(Thanks again to Sue for passing this on)

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a

simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate,

lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are

going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth

at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of

decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not

one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute

that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you

are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to

have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water,

soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch

the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that

spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue

that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per

hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really

good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will

receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can

tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school.

It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and

that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And

here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not

possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know

what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it

was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my

answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is

happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data.

But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and

the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a

pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing

to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore

some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet

Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot

with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary

power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description.

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action

is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses,

companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups

and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day:

climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger,

conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the

world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather

than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like

Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large

as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides

hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its

clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers,

children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns,

artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,

incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets,

doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the

President of the United States of America, and as the writer David

James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such

a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and

the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is

true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall

us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform,

rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept

shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving

away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the

living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the

evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of

strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific

eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to

create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those

they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance

except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely

unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their

goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four

people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human

beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted

with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists

as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They

were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.

But for the first time in history a group of people organized

themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would

never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions

of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits,

civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental

organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice

at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this

effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What

do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life

creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no

better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of

abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned

people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed

regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the

only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We

have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in

real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money

to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present

we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross

domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on

healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the

future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the

other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people

and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich,

it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,

and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally

you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by

Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our

fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is

to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90

percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and

without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each

human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes

between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human

body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one

with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has

undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the

universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science

would discover that each living creature was a “little universe formed

of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute

and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?

Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on

simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore

it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who

is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully

not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are

conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want

you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate

wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came

out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of

course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be

ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the

stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and

the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,

not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as

complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done

great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring

creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging,

stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations

before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted

and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your

existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for

a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic,

not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make

sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your

life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental
activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How
the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw
It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane
letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May,
when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica
Linson for her help making that moment possible.

www.paulhawken.com