There Are So Many Things We Can Be Doing!

I think I'm just going to make a list today. I haven't offered this sort of thing in a long time, but we attended a meeting the other night where lots of ideas for what a nearby city (and the capital city of my province in Canada) can do about the climate crisis. I'll add in some of my own ideas.

Change now, as philosopher Krishnamurti taught. Picture … dream … envision how the world needs to be: free of war, terrorism, violence, cruelty and slaughter. A world free of fossil fuels, a “golden age” of zero-carbon renewable energy, will be safer, cleaner, kinder, healthier, more equitable, and more peaceful. It’s a beautiful vision, isn’t it?

For the sake of the children – of all species – find the strength, the courage and the compassion to truly feel the pain of the climate crisis. Next, lament. And then, get active. Remember that the most vulnerable are being impacted worst and first, but we are all impacted. People around the world are losing their lives or their loved ones, their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands, in extreme weather events caused or exacerbated by climate chaos. We also need to understand this from the perspective of indigenous people, who have nowhere to move to because they are their land.

If you and your family are not already eating a plant-based diet, go vegan now, for the sake of your own health and the health of the planet. It’s the quickest – and most significant – way to lower your greenhouse gas emissions. Further, how can we create peaceful transformation in a world filled with slaughter and cruelty?

The Burning Age is over. Support a carbon fee and any other strategy that will encourage people to switch their investment money to zero-carbon, non-combustion renewable energy. Work towards a combustion-free society by transitioning away from the internal combustion engine.

Call for your government to keep its pledge to end taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuel industries. According to the International Monetary Fund, every year governments around the world give $5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuel corporations. Just think how much faster we’ll make the transition to zero-carbon, non-combustion energy when all that money is switched to renewables.

Make a plan for reducing your family’s carbon footprint as rapidly as possible. Invest in the future by ensuring that your investments are ethical and green. Divest from fossil fuels. Vote with your dollars. Invest in a heat pump for your home to lower your heating bill. If you need to drive, save up to purchase a hybrid or electric vehicle. Figure how far you and your family are willing to walk, bicycle, take public transit, car share, etc., and set up systems to help you use these greener modes of transportation more often. Be willing to make changes, compromises, even sacrifices for the sake of the future.

Support fair elections and electoral reform so that governments are made up of elected officials representing all voices, not just those beholden to fossil fuel industries.

Learn the basic science of the unprecedented crime of greenhouse gas pollution and the anthropogenic (human-caused) climate and oceans crisis it has led to. Then learn why climate disruption and the trifecta of ocean heating, ocean acidification, and ocean de-oxygenation represent an urgent emergency. Understand that the climate change denial campaign is deliberate and extremely well funded. They can sound convincing, but don’t be fooled. Do your own research, check your sources, and stay strong.

The greatest immediate threat is food and water insecurity. After all, we have evolved over the last 10,000 years into a species dependent on agriculture – and agriculture is dependent upon a stable climate, which we’ve had globally for the last 10,000 years – until now. Encourage ecological and regenerative agricultural practices and the implementation of permaculture principles. Mulch your garden. Plant trees. Lend support (time, money, energy, expertise) to food-growing programs for children and schools. We can’t grow food overnight; nor can we learn to grow food overnight. Be a champion for a different kind of education … one that will help create the world we need.

Permaculture the heck out of your community. Turn public spaces and boulevards into food forests. Build food security, food sovereignty, food resilience. (If climate chaos is going to lead to worldwide hunger, at least we'll be among the last to go.)

Get your local municipal government/s to declare a climate change emergency. (The Climate Mobilization can offer guidance with this.)

Protest outside of any bank that is investing in global destruction. Divest while you're at it, and put your money into a community bank or credit union.

Pull off some "intersactions." Take your protest signs to the busiest intersection in your community and keep crossing the road when the walk sign is on walking around in a square. Get it? High visibility. Not illegal. Drivers won't be turned off because you're not blocking traffic.

Remember to make your planning meetings and your public actions inclusive (invite others who might not normally participate) and accessible (for example, to people with disabilities, to parents with small children). 

Finally, do your spiritual work – pray, meditate, dance, go for walks, whatever – but don’t stop there! Remember, we all have at least a little bit of time, money, energy and/or expertise to share.

 And hey, if none of these actions feels right to you, you can always bake muffins for those on the front lines of saving the world. Even protestors have to eat!

Adapted from Henry Van Dyke

We are the "Architects of the Future"

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an architect, writer, systems theorist, designer, inventor and futurist. He once said, “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.”

People, at least in my circles, seem to be finally talking about the climate crisis. But there still aren't many who are actually taking some action — action that will create the future. 

So, in the interests of the new year, and new year's resolutions, here is a short list of actions that you can take to do your part in 2019 to help safeguard the future.

