A world in urgent need of more compassion...

In a week when the crisis in Syria escalates, and when retiring Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is quoted as saying that mankind has "lost the plot", it is sobering to reflect on the fact that man’s place in nature is unique. He is not only conscious of his own evolution, but he can shape his evolutionary future by how he behaves. And we surely behave badly!

Sure, we commit acts of violence against each other and against ourselves, of a physical and brutal nature, that is widely seen across our media. But this violence can be more subtle, such as verbal abuse and childhood bullying. There is aggression and violence in our homes, on our streets, and between communities as well as between nations.

And that is not all. We also commit acts of violence against the environment, manifested in pollution, soil erosion, species extinctions and perhaps in some of the effects of climate change we are now experiencing. We are all guilty of thoughtless and selfish patterns of behavior that can so often directly or indirectly contribute to the suffering of others.

The real problem is that on its own no amount of any rule and regulation, law or leadership, will change the way we behave. Rather than having regulation thrust upon us, we need to understand why we behave as we do and really commit our hearts and our minds to the need for change. Perhaps that means tracing our behavior back to the healing needs of our own wounds. This does not mean our physical wounds, but the wounds we have inherited and those from our own suffering, from the way we react to personal experiences that life has thrown at us: our insecurities and fears, our feelings of hopelessness and despair, that can be reflected in greed and envy, in over-consumption, violence and addictions to work or harmful substances.

Our unhealed wounds are potentially dangerous not only for our own personal well being but for the future of the world. We are in grave danger of being driven by our present behavior to spiritual bankruptcy and physical destruction. Action is urgent.

To find healing and wholeness we need to reconnect with our roots, with our souls, rediscovering our spirituality and our faith, and healing those wounds. And once we have found healing for our wounds, we may even discover that we are uniquely equipped to understand the wounds of others, to walk alongside them and assist them in their own healing process. We will feel a profound and healing compassion towards all sentient beings. This is what it means to be a Wounded Healer.  And this is surely our future. Is it too much to hope for?

So should we give up hope?

So many people feel daunted and depressed when they read about the seemingly intractable issues facing our world around Climate Change, water shortages, food shortages etc. This is sad, because I'm sure that most of us are already doing our own things even if only in a small way, trying to change our eating and spending habits for example, recycling where we can, etc. etc. And every little action helps and we should all congratulate ourselves for those. But what if we all tried to change our behaviors in just one more small way - we could all start Ripples of Hope for a better world!

I think it is really a case of finding what appeals to each one of us - we all have different skills, all have things we couldn't possibly do. That doesn't matter. I can think and I can write (at least I think so!) but I'm not hot on the organizing side - some people are quite the opposite - don't ask me to organize a coffee morning or a play group - some would relish it!! 

So rather than focusing on the big picture issues of climate change, population growth, energy and water depletion, all a bit daunting and depressing to some, let's look at other simpler yet powerful ways to do our little bit to help and the simplest thing we can all do is to connect more closely with the food we eat, the choices we make about our life-styles, and the realities of materialism and consumerism and its consequences. Here are a few links to follow up:

The concept of the Transition Town started in the UK in Totnes, but it is now worldwide and gaining significant ground in the US. But this can seem too big and daunting for some, especially if there is no action going on local to your home.

So there is Incredible Edible, which has specifically identified food as a simple yet effective way of contributing to a better world. It started again in the UK, and I am not sure if it has reached the US yet, but on its well developed website it gives lots of ideas and inspiration and encouragement relevant to anyone who has the concern of the world at heart, wherever you live.

For example how about having a meat free day each week? This is something all the non veggies could do once a week - a good start!! - and there's loads of other items and blogs on the site full of ideas for us all.

We vote three times a day when we decide what we eat! Organic? Local? Meat? fair trade? (in sense of ethical trading, not necessarily FairTrade).

You could try the fairtradeusa (every purchase matters) site for a start.

Then for those affiliated to any church or other place of worship are you only using fairly traded tea, coffee, biscuits, wine etc? I have just given a presentation to our own Parochial Church Council Meeting in our church to move this along, and I'm giving a training session in 3 weeks time to a local church group here on making ethical shopping decisions. 

Some Dioceses have already declared themselves FairTrade dioceses.

And there's EcoCongregation - sponsored by A Rocha, to encourage churches to lead by example by becoming "greener" and more eco friendly. Energy efficiency, and so on. Eco-congregation is a tool to help churches begin to address environmental issues in all that they do. It is suitable for all kinds of churches to use, and it has developed across the USA and the UK. 

