Fund & senior researcher Institute of Psychology
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russia

Bruce and Birgitta Gregory
Gregory & Associates
Executive Consulting Services
Los Angeles, CA

Jan Hauser
Principal Architect, Sun Microsystems
Palo Alto, CA

Leonard Joy
Consultant: governance--human rights, poverty/livelihood, environment
Berkeley, CA

Prasad Kaipa
CEO, SelfCorp.com
Founder Mithya Institute for Learning
Campbell, CA

Joseph Kruth
Chair, Tahoe Center for a Sustainable Future
Lake Tahoe, NV

Claudia L'Amoreaux
Founder, Haven.net Learning Community
Neary Lagoon Watershed on Monterey Bay, CA

Paul McIsaac
Director, Worldwork Documentary Project.
New York, NY

Corinne McLaughlin
Executive Director, Center for Visionary Leadership
Washington, D.C.

Bill Minnis
Developer and owner of software systems
Austin, TX

Bill Moyer
Executive Director, Social Movement Empowerment Project
San Francisco, CA

Michele Perrault
International Vice President, Sierra Club
San Francisco, CA

Vance Peterson, Ph.D.
President, Sierra Nevada College
Incline Village, NV

Kelly Quirke,
past director, Rainforest Action Network
San Francisco, CA

Professor Richard C. Rich
Virginia Tech Institute for Environmental and Energy Studies
Blacksburg, VA

Jan Roberts
President of the Institute for Ethics & Meaning,
Tampa, Florida

Vicki Robin
co-author, Your Money or Your Life
Seattle, WA

Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D.
Evolution Biologist and Futurist, Living System Design
Burlingame, CA

F. Michael Smith
President, F. Michael Smith & Associates
Information Architecture and Resource Management
San Rafael, CA

Rick Smyre
President, Communities of the Future
Gastonia, NC.

Anne Stadler
Organizational Consultant
Seattle, WA

Lauri Thomas
President, Productivity Links
Woodlands, TX

Chris Thomson
Director CRISTOS
Edinburgh, Scotland

John Tracy, Ph.D.
Water Resources Engineer
Reno, NV

Barbara Vogl
Founder/Director, Change Management Systems
Santa Cruz, CA

A. Brian Wallace, Chairman
Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California
Lake Tahoe

Arthur Warmoth
Professor of Psychology, Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, CA