1. Create Political Will

• write a letter 
• sign a petition
• send an email or a fax
• make a phone call
• visit your elected officials, at all levels, and ask them what they're doing about climate change
• vote in the candidates who understand climate change and who include viable climate change solutions in their campaign
• talk to others about how they can create political will

2.  Make the Following Demands of Your Elected Officials

• declare the climate change emergency (if London, England can do it, then your municipality can, too)
• end fossil fuel subsidies

3. Meet with Like-Minded and Like-Hearted Members of Your Community

• it's important (for our mental health) that we learn to mourn and lament all the sadness and "climate grief" surrounding this greatest crime ever against humanity
• cry, laugh, and come up with solutions for local resilience together over tea
• support a local coffee shop or library as a meeting place

4.  Set an Example for Others

• choose a plant-based (lower greenhouse gas-emitting) diet; go vegan (and share vegan foods with your friends and family)
• grow some of your own food using no-till, no synthetic chemical methods
• be an early adopter of new (lower/zero carbon) technologies, if possible (and if not, learn about them so you can promote them in your community)
• be seen with your low/zero-carbon technologies (renewable energy, transportation ... like walking!)

5. Seek Out Courageous and Compassionate Ways to Make the Conversion to Zero Carbon

• there are so many possible (viable) solutions to the climate crisis — and we need them all ("clean coal" is not viable)
• spend some time to do some research; become passionate about some of the solutions
• do this for all the children, of all species
• ignore the deniers — or, if you've done enough research, stand up to them (but, be forewarned, it's time-consuming)

After all, as Peter Drucker says, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." And it's our future to create.

 Plant something in 2019!

Creating Change is Like Gardening

It was a sad day for me. I discovered yesterday morning how difficult it is to change a norm, even if it's a simple change (with not much sacrifice attached to it) and even when making the change would be a gift to the children and their future.

For almost a year, I've been a member of a group of teachers who are interested in social justice issues. I sit on the sub-committee that deals with environmental justice issues, so it's normal that we would bring forward environmentally related issues. 

Yesterday I presented a simple motion that we transition to meatless meals at our meetings (which would amount to a couple of lunches, the three times per year when we meet). The supporting statement explained that eating lower on the food chain (note no use of the V word) has many benefits.

My rationale was that this would lower our carbon footprint and set an example to other educationally-focused groups. It truly is the easiest way we can reduce our personal and collective greenhouse gas emissions. 

Industrial livestock processing (veganspeak: the inhumane torture and slaughter of almost 30 billion animals every year in the USA alone -- but I didn't use that language, because it's often considered inflammatory) (imagine how it feels to the animals, then compare that to the "pain" we feel when we "feel their pain" -- we're such wimps at times, eh?) is one of the most carbon-intensive and environmentally damaging human activities on the planet, polluting water, degrading land, and spewing carbon, nitrous oxide and 35-40% of anthropogenic methane emissions. 

It took me three meetings to get up the nerve to put forward this resolution. I guess I already knew what the reaction would be. And I was right. To be fair, I was encouraged by how many people spoke in favour. But we use a consensus model and that means that one person holding up a red card can scuttle a motion. Four or five people held up red cards. One person tearfully admitted she's not ready to give up meat yet. (For six lunches per year?) Another said she didn't want to lose her freedom of choice. (Forget that billions of people are losing their freedom to choose to live on a habitable planet.) 

The motion was defeated. I was defeated. Afterwards, I got some advice and had some helpful discussions. I'll rework and reword my motion and present it again the next time we meet. But the bittersweet ending came during our farewell go-round. One of the no-voters thanked the group for opening her up to new ideas that haven't been within her realm of consciousness. "I might even start eating less meat," she said. "But not quite yet."

What do I take from this experience? Creating change is more like gardening than building. We have to plant our seeds (the earlier the better) and then be patient. A lot of the process is outside of our control ... though definitely within our circle of influence. Time for me to tend those seedlings.

p.s. Speaking of food growing, the news from drought-afflicted California grows ever more terrifying!

From 7 States Running Out Of Water: "At [the current] usage rate, California has less than two years of water remaining."

And this, from Cows, Rice Fields and Big Agriculture Consume Well Over 90% of California's Water: "Agriculture uses 93% of California's water and almost half of that is devoted to growing alfalfa for shipment to the Far East, mainly China, to feed their cows. California is, in effect, shipping almost half its precious water to China."

Who Should Be Apologizing?

There seems to be an upsurge in fault-finding and aspersion-casting these days. But the wrong people are taking the flak.

Why are the "green capitalists" (who at least are trying to raise awareness and create change, even if it's within a broken system) being excoriated by all parties while the vast majority of capitalists — the rape-and-pillage kind — pretty much escape censure and get to carry on, business as usual?

