In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals t… - Al Gore

As important as identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea for what they are, we must be equally bold in identifying other evils that confront us. For there is another Axis of Evil in the world: poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression. We may well put down terror in its present manifestations. But if we do not attend to the larger fundamentals as well, then the ground is fertile and has been seeded for the next generation of those born to hate us, who will hold these things up before the world's poor and dispossessed, and say that all these things are in our image, and rekindle the war we are now hoping to snuff out.

The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional architecture of checks and balances. When the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a broad survey on our Constitution, released in September 2006, they found that more than a third of the respondents believed the executive branch has the final say on all issues and can overrule the legislative and judicial branches. Barely half — 53 percent — believed that the president was required to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed. Similarly, only 55 percent of those questioned believed that the Supreme Court had the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. Another study found that the majority of respondents did not know that Congress — rather than the president — has the power to declare war. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute conducted a study in 2005 of what our nation’s college students knew about the Constitution, American government, and American history that provoked the American Political Science Association Task Force on Civic Education to pronounce that it is “axiomatic that current levels of political knowledge, political engagement, and political enthusiasm are so low as to threaten the vitality and stability of democratic politics in the United States.” The study found that less than half of college students “recognized that the line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ is from the Declaration of Independence.” They also found that “an overwhelming majority, 72.8 percent, could not correctly identify the source of the idea of ‘a wall of separation’ between church and state.” When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a survey of high school students to determine their feelings toward the First Amendment, they found that “after the text of the First Amendment was read to students, more than a third of them (35

Nevertheless, the obvious and overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing is now increasingly impossible for reasonable people to ignore. It is widely known by now that there is a nearly unanimous view among all scientists authoring peer-reviewed articles related to the climate crisis that it threatens our future, that human activities are largely if not entirely responsible, and that action is needed urgently to prevent the catastrophic harm it is already starting to bring. More importantly, Mother Nature is reminding us almost daily that the impacts of the climate crisis are growing steadily more severe, with more frequent and powerful climate-related extreme weather events. Every night, the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. But before diving further into examples of the unprecedented harm we are causing, please remember how important it is to guard against feelings of despair. Despair, after all, is simply another form of denial, and can serve to paralyze the will we need to fight our way out of this crisis. And bear in mind that the hopeful news about the availability of solutions is a powerful antidote to the feelings that can be aroused by the disconcerting news about the self-harm we are presently inflicting upon humanity.