The growing number of global heat waves is one expression of the calamities of climate change resulting from human greenhouse gas emissions. Sea levels are rising as global temperatures continue to increase, creating an array of climate risks. While humanity postpones ambitious climate action, the planetary biosphere on which we depend is changing, perhaps irreversibly. Deforestation, desertification, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, environmentally harmful mining, ocean pollution, relentless consumption, and plastics addiction are all a part of this heedless destruction by our careless and wasteful species, which increasingly threatens the continuation of human civilization. Humanity is now an agent for geological change. Further, human-created ecological risks are compounded by the confluence of the risks of pandemics and armed conflicts. Alone among all the species of the Earth, we have the power either to destroy the world or to transform it to achieve the full measure of the flourishing of our species. Burdened by our lack of wisdom, and driven by the worst in our nature, we seem bent on our own destruction. Ours is a species that must wake up. We must recognize that not changing our ways may be an act of self-destruction. If we do not act together to lift ourselves up – and especially to lift up the majority of us who are at the bottom of our global social and economic pyramid – then time may soon run out for achieving the heights of human aspiration. Human life may become mostly a matter of survival.