Reactions to Reactions to COP15 after a News Fast

19. December 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: america, climate, climate change, daily life, green, politics, struggles

Essentially, I’ve been on a news fast for about a month and a half.  I’ve avoided the news like the plague.  It’s not that I don’t want to be informed but that I went into a kind of information overload.  All the news is bad news – everyone knows that.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t make headlines.  Recently, I went through my RSS reader and marked thousands of articles read.  I have never been able to keep up with all the articles from the various  sources that I subscribed to, but I also never had thousands of unread articles – yes thousands.  By avoiding the news, I have managed to live a somewhat more peaceful life – though not as peaceful as I’d expected.  The news creeps in – like dust in the house – and it has an impact.

I’ve had a strong interest in protecting the environment since I was a teenager, but the interest had faded over time as I got older and had other concerns – like figuring out how to make a living.  My interest in the climate was really re-ignited about two years ago after seeing Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth over the summer.   The film resonated with me strongly, but not quite moved me to significant action.  In December of that year, the leaves on the trees still had not fallen to the ground and it was 70F.  I knew something was seriously wrong at that time and began researching the whole Climate Scene.

I’ve read a number of books, follow a few blogs and websites, and have at times scoured the mainstream media for articles related to the environment.  Very often, I find myself quite angry with both the mainstream media and the activists.  The mainstream media often gets their facts wrong, misrepresents data, and bows to the interests of industry.  At least it seems that way – sometimes I wonder if its simply that they have to edit so heavily to fit things in their alloted space that important details get cut.

The activists, on the other hand, spout facts as if they were handed down from god.   They get indignant.  They get irritated.  They focus on their losses rather than their triumphs.  This is sad.  This message, ultimately turns people off.

I’d been very interested in COP15 this year and had followed a lot of the news surrounding the summit over the summer.  I did not pin my hopes and dreams on it because I know that there are a lot of interests and most of those interests are not in line with my own and are not in line with the health of the planet.  Then I stopped taking in news.  By the time COP15 rolled around, I couldn’t bring myself to follow the news.

I tuned in this morning.  So much of the news about COP15 is negative.  So much energy focused is on what we didn’t achieve (we being folks concerned about the environment).  There is significant backlash against Obama’s “deal” with China, India, Brazil and South Africa.   I understand all the arguments – that this breaks the UN model, that these nations are only in it to protect their own interests, etc…

But isn’t it significant that a year ago the US had a president who refused to look at the science and actively denies that climate change is a real problem?  Haven’t we come a long way in the US in just one year?  Maybe not as far as we’d like, but aren’t we on the right path?

Shouldn’t we celebrate this fact (that we have a leader who is intelligent and at least interested in climate change as a reality) as a victory instead of bemoaning the losses?

To do:

08. November 2009 · 4 comments · Categories: Buddhism, climate, climate change, culture, daily life, environment, green, mr. grey, mrs. tkd, science, struggles, thoughts

Sedona, AZ

The list of things I should be doing today is probably too long to post, and I’m not feeling up to them anyway.  So instead I’ll post the few things that I plan to do today instead.

  1. Go to a bookstore to explore books on systems thinking and Buddhism.
  2. Hit the grocery store and pickup milk so that there is some here when Mrs. TKD and Mr. Grey get back tomorrow.
  3. Ruminate on the following thoughts from Andrew Brown in the UK’s Guardian and how they are interrelated with Dr. Kaza’s book Mindfully Green:

Climate change …  is a global tragedy of the commons, individual action cannot be enough. I cannot ensure the survival of my grandchildren, nor even yours, without compelling you to behave in ways that science tells me are necessary. Not to act, not to coerce, itself becomes immoral.

…

Compulsion will be needed but compulsion alone won’t do it. People aren’t made like that. They need to believe in what they are forced to do. They need idealism, and that will also mean its dark side: the pressure of conformism, the force of self-righteousness, huge moral weight attached to practically useless gestures like unplugging phone chargers. They need, in fact, something that does look a lot like religion. But we can’t engineer it. It can only arise spontaneously. Should that happen, the denialists, who claim that it is all a religion, will for once be telling the truth, and when they do that, they’ll have lost. I just hope it doesn’t happen too late. (Andrew Brown)

350.org – Worth Your Support

07. November 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: america, climate, climate change, creativity, culture, daily life, environment, good things, gratitude, green, health, hope, noise, science, smiles, struggles, thoughts, work

As I write this, my neighbors are running their gas-powered leaf blowers. (I confess to having not one but two such devices in my shed.) I am wondering how I will handled the leaves this year. There are literally thousands of leaves in the lawn. In the past, I’ve used the heavy artillery of the leaf blower to deal with them. The leaf blower runs on a 2-cycle engine, which means that it literally burns oil mixed with gasoline. It’s not good for the environment on a number of levels: Carbon Emissions being the first and noise pollution being the second.

