Ecological hope sprouting all over the place

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Posted on January 22, 2008
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels, Inspiration and reflection

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

One of the joys of being involved in something like this is the inspiration that comes from being part of a movement, inspiration that comes from the witness and commitment of so many people making their contribution towards creating a liveable, just, more life-giving world.

There are seeds of ecological hope sprouting up everywhere. Lacking the leadership we need to face the multiple aspects of our planetary crisis, many take leadership themselves — from below — like the energy of volcanos. It cooks and bubbles and boils, and one day it explodes onto the scene.

Hello, world/cultural/religious/educational leaders: we have a problem, we are doing something about it, and you’d best get your act together. We are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

So today I thought I would just mention three such expressions which, at different levels, provide examples of what people can do when they decide to take action.

Here’s one that comes from the churches, in this case, the United Methodists of North Texas. They have come together to buy green energy from wind turbines in the western part of the state, a commitment, even at some expense, to begin replacing fossil fuel energy sources with clean energy. You can read about it here.

Imagine the impact it could have if churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious-oriented buildings made such a commitment. It should be a moral obligation, and one gets this feeling that other denominations might begin to feel the weight of this obligation pressing down on them by the witness of the North Texas United Methodists. That is the meaning of ‘witness,’ after all.

Here’s another example, this one at the most local, grassroots level of government. This is the story of a small Green Energy Task Force in Westport, Connecticut, looking at ways to shrink the local carbon footprint through local initiatives. The article from Sunday’s NY Times, entitled, A community tries to shrink its footprint, shows not only what citizens can do when they come together with drive and initiative, but how these efforts manifest the growing concern across the nation that climate change is a crisis that government must address. From these local efforts comes the realization that the change required must also come from the top, from the level of governments and institutions — yet, to be effective, inspired by and in concert with the creativity of the country’s citizens.

Finally, there is the example of the witness of the single individual, the one who rises in the perfect moment, the perfect time, and has an impact far beyond what he might have imagined. This story is from today’s NY Times and is about Kevin Conrad, the man who represented Papua New Guinea at last month’s international climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. The article: Issuing a Bold Challenge to the U.S. Over Climate.

You may remember him. We, like literally thousands of others, made note of his great moment, seen on YouTube and elsewhere since then. This was the guy who at the end of the conference, with a very fragile agreement finally negotiated and the US announcing at the last minute that it objected to some last minute language, declared:

I would ask the United States, we ask for your leadership. But if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.

His remarks were met with a thunderous ovation. Revkin’s article provides background to that moment. I’m sure Conrad (who is also exec. dir. of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations) didn’t intend it at the time, but he ended up providing one of the moments of peak drama at the Bali conference, putting an international spotlight on the lack of cooperation on the part of the US government to address climate change in any meaningful way. He put us in our place, so to speak.

This is how one individual in a given moment can impact their world.

We all can do something, beyond changing our lightbulbs. We can all offer a measure of ecological hope to the crisis — by lifestyle changes and through our social and political engagement. The folks in Westport came upon their approach simply and directly:

Our big job is to tell people they can do something. Many people acknowledge there’s a problem and they don’t know what to do. So the first thing we did was come up with the carbon footprint and then came up with ways to reduce it.

So simple, but do you also see how empowering? Okay, you feel overwhelmed. Let’s quantify the problem — the carbon footprint of folks in Westport is this much, we need to reduce it by this much, and here are ways in our homes, communities, local government, businesses, that we can reduce it.

A national approach like this would have us all participating in such a process. Since, as the article reports, 71 percent of us now acknowledge that global warming is occurring and nearly half of us believe that it is already impacting our world in dangerous ways, religious leaders and institutions, teachers, and politicians at local, state and national levels, would find many, many people ready to get involved in this project of stabilizing the climate to give the generations after us a chance at life in a liveable world.


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