Why are outspoken climate scientists who mention nuclear as a partial solution to the climate change emergency being pilloried while the vast majority of climate scientists are not called out for their cowardice and their silence?

Why are people who care deeply about the future we're bequeathing our children getting blamed by friends and strangers alike for spreading doom and gloom (aka, the truth) while the vast majority of parents and grandparents (in my culture, at least) spend their spare time watching crap on the television? If you feel "blamed" then maybe you know deep inside that you bear some of the responsibility.

It's getting pretty tiring for anyone who's been trying to sound the climate crisis alarm to continually be called an alarmist. (What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm an alarmist. Full-time.) Why is it considered worse to be a scaremonger (when what's happening is seriously scary and we want people to wake up and be frightened!) than to be an ignorer, delayer, skeptic or downright denier?

And don't even get me started on what a vegan has to put up with these days. Apparently our lower-carbon dietary choice is a judgement, an imposition on people who want to torture and murder animals in the most inhumane ways possible in order to enjoy their hunk of flesh without guilt — at the expense of all future generations. Well, folks, if you're feeling guilty around a vegan, perhaps you should listen to that little niggle.

How can I apologize for caring? For passionately wanting to safeguard the future of life on this planet? Why should I have to? Why do I have to watch what I say at dinner parties and in cafés? Why aren't we all talking about all of this? All the time? With everyone we meet?

How will we ever transform political will if we can't muster some personal and social will just to discuss the emergency let alone face it and solve it?

Truthfully, who should be apologizing to whom?

"The Death Orientation that Stares at Us from Our Plates"

I'm going to be attending and emceeing a presentation tonight by Dr. Will Tuttle on his bestselling book, The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. I think what I'm really looking forward to is a sort of "darshan"— being in the presence of one who is enlightened. Never has a book taken me on such a voyage of discovery and on such a roller coaster ride of emotions! This former Zen Buddhist monk has articulately synthesized ideas I've been wondering about for years.

• Why is there so much cruelty and violence in our human world?
• Where does "man's inhumanity to man" — and to nonhuman animals — come from?
• Why do we think we're so much better than other animals?
• Why can people (in our society) love their pets so much but then slap a hunk of a lamb, a pig, a chicken or a steer on their plates and eat it without ever making (seeing, feeling) the connection?
• Beyond the greenhouse gas toll of industrialized meat processing, what (and who) else suffers because of our meat-based diet?

Dr. Tuttle explains all that and more. I'm not going to tell you too much because I wouldn't do it justice and I want you to buy (or borrow) the book and read it. Really take it in. And, every chapter or two, slam the book shut and sob and sob and sob at the unspeakable atrocities committed (at least in our society) so that people can have their hunk of flesh and eat it too.

But let me leave you with a couple of "big ideas" from Will Tuttle. 

The first is that the move to the herding of large mammals about 10,000 years ago was the start of it all, including the beginnings of raging capitalism (which is bringing not just the natural world but human civilization to its knees):

"In fact, our word 'capital' derives from capita, Latin for 'head,' as in head of cattle or sheep. The first capitalists were the herders who fought each other for land and capital and created the first kingdoms, complete with slavery, regular warfare, and power concentrated in the hands of a wealthy cattle-owning elite.... By commodifying and enslaving large, powerful animals, the ancient progenitors of Western culture established a basic mythos and worldview that still lives today at the heart of our culture." (pp. 18-19)

The second point is something that is making people laugh when I share it with them. And sometimes laughter creates a beeline to the heart and soul, so that people can really hear something their mind doesn't want to listen to. 

Hmmm, I just found the passage back on pp. 67-68 and it's rather graphic to quote here for you. Anyway, here's the gist: Lots of people think that we're "meant" to eat the flesh and secretions of other animals, that it's perfectly natural for us to eat meat and "dairy" products. So here's a question: Could you, using no implements, just your body (with your tiny mouth, dull teeth, delicate skin and no claws) hunt down a deer? Kill it with your teeth, rip it apart and eat it? 

Okay, here's another question: If we were meant to drink the milk designed for calves, then shouldn't we be able to walk past the bull, kick that calf out of the way, and then slide underneath the cow to suckle at her teat without getting kicked or stomped on?

For 30 years I was a vegetarian who considered cheese and eggs to be "gifts" from the animals. But gifts are freely given. Choosing a vegan diet three years ago (for environmental reasons, but also because all my talk of compassion was no longer squaring with my diet) has allowed me to truly see what's going on in this world. Otherwise, I would still be stuck in my own herder mentality. 

May the "spiritual health" and "social harmony" of Dr. Will Tuttle's book, The World Peace Diet, come true in time for compassion to save the future for the children ... of all species.

Is anyone else weirded out by the fact
that our culture eats
the children of other animals?