“In the Gettysburg Address, honoring those who had died fighting on a civil war battlefield, President Abraham Lincoln uttered the world-famous declaration: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." It was a stirring vision that has galvanized people's hearts ever since, but it was sadly a long way from describing the American system of government. It is, however, a fitting description of what governance must look like for the realization of an ecocivilization. After ten thousand years of mostly hierarchical power organized around a wealth pump sucking the life force out of ordinary people for the benefit of small elites, the road to governance for an ecocivilization must be transformative. We must redefine democracy itself, recognizing that, even at its best, electoral democracy is little more than oligarchy by consent. The challenge is how to incorporate humanity's evolutionary heritage of grassroots decision-making into the vast complexity of the modern, globalized world. ” — Lent, Jeremy. EcoCivilization: Making a World That Works For All. Melville House, 2026. p.246.