ABSTRACT
We start our conclusions with a Churchillian turn of phrase for two reasons: first because it implies crisis and secondly because it implies possibility. Churchill, for much of his life not the most successful of politicians, discovered his true worth when he confronted crisis. His actual words, in a speech at the Mansion House on 10 November 1942, marking the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein, were as follows: ‘this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ The crisis of our time is presented by the twin challenges of climate change and resource depletion. We are certainly not claiming that this modest volume contributes greatly to the solution of such a crisis! Far from it. What we are suggesting is that this volume and many, many other scientific publications in the last decade have been a beginning. No longer are questions of resource depletion dismissed by serious commentators as merely neo-Malthusian scaremongering. No longer is climate change denial a serious scientific position. The battle to put these issues on the global policy and science agendas has been won. The entry into public discourse of carbon trading, low carbon activity, one-planet living, food security, energy security, water security, biosecurity, and ecosystem services, are all evidence of that victory. And the significance of this beginning should not be underestimated. For those of us who have been students of environmental issues for several decades, the transformation of discourse is dramatic, as discussed in the second section of this chapter.
