Epilogue:
From Critical Mass to Personal Best
The crisis is bringing us an opportunity to experience what few generations in history ever have the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unified cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise.
—AL GORE, “THE FUTURE IS GREEN”
It was like cosmic clockwork. Al Gore’s personal essay, largely about the collective search for higher purpose, appeared in Vanity Fair’s first ever “green issue” in May 2006, the week I sat down to write this epilogue. “When we do rise,” Gore writes, “it will fill our spirits ...