So there really is plenty we can all get on and do in our own small ways: small things, one step at a time, and don't let yourself be depressed by the seemingly hopeless situation. It is not hopeless at all - but urgent yes!

Finally there are loads of sites on the Internet where if we don't think we can do anything else, we can at least sign petitions! Avaaz is a good place to start.

There you have it. Just a few ideas to start the ball rolling!

Please tell me of your own favorites.  

Climate Change Awareness: Are we near the tipping point?

Here is a very thoughtful, well measured and well researched article on climate change from Colin Bell of Sustainability in Crisis that I want to share with all my readers.
I urge anyone to read this who has any care at all for our future and the future of our children/grandchildren/greatchildren. What future?! Time to WAKE UP!! What a shame that millions read eroticism for cheap entertainment (Fifty Shades etc) and only hundreds read the serious stuff on where we are at and where are we going and what can we do about it!!

Climate Change where Science meets Faith

At last a Climate Change book that looks at the whole issue and what we should do about it from the perspective of the compassionate Christian, rather than from the purely selfish perspective of saving our own skins or from a knee jerk reaction to materialism (although that does matter as well)! Having said that the book does come in for some criticism of its lack of any substantial action plans- what one reviewer calls a "lean menu."
A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions is by Katharine Hayhoe climate scientist and geoscience professor at Texas Tech University, (and with her credentials she surely writes with authority) and Andrew Farley, who is, according to his Amazon bio, lead teaching pastor of Ecclesia, a growing church on the high plains of west Texas. Now a scientist and a pastor getting together on this is a powerful combination. Andrew apparently co-hosts "Real Life in Christ", said to be a thought-provoking TV program that airs every Wednesday morning on ABC-TV in west Texas and New Mexico - but I couldn't find the link for that - perhaps someone else can, and let me know. Andrew is also author of The Naked Gospel. and God Without Religion. Not sure about that idea - I need to check it out - but of one thing I am sure - we certainly need to bring compassion and the idea of personal responsibility into the equation in all aspects of our lives - not just in thinking about the suffering humanity that is the fall out from climate change - and something I've written about at some length in Healing...

Climate Change Deniers in US Schools

My last post here was on the education of our children - I called for the need to help them develop into decent citizens equipped with a spiritual literacy, and properly prepared to accept  responsible and fulfilling roles in the world.
Now I have found some disturbing news from America on the teaching of science. There has been a long running saga over whether or not Creationism should be taught in schools as an acceptable theory, as against evolution. Now there is a further twist. Apparently according to New Scientist the Oklahoma House of Representatives has moved closer to approving a bill that some fear will allow for the teaching not only of creationism but also of climate change denial in the classroom.
Now this is worrying indeed. The science behind climate change and man's contribution to global warming is just about indisputable now. The implications for our children and grandchildren are potentially serious. If children are brought up to share a cynicism and skepticism with their elders about climate change what hope is there to make any real moves towards more sustainable living in a country whose ecological footprint is something like twice that of Europe per capita.
Not that Europeans can afford to be complacent either. It already takes Earth something like eighteen months to replenish the resources we use globally in a year. If everyone shared our levels of consumption in the West, we would need somewhere between three to five planets like Earth to sustain us. Commonsense tells us that the figures simply do not add up. Our behaviour is totally unsustainable in the long term.

We can all see the violent natural disasters for ourselves, and observe that the poorest amongst us suffer the most for the damage caused when houses collapse or are washed or blown away, livestock drowns or starves to death, disease spreads through stricken areas. I know many would love to believe that the earth will always be able to sustain the profligate Western lifestyle as it spreads across the whole world.

But Earth has finite resources and is groaning.

Personal prejudices should not be allowed to stand in the way of teaching good science. 

Saving the habitat of the Polar Bear

Whilst many bury their heads in the sand and ignore the effects of global warming, refuse to accept that urgent actions are required, how heartening it is to know that others are actually cracking on and taking positive measures to try to lessen the effects and at the same time preserve some of its most iconic victims.
The World Wildlife Fund and Coca-Cola are in partnership to rescue the Arctic habitat of the Polar Bear. The role of Coca-Cola is to raise awareness and funds for this initiative, in a project called Arctic Home.

This is just one of many conservation projects run by the WWF in partnership with many different corporate organisations, as well as "U.S. government agencies ...such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Oceanic & Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and others."
They need our support. Please follow the links and read more about the work they do on a global basis.

