I also wonder if this might be a good time for the environmental community to reconsider its use of apocalyptic terms when describing our fears for the future.

There’s no doubt that we face certain peril and that immediate radical action is needed. We find ourselves frustrated by failures in Copenhagen, Cancun, and the Obama administration. And the “Arab Spring” reminds us that we need massive mobilization; we long for our “Cairo moment.”

So, what now?

I’ve spent two years studying the reasons why we haven’t been more effective on climate change. I have looked at our opposition, and at ourselves. In the light of a long history of failed doomsday forecasts, I think we need to find a more sympathetic and less cataclysmic way to capture the public’s attention.

The opposition is well funded, dishonest, cynical, and divisive. It includes those who deny the science behind climate change, obstruct policy, oppose reasoned public debate, block government action, or preach the gospel of economics as the only basis for life on earth. But, given enough time, these ideas are ultimately doomed because they’re based on a fundamental lie: that humanity is entitled to exploit the earth without regard to consequences.

In the short term, all they need to do to appear successful, though, is create uncertainty by highlighting the incoherence of data sets, mock anyone who disagrees, and appeal to people at their most limbic level, playing on fears and prejudice. The good news is that they remain a small, although outspoken, minority. They do not deserve much credit, or attention.

In my work so far, I haven’t found any easy answers. Political science, psychology, economics, and religion all give their own reasons why people are not responding to this crisis. The issue itself is fraught with inherent difficulties, and there are systematic challenges that cannot be overcome quickly. Also, it appears that humans are constitutionally incapable of acting on threats that will take place in some uncertain time and manner. Between those obstacles, and the relentless opposition, it’s no wonder we’re worried.

So, let’s go back to basics for some insight. We named ourselves Homo sapiens, meaning we chose wisdom as our defining attribute. That means we as a species have chosen the course of knowledge rather than instinct. We are not Homo economicus, capable only of short term self-interest.

We can, and often do, act for the greater long-term good, as highlighted by two recent books. Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization makes the case for us as capable of great empathy, and Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life makes the case for us acting with compassion.

Watching the painful struggles of the Japanese surviving the triple tragedies of earthquake, tsunami, and radiation taught me something important: that all natural disasters are also social disasters. What that means to the environmental community is that our success will depend on embracing the needs of humanity as well as the larger biosphere. Climate change is about what happens to the earth and to human society. If life on earth is truly about our interconnectedness, our agenda must reflect that value.

There are groups working on social change and sustainability. We do try to understand the relationship of poverty, development, and environmental degradation. But what I am saying is that we must bring basic human rights into the heart of the environmental agenda, once and for all.

Indigenous climate activists are asking for this, but the poster child of climate change is still the polar bear and the ice caps, not the Inuit. I was an observer at the first people-of-color environmental summit in Washington, D.C., in 1991, when the principles of environmental justice were adopted. Twenty years on, we are still struggling to actualize this agenda. I don’t see it being implemented by the major national green groups.

So, we need to do two things better: make humanity’s plight an integral part of our understanding of this ecological crisis, and talk about it in ways that ordinary people understand. Ever since Al Gore presented his graphs and charts, environmentalists have been talking about numbers like “parts per million” and using jargon like “greenhouse gases.” That won’t reach everyday people struggling to stay afloat in a world of entertainment and electronic distraction.

But a word of caution: This is not about messaging. It’s about deeply understanding exactly what we are facing. That includes accepting accountability for having caused this mess and the impacts it will have, first and foremost, on the developing world. This is a moral dilemma, not something communications theory can address.

Maybe the reason we have not been able to take this essential step is that we lack leadership and inspiration equal to this task. We do not want the top-down charismatic authoritarian model of leadership. That’s what false prophets like Camping provide, simplistic solutions that avoid taking responsibility.

Instead, I would look to the civil rights movement for a model of leadership. When Martin Luther King was about to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech in August 1963, he was introduced, simply, as “the moral leader of our nation.”

