Innovation for Sustainability: A Call for an Abolitionist Mindset to Liberate Our Imagination for Action

Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Thus spoke President John F. Kennedy nearly 60 years ago in his 1961 address to the United Nations (Kennedy, 1961). He was not talking about the consequences of climate change then, which was not a concern at the time, but of nuclear war, and his words carried the immense weight of the dire message—whether or not the audience had ever experienced a nuclear attack, whether or not it was fully understood, everyone believed the science behind the President’s speech about the dangers posed by nuclear conflict. There were no deniers. Everyone got it. The threat posed by the hydrogen bomb was collectively accepted as fact and everyone understood the importance of preparing for this threat.