No Need to Panic about Global Warming

I'm really getting pretty fed up with the people who insist on burying their heads in the sand over the whole issue of global warming and climate change. Now a paper as influential as the Wall Street Journal, that frankly should be more responsible, has published an opinion piece "No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy."

Now check out the other view, Dismal Science at the Wall Street Journal, from the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

How do we convince people that this threat is for real and make them look beyond their own cosy lifestyle to the bigger global picture? I think the Wall Street Journal should now balance that article with the majority view from the science community.

China, Giant Pandas and Living with the Planet

Did you know that you can identify a particular giant panda by the length of the pieces of bamboo shards in its droppings? No, neither did I. It's all to do with the fact that each animal has its own 'bite', peculiar to itself.
I learnt this little known fact reading a gem of a book I found in the shop at St Paul's Cathedral London, down in the crypt. I was really just biding time waiting for someone, but I'm glad I strolled in to browse, because this book is superb.
Catherine von Ruhland is a journalist and writer, with a particular interest in green issues. As she says herself in her Introduction, in this book she wanted to go beyond the "put your bottles in the bottlebank" type of book, with lists of things we should all be doing at local level. Actually quite a few of us are getting quite good at that anyway (although we cannot be complacent- many have a long way to go!).
Von Ruhland wants to help us see our individual actions in a global context, to understand and recognise the way we coexist alongside the people, plants and animals across continents with whom we share this wonderful but groaning planet.
And she does this admirably, in a beautifully illustrated book, Living with the Planet: Making a Difference in a Time of Climate Change. Starting with chapters on the earth's atmosphere, the earth itself, and its oceans, von Ruhland then goes on to look at each of the continents in turn. This is such a refreshingly new and informative way of considering our global environmental issues.
And she starts with Asia, our largest continent, including of course China.
There is a massive misperception in the West that China cares not a jot about environmental issues. 
Add to this the oft- quoted statistic about the proliferation of their fossil fuel guzzling power stations and this is all the excuse that many need to sit back and do nothing in the West. Why should we do anything, we say, when we can't possibly make a difference on our own?
I wrote only the other day about China taking advice from the Daoists on environmental issues - the first time ever, or for 900 years, depending on which source of information you use.
And they also care about their giant pandas. This book tells us that the Chinese government has been concerned about the population of this wonderful iconic creature for over forty years, initiating its First National Panda Survey as long ago as 1974, later involving the World Wildlife Fund in 1980. Essential conservation work, including reforestation, poaching control, establishment of further reserves and taking action to prevent inbreeding, for example, has been successful. Part of the work has involved equipping nature reserve staff with the technology to help them in their conservation work, and this is where the droppings come in! The work of the nature reserves in re-establishing breeding populations of giant pandas has been so successful that after three National Panda Surveys a fourth one may not be even necessary.
So let's think again before we instinctively knock China. And let's revise the way many of us think about environmental issues. Actually in years to come China's problem is going to be our problem as well. Let's go global, one continent at a time. At the end of each chapter, the author includes a list of practical suggestions for how we can take action. There are some simple things we can all do if we really have the heart and mind attuned to helping our global brethren. I shall come back to some of these in later posts.
For a start how about checking out Friends of the Earth and seeing how we can all support their projects.

7 billion and rising

 So any day now the population of the world will top 7 billion, if indeed it hasn’t happened already. And it is widely predicted that by 2050 there will be 9 billion humans on the earth. This raises so many issues. How will we be able to feed all these people, provide them with decent housing, satisfy their energy and water requirements, ensure that they all have adequate health care and education?
Mark Stevenson in The Times last Saturday took the optimistic view. More and more people, he wrote, will live in cities as the population grows, and they then apparently have fewer children, going some way towards solving the problem. Also, as he points out, there are economies of scale in providing the various services, utilities, education, healthcare etc., in a denser population. In addition we fight less apparently as we grow in number; we collaborate more, and become more innovative. “Imagine the creative geniuses lurking in the next 3 billion,” he writes.
But doesn’t he ever read the “world news” pages? We are incapable of properly feeding and housing a huge proportion of the existing 7 billion of us already walking this earth, let alone another 2 or 3 billion. As Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London, reminds us in the same paper, 2 billion already have no access to clean water, and 2.5 billion don’t have proper sanitation.
And what about migration issues, lack of jobs, city slums?

And according to a Christian Aid Report in May 2006, The Climate of Poverty: Facts, Fears and Hope, “a staggering 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by the end of the century. Many millions more throughout the world face death and devastation, due to climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict.”

