At this stage in the history of earth’s conservation, when so much is waiting to be done, if each family, each village and town, each city state and nation will do its bit to conserve, plan, shape, utilize, beautify, improve what remains of the natural environment, the results will be impressive enough to justify the time and means devoted to the enterprise.

Wherever we go with our plea for the foresighted and economical use of the earth and its remaining resources, we are met with the question:  “But what can I do?” The answer is simple.  Find your place in the nearest team working to utilize, conserve, and, where possible, enlarge the natural wealth of the planet.  If no such team exists, join with your neighbors in organizing one.  Take seriously your assignment to use the part of the earth with which you are in contact intelligently, economically, wisely.

Whether you are a novice or a professional, a homesteader or a longtime resident, be sure that each contact you make with the earth enlarges its possibilities of utility, order, beauty.

This crusade to save and utilize the earth as the common mother of so many forms of life must be carefully planned and well organized through successive generations.  Men have spent far too much time and energy in destroying.  The time has come when they must conserve, plan, shape, utilize, beautify, improve.

If the energies now going into business, sport, social events, frivolities, make-believe and the deliberate destruction of waste and war could be directed to planning, utilizing, beautifying on the circumferences and at the centers of population concentrations, immense forward strides could be taken in a single generation.

The planet still has immense, unused or little used reserves of natural resources.  The old order is slipping, floundering, wasting.  Civilization has told the best of its story and is busy writing its epitaph.  The revolution of 1750-1970 provides the opportunity for a new beginning.  The place is here.  The time is now.  Let us conserve, beautify, share, utilize and, in so far as possible, improve our natural surroundings.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

REVAMPING THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PLANET

Beyond civilization we could develop a sociology-a cluster of associations, institutions, outlooks, purposes and practices designed to revamp the social life of the planet in much the same way and with the same general outlook with which we approach the political, economic, sociological and ideological problems arising from the presence, on the planet Earth, of some 3,700 million different human beings.

There are at least two approaches to the sociological aspects of our planet-wide, coordinated society.  One way is that with which nature’s cyclism has made us familiar—­the “day” of manifestation (activity) and the “night” of rest (recuperation, restoration and renewal).  This might be described as a natural, gradual evolutionary way.