That's what Bill Clinton said about our interdependence with our planet in his keynote address at Omega Institute's recent conference on sustainability which I attended. We must all wake up to the fact that climate change is here and that it is real, that it is manmade, that it is happening fast, and that it is a scary thing. As a matter of fact, Jeremy Rifkin, the writer and economic and social visionary actually called it "terrifying."

But then, out of crisis and chaos new things are born. Environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken's message at that same conference was to embrace carbon, our supposed enemy. "Carbon," he says, "is the business of life and the answer to our nightmares," the subject of a book he is currently writing, because carbon is "the currency of abundance," a concept we lack in our present interest based economics of scarcity (see also Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics). Interesting, because spiritual traditions have always advised us to embrace our enemies who mirror back to us what we lack or need to embrace.

So, since divorce from our planet is not an option, and closing our eyes and ears just prolongs the agony, we each need to wake up - quick quick. The break, or consciousness shift, that the Mayans may have seen in the ending of their calendar with the year 2012 is here. Change is opportunity, and we choose how gently or how chaotic change happens. Through embrace and acceptance change happens more gently. Do your bit - we must get off carbon as an energy source and embrace it in other forms. Get a Prius, insulate your home, realize that the world is changing, eat much less meat and not the supermarket kind, open up to your intuition, speak kindly to others, and most of all enjoy life! That way "life does not come at you, it comes from you," as my wise yoga teacher Aura Lehrer said.

It's no longer business as usual!

Also see recent posts on what sustainability is and the conference notes.