Not very much cause for optimism there then. And social injustices fuel anger and unrest and potentially explosive and violent situations, as we have seen on the streets of English cities so recently, and in the Arab Spring.

And one vital aspect of population growth was not mentioned by either of these gentlemen: ecology. We are already encroaching more than we should into the natural world, with often devastating consequences. But we also have a role within the complex eco-systems of the world, within the complex interrelationships of nature in all its facets. As the naturalist Francis Rose once observed, ‘nature is very complex. When you start to interfere by thoughtless introduction of alien species, you do so at your own peril.” But this principle can be just as well applied to our interference with nature at many other different levels- our destruction of natural habitats is one glaringly obvious example.
It is imperative that we curb our own excesses, that we stop violating the natural world around us, that we acknowledge the integrity of our finely balanced ecosystems. Never mind the introduction of alien species. Every time we drive one more animal or plant to extinction, not only are we poorer for that, but also the effect on the fragile balance of planetary life may be profound. That is why it is so important, and ever more urgent, that we do not compromise our future by today’s actions, or indeed through our in-actions.

But there is another reason, and I think a very important one, why the idea of ever more people crowding into ever bigger and busier and more crowded cities fills me with horror. When we lose contact with the natural world around us I believe that a part of our soul dies. We become wounded, incomplete in some way. Contact with the soil is part of our ancestry; it is a very natural part of us to want to till the earth, and commune with nature. It is definitely not a natural thing to do to hare down motorways and freeways at alarming speeds, in vehicles often four abreast. It is not natural, and surely not what God ordained, to live significant proportions of each working day stuck in traffic jams, barely moving, belching out ever more greenhouse gases. It is not natural to live many storeys up in high -rise condominiums and flats. It is not natural to join the awful rush hours of any large city on this earth.

It is not natural to have little or no compassion and empathy for the living world that we are now destroying.

Organic farming CAN feed the world

Good news from Planet Green for all those struggling to convince the skeptics that factory farms are the only was forward – and good news for the animals! I quote: “The hold out for many of those that cling to conventional farming has often been that it will be impossible for organic farming to feed the world. It's more expensive and the crops aren't as strong, right? Wrong. This is far from the truth according to a new UN study reported on Civil Eats.”

I quote again from the planetgreen.com site: “According to the report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, organic and sustainable small scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation.
“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

Such good news!!

Australia the next great hope for Climate

 “Right now, a major climate fight is blowing up in Australia -- the government is about to pass a law that would cut carbon emissions and get polluters to pay. But big businesses, backed by Rupert Murdoch, are trying to kill the bill….

If together we can drown out his campaign to crush the bill with 

messages of hope

from across the world, we could help it pass.”

Words quoted from the site of Avaaz.org “a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.”

This is not just about Australia - it is about the world!

If you care about the future of this earth, and I guess that is why you are reading my blog, then please go to the website of Avaaz
and sign the petition for common sense to prevail over business interests!

When Avaaz reach 250,000 signatures, they say they will run inspiring radio ads that deliver their global messages, laying out the benefits of the law and rousing public support.

The photos are in La Gomera - aftermath of unprecedented flood damage after high tide and rain storm came together. The hotel had to do a massive clean up. I was there and could not believe the devastation. Neither could the locals.

Love and Compassion and Responsibility in a shrinking world

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama emphasized that responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually.
The next day in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture he elaborated on the theme:

“The realisation that we are all basically the same human beings, who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering, is very helpful in developing a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood; a warm feeling of love and compassion for others. This, in turn, is essential if we are to survive in this ever shrinking world we live in. For if we each selfishly pursue only what we believe to be in our own interest, without caring about the needs of others, we not only may end up harming others but also ourselves. This fact has become very clear during the course of this century. We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that by polluting the air or the oceans, in order to achieve some short-term benefit, we are destroying the very basis for our survival. As interdependents, therefore, we have no other choice than to develop what I call a sense of universal responsibility.”

Most importantly, we cannot confine the scope of our responsibilities to our own country. It is a matter of global justice that we have equal concern for the conditions in which our brothers and sisters live in poor parts of the world. In December 2001 a Statement was issued by 110 Nobel Laureates on the one-hundredth anniversary of the launch of the Nobel Prize. It included a plea for us all to reassess our global obligations to one another:

“The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate, and manifestly unjust. It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If, then, we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor.”