After reading Dr. Kaza’s book this week, I’m seriously considering handling the leaves differently, perhaps with a rake instead of the leaf blower. It would be another step down a greener path in life.

I stumbled upon this video below at No Impact Man’s blog. It struck me and I need to share it.

On 24 October, people in 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for action on the climate crisis. To make this global call to action count, it must be impossible to ignore. (http://www.350.org)

You must read this book

06. November 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: advertising, america, climate, climate change, culture, daily life, environment, good things, green, health, hope, politics, reading, science, slowing down, smiles, struggles, thoughts

Only in rare instances, have I read a book cover to cover in less than 24 hours.  These instances are usually marked by three things: having a lot of time on my hands, having few distractions in my immediate environment, and having a book that I find absolutely compelling.  This was the case with Mindfully Green by Stephanie Kaza.  I’ve been meaning to read it since I saw it in the hands of one of the teenage lifeguards at our pool over the summer.  I picked it up from the store on Wednesday of this week but did not being reading it until about 1:00 PM yesterday.  (I’m sure of the time because I was waiting in a courtroom for a case to be heard.  I was dismissed as a witness in the case thankfully and won’t be needing to go back.)

I read a lot on issues related to the environment.  On average, I’d estimate that a good 70% of what I read either in print or on-line has to do with the environment.  Much of the current “green” hype is just that, manic greenwashing in an attempt to catch part of the wave that Al Gore unleashed with his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth.  Sometimes though you find a real gem.  Dr. Kaza’s book is one of those gems.

The book approaches environmental activism from a Buddhist perspective of following a green path, rather than simply making small yet important changes.  The intention is to move the reader from the current vogue of green to a more holistic approach to caring for the environment.  The discussion is split into three parts:  Seeking Green Principles, Following the Green Path, and Acting on Green Values.

While I am not well schooled in Buddhist traditions, I found this book to be fascinating on a number of levels.  First it challenged some of my assumptions about life.  For example, in a discussion of systems thinking, Dr. Kaza introduced the concept that human beings are part of a larger system and also a system of systems themselves.  As such, the Western notion of free will becomes questionable.  The argument is not that individuals do not make their own decisions, but that by virtue of the fact that we are part of a larger interconnected system we are influenced by external forces that have impact on our decisions.

More »

Today is World Food Day

16. October 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: america, charity, climate change, cooking, daily life, environment, family, food, giving back, good things, gratitude, green, health, hope, politics, slowing down, smiles, struggles, tragedy

As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I love food.  I spend a great deal of my free time cooking, often as a form of stress relief.  Even this morning, I was thinking about how I’m going to make some chicken corn soup this afternoon to go with this dreary, cold, grey, and wet day we’re having here in Maryland.  I’ve had a long week and neglected some important things while attending to my work.  So, today, I’m taking it a bit more slowly and I’ve spent a few minutes looking at some of my favorite websites and catching up on some social networks.

I came across this from one.org on twitter:

The ONE Blog Food Security in Focus series brings issues of

security & agriculture into sharp detail. Keep an eye

out:http://bit.ly/3sWA9t

about 1 hour ago from web

I usually spend some time each week keeping abreast of topics related to organic agriculture, food safety, and food security, as part of my general interest and concern for the overall health of the globe.  Since I’ve been so busy, I hadn’t realized that today, October 16th, is World Food Day.  World Food Day was first celebrated in 1981 to recognize the founding of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization on Oct. 16th 1945 and to increase awareness and inspire action to solve global hunger.

In this day and age there really is no reason for people anywhere in the world to go hungry.  The US grain belt produces enough grain to feed the world, but due to politics this food never reaches people who need it.  Some of it goes to feed animals unhealthy diets which result in unhealthy meat at the dinner table. Some of it goes to produce “alternative” and “clean” fuel intended to replace oil – this fuel is neither alternative or clean because it requires signficantly more gallons of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.  Some of it, and this is probably the most egregious point, simply sits and rots.

Today, I’m going to be mindful of my good fortune – I was born in the US and have never had to worry about a meal in my life.  But I’m also going to start on an annual tradition that Mrs. TKD and I have been doing for a few years – planning for and purchasing the fixings for a thanksgiving meal for a local family in need.

It’s a start.

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