Countless teenagers cope with this deadly awareness, as do some of their elders, with denial. They go on with business as usual, numbing their awareness by all manner of escapes and addictions. But, their vain attempts to escape into this self-protective womb of denial does not really protect them from the spiritual virus that psychiatrist Robert Lifton calls radical futurelessness. Young persons without a deep, reality-based feeling that they have along-range healthy future are infected with futurelessness and in attending hopelessness….

For civilization as a whole, the faith that is so essential to restore the balance now missing in our relationship to the earth is the faith that we do have a future. We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can walk blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in the balance. (From the book “Ecotherapy by Howard Clinebell, P. 32 & 73)