We may need courage to take a stand, and we have to ensure that we are properly informed before making decisions. But surely it is now time that each and every one of us realized that we must bear our own share of responsibility in the shaping of our world, and then turn that realization into action.
Some debate whether war or climate change poses the greater threat to humanity. As expressed above, the two are in some ways linked. It is an unarguable fact that we have the technology and productive resources to eliminate worldwide misery, poverty and injustice howsoever caused. And we can thus remove some of the threats to peace and stability in many parts of the world.

Climate Change Denial 2

These are my further thoughts on the post yesterday on Climate Change Denial, prompted by the comment left by "anonymous." He is right in one respect. To some people science has become their new religion, which then becomes unquestionably right and has no room for other viewpoints. But this refers to scientific reductionism, a perpetuation of the view that eventually everything in nature will be described and explained scientifically and there can be no other explanations “outside the box.”

The Dalai Lama has warned us about this; that we should not ‘overlook the limitations of science. In replacing religion as the final source of knowledge in popular estimation, science begins to look a bit like another religion itself. With this comes a similar danger on 

the part of some of its adherents to blind faith in its principles, and, correspondingly, to intolerance of alternate views.’ I agree that this spawns those who are as fervent and aggressive in their scientific beliefs as the religious fundamentalists.

But there can be no comparison between the ignorant illiterate masses who were within the influence of the priests of old, and the literate well educated, indeed often overly opinionated people of today who are mostly quite capable, scientist background or otherwise, of reading and understanding the essence of the reports of the IPCC on climate change. These reports are based on the research of very many well-qualified scientists worldwide, whose work is subject to the rigorous peer reviews that are a part of all new scientific research. 

We should respect and try to understand, but this is not a question of reverence. And yes science has its limitations, not only within the IPCC reports. Science cannot explain everything, and increasingly many scientists understand this. Science can and does ignore another dimension, another way of knowing, that is somewhere between (or above?) the two extreme mental poles of objectivity and subjectivity, language based or sensory based, analytic or holistic, rational or intuitive, science or religion, left hand or right hand brain if you like. 

Perhaps this is where wisdom comes into its own and is most needed.
Iain McGilchrist in his wonderful book The Master and His Emissary shows how it seems that the former objective end of the mental polarity is suppressing the subjective element, with huge implications for our future on this planet. We need a balance between the way our different brain hemispheres relate and act, a harmony between science and spirituality that has been lost, particularly by those with the new scientific reductionist faith.

We need joint tools and joint actions to heal the breach, for science to dialogue with spirituality to redress the balance.

Professor Clarke suggested that perhaps the very real threat of Climate Change becomes an opportunity to heal that problem within society; the problem that is the disjunction between these different ways of knowing, which poses a greater risk to society than Climate Change itself. 

And we should heed the work and words of  The Elders, who have wisdom beyond anything most of us can conjure.

Climate Change Denial

I was at a conference for members of the Scientific and Medical network last weekend and very good it was too. But one session really had me worried. Professor Chris Clarke, author of Weaving the Cosmos, was talking to us about the need to connect science and spirituality in our living planet, the different ways of knowing the world, and the need for bringing back a harmony between our rational and emotional selves. In the one and a half hours of talk and dialogue he covered much of enormous interest and significance for the future of humanity, that I may come back to in more detail another time. But what was the cause of my concern?
Well apparently something like 50% of Americans are in total denial about climate change. And what is more, the percentage seems to be increasing as the science produces even better and more indisputable evidence. It seems that there are psychological dynamics at work here. We rely so much on technology and when we are told it has to change, we find this uncomfortable, unendurable, intolerable even, and think there has to be a way out, that science has it wrong, and we go into denial.
We in Britain are nearly as skeptical. A Times poll in 2009 found that only two in five Britons believed that this current and visible problem was largely man made. We really should take more notice of the evidence, including for example the report to world leaders by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following its meeting in Paris at the start of 2007. This report concludes that it is very likely (and that means a 90% chance!) that the activities of man are responsible for the increased greenhouse gases and the resultant problems of climate change now being seen and predicted for the foreseeable future. As a consequence average temperatures are likely to rise by 4°C by the end of the century. This is the consensus of opinion from the combined efforts of more than 800 contributing authors and more than 450 lead authors, with more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers involved in the two-stage scientific and technical review process.
For the continuing cynics why not use an adaptation of Pascal’s Wager? Pascal reasoned that whether or not one believed in the existence of God, it was a safer bet and one had nothing to lose by supposing that He existed. So it is with the global warming debate. If we allow ourselves to become more spiritually aware, more sensitive to our finely balanced place in the world, more compassionate towards the plight of our brethren across the globe, more simple in our needs, more at peace with ourselves, more in tune with our own souls and the soil beneath our feet, then surely we are all enriched? We will certainly be happier, and we will be leaving a better world for those who come after us. What do we have to lose, climate change or not?
Of course there are bound to be some controversies and debates surrounding the details of the IPCC report and the scale of its significance. But much of our best scientific research effort continues to be directed towards gaining a fuller understanding of all the issues involved, and what actions we can take.
Please let's not ignore the evidence any longer.
And let's find a dialogue between the scientists and spirituality, between the rational and the emotional, combine the analytical with wisdom.
E F Schumacher said something along the lines of: "Man is now far too clever to survive without wisdom."
(The photo is of white hydrangeas at Loseley Park, Surrey, England) 

