EARTHFUTURE.COM by Guy Dauncey

In Cervantes' classic book Don Quixote, published 400 years ago, Don Quixote is a retired country gentleman obsessed with the ideal of courteous chivalry. He lives out the fantasy of becoming a noble knight, rescuing damsels in distress and tilting at windmills, for which he is mocked by his neighbours.

In 1965, his book became a Broadway play, which included the song The Impossible Dream; you can hear on You Tube if you search Impossible Dream and ignore the Honda ad.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star...

Why has the song become so popular? Because it speaks of great dreams and action motivated by nobility of spirit. Our history is full of injustice and cruelty. There have always been those who revel in their self-importance as they beat, humiliate or kill their victims. History is also full of people falling prey to collective madness: people who empty the ocean of fish and people who profit from fossil fuels even though global warming will cause untold misery for future generations.

Why, however, is our world not completely dominated by injustice, cruelty and folly? Why have so many good things been achieved in spite of these tendencies? The answer lies in the song: that throughout history, individuals have been stirred by injustice and folly to right the unrightable wrong, to fight the unbeatable foe.

What motivates Paul Watson to take on the Japanese whaling fleet, or pianist Daniel Barenboim to bring young Israeli and Arab musicians together to perform concerts in Israel, Palestine and around the world? What motivates Jane Goodall to work so hard to protect the chimpanzees and other wildlife around the world? The same deep-rooted urge – the impossible dream.

Where would we be without it? No democracy, no social justice, no end to slavery; no socialized health care, no ecological protection. To this, we can add the achievements of scientists, doctors, engineers and explorers who pushed the boundaries to open new worlds of possibility. The list includes those who took up arms to stop the Nazis, inspired by their determination "to fight the unbeatable foe." Far from being crazy, "to dream the impossible dream" might be the sanest of all responses to the challenges we face – which brings us to the present.

On May 4, two young Vancouverites, Stephanie Tait and Matt Hill, are embarking on their impossible dream – the Run for One Planet. They asked themselves what the world will look like for those who will inherit it and they didn't like what they saw. They believe in the power of the individual, but they realized that most people don't know how they can make a difference.

So they developed the idea to run a marathon a day for a whole year, covering 11,000 miles from Vancouver to Newfoundland, down the East Coast to Florida, across the south to Los Angeles and up the West Coast to home. Along the way, they will stop in cities and towns to motivate people to make new choices for our planet, asking them to become "Environmental Ambassadors" and make up to 10 personal actions that will make a difference. They want to inspire a million actions and raise $1 million to enable others to organize more One Planet Marathons. My heart swells for what they are undertaking. To follow their dream, see www.runforoneplanet.com

We live at a time of great crisis, which calls for great dreams. If we all reach deep inside and ask, "What is my impossible dream?" we will be able to achieve the "Great Transformation" that is so urgently needed to create a just, sustainable world without homelessness, poverty, pollution, food shortages and the many other perils that confront us.

Guy Dauncey is president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org) and author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. www.earthfuture.com