This week’s U.S. Democratic debates provided striking evidence of how fast the zeitgeist can change when it’s amplified by the viral influence of social media.

In the last U.S. presidential election, I was so frustrated that the debate moderators never asked a question about climate change, nor was it a topic the candidates ever broached on their own.

This year, as Europe is scorched by record-breaking heat, the Midwest digs out of record-breaking floods, the Arctic ice is the lowest its been in millennia, and all indicators point to this being just the beginning of the severe climate disruption to come…this year, things are very different.

When the debate moderators asked the candidates to name, in a word, what they considered to be the most important issue facing the world today, many of them answered “climate change.”

If they’re saying it, you can bet that they’ve had their analysts working busily to determine that yes, this is an issue that “will resonate” with voters.

Democrats, at least, have begun to come out of the trance of the late 20^thcentury. We are beginning to realize the costs of the kind of unfettered global capitalism we’ve inflicted on our finite, yet endlessly generous planet.

Shel Silverstein’s bizarre parable The Giving Tree is truly emblematic of our situation in the early 21^stcentury. In Silverstein’s vision, a little boy who loves playing beneath a benevolent apple tree ends up greedily using and abusing her, in the end sitting moodily beside her dead stump.

Will that be the story of human beings in the 21^stcentury?

These are exciting but frightening times to live through. The narrative rushes on, with important new developments—both positive and tragic—every day. The stakes are so high. Will we be able to transition into a harmonious relationship with our planet, recognizing our profound interdependency with All That Is, and dedicating ourselves to honoring and stewarding the sacred in life?

Although there is much to be anxious about on the road ahead, there are also many signs that we humans are now beginning to turn our immense intelligence to the task of saving ourselves and all the other beautiful life forms on this planet.

We are acting from fear, yes; but also from love. Realizing the immensity of what we stand to lose if we continue down the path of “business as usual,” we are awakening to the unfolding environmental crisis and insisting that our leaders address it as the emergency it is.

The pressure being exerted by the children and youth has been critical in awakening the sleep-walking adults.

It is no accident that Greta Thunberg’s example has sparked a wildfire of protest among young people on the planet. Greta, like so many children today, was suffering from depression, anxiety and ADHD, as well as being diagnosed on the autism spectrum. These are all symptoms that are practically epidemic today among children in the developed world. The causes are undoubtedly complex, but to some degree I believe that these are natural psycho-physiological responses to the extremely negative, harmful social climate we have collectively created.

Greta showed that children do not have to accept the world they have inherited. Standing up for a healthier world, they find health themselves, in the shared sense of meaning and purpose they discover in rolling up their sleeves together to create a better reality.

The time of the lone wolf is over, the Hopi prophecy said. The time of the selfish individualist is over. We will survive together or we will not survive our current self-inflicted environmental crisis.

The Internet has enabled global communication that makes humanity a vast hive mind, capable of incredible leaps in understanding. We humans can now almost instantaneously create responsive, synchronized global movements; we can murmurate like starlings or schools of fish, swerving elegantly out of the path of danger.

The key, as Penny Gill wrote in What in the World is Going On? is to tap into the wisdom that lives in our hearts; what some might call our emotional intelligence. Coming from love, we see what must be done, and once we understand, we can respond with intelligently designed solutions.

When the leaders of nations and the leaders of corporations synchronize their hearts and minds with the deepest desires of the people…we will move together, and the waters will part for us.

So it must be.