Let’s all do one extra compassionate act today.

I have written over the last week of the dangers of remoteness – not linking our behaviour with the effects of our actions. This remoteness is seen at a global and human level, when we do not always associate the extreme manifestations of climate change happening in other parts of the world with our own excessive and consumer lifestyles.
10% of the world’s population is consuming 50% of its resources. 20% of the world’s population has no safe water supply. Observing our speed limits can save a liter of fuel or more per 100 miles. Are we going to slow down, stop using that pressure hose, cut our consumption?

The IPCC said in 2007 ‘that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages. The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use — almost 500,000 gallons per person.’ Serious water shortages in the US are predicted sooner than 2050, caused by ‘rising temperatures and evaporation rates, lack of rain, urban sprawl, waste and overuse.’
We usually take our potable water supply totally for granted, because we have not experienced for ourselves and cannot begin to imagine having to walk miles each day to carry back pitchers of water that is possibly dirty and harmful to drink. The chronic water shortages that hit parts of the South of England in the summer drought of 2006 provoked a positive response from customers to the requests to save water. This was almost certainly because the threat of water standpipes in the roads was seen as a real possibility that would affect us all directly and make our lives quite difficult.

The same principles could equally apply to any of the other resources that we hold dear to us or take totally for granted, such as food, fuel, power. I feel sure that we would be far more interested in being frugal with such commodities if we could only fully comprehend the real risk of us losing them by our inappropriate actions.
In the UK shock tactics have been used to change public opinion. Celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have both used powerful documentaries on prime time TV to drive home the message about unacceptable and cruel farming practices.
Do we need celebrities to make television programs or videos with shock tactics about every aspect of our lives before we will act responsibly as individuals? I hope not! Change needs to come from a change of heart, a sense of love and compassion and empathy, rather than by the use of shock tactics.



Someone said to me yesterday: “we cannot do anything at all about atrocities happening in other parts of the world except pray.” I was horrified! At the very least we can find out more about the many wonderful charities and other organizations that are working tirelessly in so many places to improve the lot of humankind, to relieve hunger and suffering and to provide education and support wherever needed. So many of us are very privileged. So many of us don’t really have to worry about where our next meal will come from, and we can take for granted our relative safety in our own secure homes and neighbourhoods. We may not be able to become directly involved with the work of aid agencies etc., but we can at least support them financially as well as in our prayers.

Let’s all do one extra compassionate act today.

Floods and Climate Change

Images on our TV screens showing the extent of the Queensland floods are almost unbelievable. Images of the Brazilian mud slides and the dreadful suffering and loss of human life there just add to the dismay we feel for the plight of all these people.

But we are struck by the greater potential for survival in Australia. It is a wealthier country of course, and the people are more able to build quality housing, that can better resist all that nature can throw at them. In Brazil, the dwellings are often of cheap construction, perched on the hills, often without planning permission, certainly much more vulnerable to natural disaster.

“We saw the distress that extreme weather can inflict in the 2005 devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Even those who cannot quite believe or accept the evidence for the part humankind may be playing in climate change cannot deny the extent of human suffering now seen on a global scale. This then becomes more than a debate on climate change. It becomes a matter of human compassion and justice. These injustices brew a potentially dangerous potion of civil unrest and worse. There is a social and moral imperative for us all to share everything, to watch out for each other, to work for global healing. I believe we can no longer ignore our global responsibilities.