Dr. King’s cause was not just civil rights, it was anti-war, and it included a blazing critique of our economic system. His strategy was based in non-violence, not just in action but in thought and spirit. Had he lived, he would be would be preaching about the planet and about tolerance for diversity in nature and society. He was and still is telling us that our work is really about is learning how to get along with all forms of life on earth.

During his remarks at the press conference announcing the choice of Vilsack, Obama mentioned biotechnology. He said that promoting biotech was part of Tom Vilsacks’s vision to “strengthen our farmers” and build the “agricultural economy of the future.”

This was an explicit message to agribusiness saying that they can count on an Obama USDA to continue their agenda.

For those of us who care about sustainable agriculture, and for anyone who cares about integrity in government, this is bad news.

The biotech industry take-over of U.S. agriculture policy began in 1986. That was when the Reagan White House hosted Monsanto executives and began years of behind-the-scenes negotiations. Then, before any products were even on the market, the terms of the deal were announced. Even though this was a radical new technology and it would release artificial living organisms into the environment and our food supply, and even though federal agency scientists warned of potential health and safety risks, there would be no new laws and no government testing or monitoring. Instead, the industry would be trusted to report any problems they might find with their products.

This voluntary system is essentially what we still have today. As a result, our food is now widely contaminated with genetically modified organisms, and our farmers are using ever more herbicides and fossil fuels. And this technology locks them into dependency on corporations for all their inputs as well as massive public subsidies (agriculture’s annual bailout) to produce commodity crops.

The only change mentioned for Obama’s biotech policy is talk of labels for GMOs. That would be too little too late. Many developed countries have labels. But the rampant GMO contamination of food and seeds continues — really, contamination is just the control of commerce by other means.

And labels have not stopped this industry’s predatory practices, such as enforcing their patents against farmers whose crops are contaminated. Labels have not stopped the industry from manipulating international trade rules. The State Departments of the last several administrations promoted biotech and even forced them on other countries, most cynically, through food aid. Clinton will do the same.

I was a lawyer for the USDA during the Carter Administration. So I have some sense of the enormous impact the agencies of this department can have. It’s not just about chemically dependent farming and unwholesome food.

The USDA also controls millions of acres of public land where the timber and mining interests have been plundering the commonwealth, where recreational users have been destroying wilderness, and where native nations have been barred from the use of their ancestral lands. There are also USDA officials in every major U.S. embassy in the world, doing the bidding of agribusiness. And, because of its negligence, which is the kindest thing I can say about the USDA, bee colonies are collapsing, and frogs in our Atrazine-laden streams are confused about their gender.

Abraham Lincoln seems to be a popular theme with pundits during this presidential transition. Lincoln established the USDA. He called it “the people’s department.” And yet, over a century later, the politicization and privatization of public governance and the deregulation of essential industries have completely changed the executive branch. Government seems to have abandoned its fundamental duty to stand between the needs of its public citizens and the rapacious greed of its private corporations.

So, allow me a moment of dread. Beyond my dashed hopes for change, I fear that this nomination, with its explicit endorsement of the greed-ridden, corrupt, private biotechnology industry, is a sign that deep down, the public interest role of government is beyond repair. I thought we progressives would be welcome in the halls of an Obama government. Apparently, that’s not the case. But given the disreputable state of government these days, participation in regulatory politics may not be what we want anyway.

Denise O’Brien, a long time organic farmer and sustainable agriculture leader in Iowa who was narrowly defeated for secretary of agriculture under Vilsack, weighed in this week on the nomination. She says that while she understands our reservations, she has found that Vilsack is someone we can work with. She says we must continue to push for change. I have worked for the USDA and against the USDA and wish both efforts well. But my dashed sense of hope has opened my eyes.

Those of us who worked at the grassroots to elect Obama have been building a strong political movement. In my decades of social activism, I have yet to see social change thrive under the blessing of the powers that be anyway. Certainly, the local food and organic farming movement has been an enormous success, despite the best efforts of the USDA to weaken it.

So this disappointment may be just the reminder we need that our vision for change is the only one we can count on. We must do everything we can to protect the right and means to feed ourselves. Let the USDA eat biotech.

