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This blog has been dedicated, in part, to promoting a mental construct that can function as a guide in determining what substantive content should be included in our civics curriculum. I will not rehash all that has been written about this promotion, but rather say that a central part of my effort has been to make the case that any construct that attempts to guide civics instruction will, by necessity, have a moral position. After all, the reason we offer civics to begin with is to encourage good citizenship. The “good” presupposes a sense for the good and therefore reflects what the creators of the curriculum consider to be moral.

The prevailing construct that guides our civics efforts has a moral posture and I have identified that moral outlook as the natural rights perspective. That moral stand holds liberty as its trump value. What I have been promoting, the liberated federalism construct, has its trump value, societal well being. This federalist value consists of a commitment toward securing the survival of the society and advancing toward those aims and goals that the society has identified for itself.

Let me focus on the first concern, societal survival. As for further explaining societal survival, when I state that that is central to the construct's value scheme, I am not saying other orientations don't concern themselves with this value. The question is one of focus or priority. The value for survival doesn't seem to be highlighted in other constructs. You see, especially among people who have never had to face survival head on, it tends to be easier to promote other priorities such as liberty or equality or religious precepts or whatever a given, other orientation might emphasize. Or the concern over survival might be taken for granted, not worth mentioning because, of course, everyone wants to survive. Finally, some might think that given our level of advancement in terms of technology or our military prowess, we are collectively well protected against any force or enemy that might bring our existential existence into question. But is this true?

In a recently released book, Elizabeth Kolbert,¹ points out how our advanced technologies and economy are producing the conditions that are very well bringing our safety into perilous danger and yet our dominant values seem to be standing in the way of our meeting this challenge. Here are but some of the particulars concerning this threat. The planet is warming up. Because of the excessive heat we are generating, our water cycles are being affected. The extra warmth leads to higher humidity – globally 4 percent higher – which results in larger rain storms with accompanying floods and mudslides. The top layers of the ocean are becoming hotter, again leading to larger and more destructive storms. With the excess heat, the oceans have become more acidic. This excess acid is threatening an array of ocean life such as coral reefs. Whole ecosystems are endangered. Land areas are not immune to the deleterious effects. Heat quickens evaporation, leaving drier conditions. Longer droughts take place; dry conditions cause more and larger fires. Dryness causes lower food yields as we have seen with wheat, corn, rice, and other crops. As we have all heard, the melting ice caps in both polar regions have caused ocean levels to rise. In addition, we are beginning to experience resulting shifts in the usual paths of our major jet streams. More conducive to this abnormality has been the Northern Hemisphere jet stream. This results in not only unusual, higher temperatures, but also lower temperatures in areas that have arctic conditions pushed to more southern areas, giving those areas closer to arctic temperatures during the winter months. Sound familiar? A warmer planet doesn't always mean hotter temperatures, but it does mean more extreme weather conditions. And all of this leads to changes not just in weather, but also to the fauna and flora of the earth. For example, macro organisms which cause diseases might be more prevalent as the number of their carriers, such as mosquitoes, ticks, and others, increase.

These changes don't sound ominous just for today's weather reports; they are promising to be highly consequential in the years ahead. Kolberg warns us that we are in the beginning phase of a “mass extinction event.” This will be the sixth in the history of the planet since life first appeared 3.8 billion years ago. The last such event, 66 million years ago, caused the extinction of 75 percent of all living organisms, from those so small we would not have been able to see them to those of mammoth proportions. And yes, this all refers to conditions threatening societal survival.

As opposed to previous mass extinction events, this one is being caused not by some meteor, but by one of the planet's living forms – by humans – more specifically, by humans from the “advanced” societies, including us. As an issue, this whole condition falls under the federalist concern over survival in the most direct way.

1Gore, A. (2014). Without a trace. The New York Times, February 16, Book Review section, pp. 1 and 22. This is a review of Kolbert's new book: Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Compnay.