Summary:  Life on this wonderful but badly abused planet is in chaos. What is really happening and what can we do about it. This episode is based on the book The Choice by Peter Childs who recognizes the peril of this moment in our history and shows what an extraordinary opportunity it affords us.

With climate change and many other crises threatening our society and creating chaos in the world we live in, it is important to have a look at what is really happening, why, and what we can do about it. 

Charles Dickens' said it in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. It’s a line that could not be more perfect for our discussion today. We live in uniquely threatening times. We also live in times that are filled with great promise. Our mind is a powerful tool. One we have used to achieve great things throughout history. It’s also one that can be manipulated and used to  affect change in negative ways. What I mean is, we have the ability to see any problem as an opportunity. We just have to be willing to recognize it. 

Are you with me so far? It’s important that you stay engaged because today is going to be a bumpy ride. Get ready because it’s going to be a lot of fun but to get the most out of this episode you need to put your thinking caps on. Keep all body parts safely inside the vehicle with your seat belts securely fastened. Today we are going to engage our prefrontal cortex. The part of our brain that manages complex problem solving. 

Are you ready? One of the toughest things to change is a habit and we have developed lots of them. According to our guest today, they have driven us to a rather perilous moment in history. However, great peril affords great opportunity so long as we see it that way. As I bring in today’s guest, Mr. Peter Childs, allow me to do it with another quote. This one is from Joni Mitchell — “……We are stardust, we are golden And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden..”

Peter Childs: If we’re gonna go back to the garden of Eden, that was way back, we’ve got a ways to go. We’re not gonna flip the switch and get back to that so the question is how do we most efficiently  move in that direction now and a very important part of that is finding a way emotionally to deal with this onslaught of bad stuff and it is an onslaught in every way. Throwing a stone in any direction and climate change is just one thing and it’s absolutely biblical and the biblical tells the whole story and it predicts it. It said we did it once before with the flood. It’s fascinating that all over the world there are legends of the flood and they all boil down to what we’re doing now. They say look, you’ve developed so much power, that you weren’t using for good and that has consequences and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see that if you keep doing bad things with increasing power sooner or later something hits the fan in a very big way. That’s what’s happening now. 

We’re not going to get into a debate about whether or not climate change is real and whether or not we are causing it. It’s real. Things are changing. The question being asked today is, what is really happening and what are we gonna do about it? 

Peter Childs: What we’re really headed for is beyond wonderful but we’ve got this problem we’ve got to work out first. It’s up to us. What we need to do now is true our compass toward good and right and there's a huge and important question that I can’t give you a solid answer for and it’s at the root of everything, how do you tell the truth? What is the reality? Because we create these false realities that are just as real to us as the real one is to the people that see that now how do you work that one out. 

Peter Childs is author of a book called The Choice and you can probably tell from what you’ve heard so far, he is passionate, non-political and driven to find solutions which he has done. It’s not an easy one but they never are are they?