It is also a great injustice that those countries with materially comfortable lifestyles are often least affected by the climate change that we now know is ‘very likely’ to have been brought about by our own profligate squandering of natural resources. The developed world has the resources to adapt most easily to any of the resultant climate change. It is the dispossessed and vulnerable in the poorer parts of the world who suffer disproportionately with hunger and disease and homelessness in the face of droughts, floods, tsunamis, and other natural disasters. The habitats of the poor are fragile, and they cannot afford to build defenses or replace their homes and livelihoods without our help. Does it matter whose fault, if any, it is?

Yes it does. There is actually enough productive capacity in the world to provide every living man woman and child with a decent basic way of life. It is important that we help communities become self sufficient for a better future. It is also imperative that we curb our own excesses, that we stop violating the natural world around us, that we acknowledge the integrity of our finely balanced ecosystems. Every time we drive one more animal or plant to extinction, not only are we poorer for that, but also the effect on the fragile balance of planetary life may be profound. That is why it is so important, and ever more urgent, that we do not compromise our future by today’s actions, or indeed through our inactions.

Huge disasters such as we are seeing now simply remind us of this.

The photo is from the cover of Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living by Nick Spencer and Robert White (Paperback - 1 Aug 2007)

Creation in Crisis; Christian Perspectives on Sustainability Part Two

I took this book to bed again last night and made significant inroads into its depths. It is so good, that today I have read much more of it and will be posting a review on Amazon soon.
Christian or not, we really do need to heed its message. After all, one argument often used by atheists against the need for religion is that there is no need of a faith or a God for them to have their own strong morals and ethics. We can, they say, be good without God.
OK, so the actions urged in this book have very strong ethical and moral support, albeit from Christian teachings. Any "good" atheist true to his own beliefs should also therefore find himself unable to ignore the reasoning in this book, founded very much on the scale of human suffering that will result from man's past actions exacerbated by the extent of any future inaction.

Sir John Houghton is currently Honorary Scientist of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the UK Meteorological Office, but his experience and qualifications as an eminent scientist over 40 years are immense. He of all scientists will most certainly know what he is talking about. He is also one of those many scientists, eminent and otherwise, who contrary to a common misperception, also feel able to have a faith, a religion. He is a Christian. And his own chapter in Creation in Crisis, Sustainable Climate and the Future of Energy, makes frightening reading indeed.

This is just a small snatch of part of his message for the climate change cynics:
"...it is only during the past century that increases in human population and the development of large-scale industry have begun to have widespread and severe effects on our climate...The change we are experiencing and which is rapidly growing is ...unsustainable because its impacts are largely adverse and will negatively affect our children and subsequent generations, many human communities (especially the poor and disadvantaged) and many ecosystems, which will experience great losses of species and biodiversity."
What adverse phenomena can we expect? The most worrying aspect is the projected rise in climate change refugees, displaced by a combination of flooding of their homelands, and extreme droughts, which will be longer and more severe as we advance into this century. A cautious estimate predicts that by 2050 there will be more than 150 million refugees, human tragedy on a vast scale. Where do they all go? How does the earth cope?
And no assessment on any other scientific topic, he assures us, has been so thoroughly researched and reviewed as the results of the IPCC's assessments and related reports.
Creation in Crisis reinforces the serious of climate change, looks in detail at all the causes, points to the possible solutions, and all within a Christian perspective. The overriding message is very clear. We have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and we have to act urgently. We also have to adapt to changes already happening, and unavoidable. We need to work on improved water defences, land management, water management, crop management, all to counter soil erosion, flooding, drought and heat. And we need a global cooperation. We also need the determination of us all, as encouraged and incentivised by governments. We need to work much more on energy efficiency, on developing non fossil fuels, on carbon capture and storage, and we need to act with a sense of urgency, akin to the mobilisation for war seen in 1941 by Roosevelt's government, or the British rally seen a couple of years earlier at the onset of World War Two.
Most of all, the book in its many and varied essays, emphasises the high level commitment and behavioural adaptations needed by you and I, now. For this to happen we have to really and truly understand, in our hearts and minds, that human well-being does NOT grow with economic growth, with consumerism and with excessive material comfort. This understanding MUST be promoted by the advertising industry and by those who guide and direct the economies of the nations.
There is so much good scientific fact, straight common sense and well reasoned ideas in this book. It is the very best from the finest scientific and theological minds. I can only say if you care at all about the future of this planet, about the future of your children and grandchildren, about the whole of humanity, (and ethically that must include us all) this book must be read; not only read, but recommended to others, and acted upon by all of us even if only in some small way, to start our own Ripple of Hope.
The photos by the way are off the book cover and attributed to Shutterstock. The refugees are crossing from DR Congo to Uganda. The car speaks for itself.



