Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/environment-politics/page/4/)
About efforts to treat the environment as sacred, to save species and ecosystems. Biophilia.
We need to clean up our act in the U.S. We need to pollute less – and this means stopping our production and consumption of dirty and dangerous energy (natural gas, oil, coal, tar sands and nuclear). That’s the biggest issue.
Between five and seven jurists of high standing in international human rights law will hear testimony before deciding whether sufficient evidence exists to indict certain nation states on charges of “failing to adequately uphold universal human rights as a result of allowing unconventional oil and gas extraction in their jurisdictions.”
We cannot escape our destiny and it is divine. It will perhaps happen during our lifetime and we all have a part to play in it if we will but surrender to what is deepest within us: a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness or, as Emerson wrote, “The thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite”.
We think of parks as a sensible response to urbanization and industrialization and of conservation as a logical solution to destruction of resources. Yet why were Congregationalists so interested in these issues? How did their religious values shape these movements?
The Clergy Climate Letter provides one way for people of faith to rally around common moral and religious values centered on earth stewardship and care for creation.
“Low carbon” and “no carbon” energy and energy efficiency should be paid for by abolishing war. Lawrence is right to insist that the U.S. should view problems and conflicts created by climate change as “opportunities to work together with other nations to mitigate and adapt to its effects.” But the madness of conquest must end before any such coordinated work will be possible.
The world needs Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems now. They are the most-efficient, utility-scale, renewable-energy-producing technologies known. The U.S. and countries throughout the world must seize this opportunity.
Pope Francis believes that our generation is very much involved in “the pains of childbirth” as we try to learn anew how to cooperate with the Creator, that “God … can also bring good out of the evil we have done” (80) since the Holy Spirit is so powerfully creative. There lies his hope and ours, that we can change our ways, that we are endowed with immense intelligence and creativity, that if we pull out of denial and away from destructive economic systems and relationships and beyond a dulled consciousness anything is possible. Or, I might add, citing eco-philosopher David Orr, “Hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up.” We can go to work, and we must.
Technology has become a cipher for the collective anxieties of a society in the throes of florid death denial. Even though we think we “cheat death” and “steal time,” the piper always demands his due, and the price is the return of the repressed. Technology isn’t the death of Spirit; it is its efflorescence. The choice is ours, to embrace or deny. And we already know the price of denial.
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports and fireworks while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is a net loss.