Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

I don’t know about you, but I am getting really tired of hearing over and over again that this country, the US of A, continues to be the major impediment blocking the possiblity of quick and effective international action on global warming.

The post-Kyoto climate conference, sponsored by the UN, got underway today. As the Washington Post reports, these talks are the biggest ever, involving 10,000 people from 190 countries.

I guess the Earth has the world’s attention.

It is quite obvious that the Bush administration sees the whole event as an annoyance, something they are doing because they have to. And once again, our fearless leaders who have yet to see a global warming disaster that gives them a moment of sleeplessness are saying they will not agree to mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, the leading, but not the only, greenhouse gas heating up the planet.

US delegates say they won’t be a ‘roadblock’ to an agreement, but obviously only as long as it is an agreement the White House favors. Most of the world is all too aware that only binding mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases, with the post-industrial, industrial, and industrializing nations all on board, will do the trick.

Now, Bush people say mandatory cuts will hurt the US economy. I guess that’s true for fossil fuel titans and Wall Street investors, but if you are from countries, mostly poor countries, where lakes and rivers are drying up, land is desertifying, climate disruptions are changing natural patterns on which communites have relied for thousands of years, etc., and etc., economic disaster, human dislocation and suffering are already part of your daily fare.

If you live in Georgia right now, or the desert Southwest, or once lived in New Orleans, you have an idea of the economic ‘hurt’ that the rest of us have to look forward to — and lots more of it — as the atmosphere cooks at a higher and higher temperature.

From the New York Times:

“The Bush administration is the only government in the world that is opposed to mandatory emissions reductions being included in a new treaty,” said Philip Clapp, the deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group, based in Washington. “The question is, will they block others from moving forward.”

I’m just so tired of it — and very angry. Combined with the deteriorating ecosystems all around our planet because of overuse, degradation, human exploitation, waste, and more, we are talking about the defining issues of our generation.

Now it just so happened that, as the conference opened, this AP story appeared in this morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Earth’s tropical region expands. It’s about how that tropical belt around the Earth’s center has expanded ‘a couple of hundred miles’ in the past 25 years. This is at a pace of expansion way beyond what scientists had predicted.

One of its meanings? That the persistent drought in the Southwest, now 8 years old, may actually be permanent. Think about that if you are still planning to buy real estate in Arizona.

“Every time you look at what the world is doing it’s always far more dramatic than what climate models predict,”

remarked climate scientist Andrew Weaver, quoted in the AP article.

I get scared. Bush and his people get richer.

Okay, I discovered this initiative late, but check it out anyway. The Climate Crisis Coalition is joining an International Day of Climate Action for this December 8. The weekend falls within the 2-week Bali conference and is a great time to speak out in your local communities. If you go to their website, scroll down a bit and you will find , ‘Call to Action,’ ‘Call to artists,’ ‘Call to People of Faith.’ If you click on the latter, you will find a deeply moving statement that you can use in your churches, synagoges, mosques, or wherever you gather to share faith and values this weekend.

I know it’s late, but see what you can do. The planet will thank you for it.

To follow the proceedings in Bali, visit the website for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

[tags] Bali climate talks, united nations framework convention on climate change, mandatory carbon reductions, climate crisis coalition, tropical region expanding[/tags]