Well then, you suffer from too much skepticism. You probably need to learn to trust what you are told more often. Maybe you should consider some pharmacological support for your worry problem. I know. My name is Claire and I’m a skeptic.

I thought all you other skeptics out there might like to know that the latest word on our problem comes from a company who knows a lot about food, farming, and chemicals. This week, the CEO of Monsanto Corporation, Hugh Grant, told Public Radio International’s Marketplace that he expects people to be skeptical about what Monsanto says but also, given the food problems the world is facing, “skepticism is a commodity the world can’t afford right now.”

OK, I admit that I may not be ready to heed Hugh’s advice and give up on a lifetime of well-honed skepticism. But I was curious about what Monsanto is up to. (And I admit, I was even wondering why Monsanto says skepticism is a commodity — or have they decided to just go ahead and commodify everything?)

Anyway, much of Monsanto’s June 4 press release begs disbelief.

It says they will double the yield of corn, soy, and cotton by 2030; “develop seeds that will reduce by one-third the amount of key resources required to grow crops” by 2030; “conserve resources;” and “help improve the lives of farmers, including an additional five million people in resource-poor farm families by 2020.”

Allow me just this one question. I won’t make a big issue out of the fact that they did not define their terms or give details. We’re used to that (it is, after all, campaign season). But what I wonder is this: Is it common practice in business these days to roll out promises for categorical, but as yet unspecified, products that may or may not come along 12 to 22 years from now?

What’s really their point? Maybe there should be a 12-step program out there for those of us who just can not take Monsanto’s word for these things anymore, something like a “Monsanto Anon” for us skeptics.

That might help us forget the company’s past, products like aspartame, Agent Orange, 2,4,5-T, and their ubiquitous herbicides. We can ignore the thousands of farmers who have been threatened, sued, and harassed by Monsanto over their patented seeds. Delete those bookmarks for Monsanto Watch and the far-too-skeptical Organic Consumers Association who should immediately cease their campaign to “End Monsanto’s Global Corporate Terrorism.” We can drink a toast to Monsanto sustainability with milk from cows injected with their patented recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone — unless, of course, you live in one of the countries that have banned it.

Maybe we should be grateful. After all, Monsanto has done so much for us skeptics. All that pollution and suffering from their products and even their early commitment to both nuclear and genetic engineering. Those two technologies alone have provided us with so much to fret about over the years.

Still, I can’t forget. Their press release triggered my doubt problem. It was the timing. It was issued just as world governments were meeting in Rome to address world hunger. And suddenly, up pops Monsanto, singing the praises of their promises and potential products but not actually offering anything the world needs now.

The international scientific community already knows they simply need to help small third-world farmers grow for the local market and save seeds. They just completed a major study at the behest of agricultural biotechnology companies and concluded that GMOs are not the answer to world hunger.

Monsanto doesn’t have a record of accomplishment on solving the real problems facing agriculture. Their herbicide-resistant soybeans produce less and use far more chemicals than other equivalent crops. And now that Monsanto owns most of the world’s seeds, farmers are having problems getting non-GMO seed for their crops. No, they just wanted to let us know they cared.

And Hugh Grant told The New York Times that the timing of their press release, coming during the Rome meetings, was just a coincidence.

Monsanto’s surprisingly well-timed reminder of who is really in charge of the food system came just as the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, who hosted the meeting, was saying that “the problem of food insecurity is a political one.” He suggested that developed nations — which were spending billions of dollars on subsidies for their own farmers, producing biofuels, and spending billions more on weapons — should reconsider their priorities.

For a moment there, I had hoped that the deeply political nature of how the world feeds itself would get the attention it deserves. Maybe the media could foster an informed public debate about how to solve these problems. Maybe pigs can fly. No, forget that — Monsanto is working on it.

I have to warn you. Skepticism is addictive. Start asking questions, and you might not be able to stop. Why, just today, after considering all this, I found myself questioning the media’s coverage of this growing problem of world hunger.