Mr. Peccei is the late wartime resistence hero, successful businessman and founder of the first think tank to severely assess humanity's chances for survival, The Club of Rome. He and the Soka Gakkai International president, Daisaku Ikeda, present their views as individual statements and in discussions on the complex web of natural and human-made problems threatening humanity's future.

Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, was a wartime resistance fighter, leading industrialist, and the founding president of one of the world's most renowned think tanks.

Daisaku Ikeda leads Soka Gakkai International, one of the largest nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) affiliated with the United Nations. During the past four decades he has visited over 50 nations, working non-stop for the total abolition of violence and war. He also founded Soka Education Systems and Soka University in 1971 to promote humanistic education throughout the world.

This book, developed through years of thinking, study, and reflection on the parts of both authors, brings to bear the complex web of problems threatening the habitability of the planet Earth. Presenting their comments alternately, they discuss how we have ended up on a collision course with Mother Nature.

They also talk of ways to meet the challenges of the future with optimism: through an internal, personal revolution of the spirit on the individual level, and through a grass-roots, participatory approach to problem-solving on the social level. Humanity's best hope for the future, they agree, is an ethical revolution that will enable people to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their roles in the inter-relatedness of problems that threaten our future.