Here is a photo I took in the Nun's Valley in Madeira at the time of the Chestnut Festival held every November. This weather was exceptional for the area. The locals did not appear to have seen anything quite like it before. Clearly this was a part of the exceptional weather patterns resulting from climate change as predicted by the science and described by John Laughton.

Creation in Crisis; Christian Perspectives on Sustainability

How many books have to be written on the related issues of climate change, environmental sustainability and the growth economy before people sit up, take notice, accept the facts and do something to pay back the next generation for our own profligacies?
When I go to bed I rarely manage to read more than a page or two of a book, even a really good one, before sleep overcomes me. Some will envy me this gift - I know that a few of my friends struggle to sleep for most of the night, fall asleep in the early dawn and then wake up feeling lousy.
Last night for me was an exception from my normal pattern. I was reading Creation in Crisis; Christian Perspectives on Sustainability. An impressive cast of acknowledged experts in their fields, scientists and theologians, had got together for a workshop in the summer of 2008 at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, in Cambridge, UK. The purpose of this gathering was to explore the root causes of environmental unsustainability. Why, they asked, do we continue on a fast track to ultimate and total environmental degradation. Is it ignorance? Partly perhaps. Is it denial? Quite possibly. None of us want to give up our "comfortable" lifestyles for a perceived drop in standards of living. Is there procrastination? Almost certainly. And where does ethics come into the equation?
This book was born out of the cross fertilization of ideas at that event. And it is essential reading for all who really do want to change the world for the better. It brings together many essays, and explores possible solutions and ways forward, within a context of Christian thinking.
Then I started tossing and turning and could not sleep. Because I couldn't stop thinking over this question. So many excellent books have been written on the concerns we have about these issues. But the sad truth is that most people would rather bury their heads in the sand, ostrich style, and would rather be entertained than worried into action by stark facts, when of course there is room for both in our lives.
Witness also to this is the huge following of what I would call the frivolous blogs, clearly addressing only the here and now, against those blogs that try to be more serious about our perilous futures.
In the magazine of Christian Ecology Link, John Mead wrote in 2007 in an article Letting Loose Despair:
"What we in the rich countries are doing to people in poor countries, to future generations, and to the planet, is beyond all argument morally outrageous."

Come on everybody wake up!

Global warming and sustainable living - scientific evidence

Scientists issue open letter on climate change

Here is another valuable contribution from my favourite blog, planet thoughts. Here is a very clear and succinct explanation of the scientific process in general and more specifically the support for the view that we contribute to climate change. More than 200 members of the US National Academy of Sciences have spoken out and signed this open letter and it is a must read for all those who are climate change skeptics and who also believe that science can categorically prove that things are black or white. Of course science cannot do this, and this is the cause of much misunderstanding amongst the general public.

I have written on this very same theme myself not so long ago in this blog.

Sad that the comments on this letter so far on "planet thoughts" revolve around disputing the actual number of scientists involved! We all want to be clever all the time, to debate unceasingly, often displaying unhealthy pedantry, whilst the world continues towards destruction under our not so clever stewardship.

Global Warming, Peak Oil, Resource Depletion, and Sustainable Living

I don't know why on earth I didn't post this when I first found it in the course of my surfing. It is such an important  commentary from BBC Four in a film of four heavy weights in the environmental debate, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins and Richard Leakey. Watch them in serious discussion as to what we have to do to save our planet, threatened as it is by environmental catastrophe, alarmed by global terrorism and disfigured by global poverty. And these three are all inextricably linked.

I would urge anyone who shares my concerns for the future of the world to watch this film in full. It lasts one hour and some very powerful comments and observations are made. Indeed if you are still sceptical about climate change and environmental issues, it is even more important that you spare the time to watch the film. I have jotted down a few thoughts and ideas from the panel:  We must level the world's population, we must alleviate poverty, and in some way persuade the developing parts of the world that they should not yearn for what we have, as we indeed and at the same time must reduce the perception of our own needs.
Dr Jane Goodall reminded the panel that Costa Rica has abolished the military - and the money thus saved goes to social issues. If we all did that, she pointed out that all the world's problems would be solved!! But of course we have national boundaries and coveted resources and greed and fear.
David Attenborough emphasised the need for everyone to accept the natural world as precious.

The one glaring omission in my view is the unanimous failure to recognize any spiritual element in the solution - I guess perhaps hardly surprising with atheist polemicist Dawkins on the team.