Joel Makower: Obama and the Vision Thing

There's long been a fundamental problem with the green world -- the myriad companies, activists, evangelists, politicians, clergy, thought leaders, and others who, each in their own way, have prodded us to address our planet's environmental ills. And it explains why, after four decades of the modern environmental movement, only a relative handful of companies and citizens have joined in, while many more have dragged their heels to slow, or even reverse, environmental progress. The problem is this: No one has created a vision of what happens if we get things right. That seems odd, when you think about it. We have a crystal clear picture of the consequences of getting things wrong (thank you very much, Al Gore). We know well the potential devastation of unmitigated environmental problems: the droughts, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, resource wars, famine, and pestilence. We know about epidemics of childhood asthma in inner cities, toxic rivers in impoverished lands, and depleted fisheries that ... (link)