I suppose the question remains is do we have the elected leadership in place to get on with the job of substantially addressing climate change?   With Australia finally signing onto the Kyoto accord this leaves the US as the only "developed" nation that has not recognized the accord.  With industrialized countries accounting for about 80% of the emissions directly linked to global warming the US government’s lack of willingness to join the international community in dealing with climate change is unacceptable. 

 Climate change is a crisis of unmatched magnitude in human history.  Coastline countries will disappear while food supplies will be dramatically affected.  Drylands will increase and massive migrations of millions of displaced people are direct results of this lack of leadership.  Canada’s record needs vast improvement as does it leadership on the issue.  There are steps that we all can do to stop global warming.  Putting climate change on the political agenda however remains one huge task for civil society if we are to direct the massive efforts we need to halt climate change.

Today, our culture rotates on shorter, faster, sleeker and smaller. The design and functionality of products and even of stories is receptive to the degree in which it can be condensed.

In a recent issue of Wired Magazine, the term "snack culture" was featured in an article which traced its evolution right from cave paintings, to the Readers Digest, to cliffnotes, the sony walkman, mp3s, the ipod nano to the one second film.

But does the landscape of the quick information bite necessarily impede the impact of social progressive agendas? Our snack culture may in fact pose an opportunity for civil society organizations to reach for clarity of purpose in their public engagement initiatives, to produce creative communications and to reach beyond policy change and begin to embed a new improved vision of the world into the very fiber of our culture.

Can we popularize the eradication of poverty, inequality and environmental degradation? Can we create massive social movements that embrace culture as much as substantive policy change?

The tipping point may in fact already be at hand even in the error of shrinking space for civil society. The very contraction of this civil society space has infused global movements with a sense of urgency to address climate change, the inequalities of globalization, the brutal infringement of human rights in the name of the war on terror and the heightened violence against women and children as a strategy of war.

The evolution of global movements is taking place, new collaborations, new organizational structures and new alliances are creating are being experimented with against the backdrop of a sense of urgency. The consensus that this is the last chance to get the future right is being embraced by a wide range of social movements.

Gore observes in reference to climate change, ” The central challenge is to expand the limits of what is now considered politically possible. The outer boundary of what’s considered plausible today still falls far short of the near boundary of what would actually solve the crisis.”

Concurrent to this reality, are millions of people participating in global movements to eradicate poverty and inequality. This mass mobilization of global citizens is infact pushing the boundaries of what is plausible. Civil society in today’s democracy deficit is positioned (for better or worse) to lead elected governments to the “near boundary of what would actually solve the crisis”