A Tale of Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,
Link and I are working against the clock before he has to go to Copenhagen in December for the United Nations FCCC COP-15. What follows is a letter we have worked on to send out to all leaders, not only Indian, and to all newspapers and other forms of media. We need your help to get this letter into the Press in your area, in your country….Please copy it in its entirety, and let us know what comes of your efforts! We will post all successes, as well as send them on to the media team for the IYCN ( see letter below).

Dear Editor,
The following is an open letter to our leaders on behalf of the Youth of India. I am a member of the Indian Youth Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meeting in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I request you to kindly put this in the Editorial page, or in the Op-Ed section.
Thank you, Linkesh Diwan.
Address: D-607, M.A. Math
Amritapuri P.O.
Kollam D.T., 690 525, Kerala INDIA

The Letter:

Dear Leader,

Namaste. We are the Indian Youth Delegation representing the concerns of Indian Youth and many more to the United Nations COP-15 in December. Our group, selected from all over India by the Indian Youth Climate Network consists of a 20 member team. We come to you representing the youth and concerns of over 1.3 billion people in our country, 35% of whom are under age 15, and well over 500,000,000 are under 30.

We feel that India can lead the planet, setting an international example, as She simultaneously pursues meaningful development.

To this end, as the youth and for the unborn who are forced to live with the economic and environmental decisions that are made at Copenhagen in December, and by individuals every day, we would like to present our urgent concerns to you for presentation to the world community at the COP-15.

1. Leader-ji, our Mother India is literally covered in plastic wastes from Himachal, Arunachal and Kashmir to Kanya Kumari; from head to toe. Even in places where the use of disposable plastic bags at the check-out counter is banned, as in Himachal, the use of disposable plastic in nearly every facet of consumer products means an astronomical amount of waste. Plastic breaks down into toxic molecules whose chemical effects are devastating the human body and have been found everywhere, even in mother’s breast milk throughout the planet. 40% of all imported oil is used to make toxic plastic.

We want to see India leading the world in a strict policy preventing the use and production of disposable plastics.

We encourage you to demand this simple right for future generations, the right not to live in and with the plastic waste created by the last 6 generations; we encourage you to make a call for a national and planetary moratorium on disposable plastic usage.

2. Leader-ji, the lungs of the Earth are found in Her Trees and Forests. We want to see India leading the planet in halting deforestation and creating jobs in reforestation. Without healthy lungs, clean water, soils and clean air cannot take place or be found on the planet.

We encourage you to demand this right of all future generations to have the clean air and water that Nature intended for us, by calling for a national and planetary moratorium of any and all deforestation of existent forests and promoting reforestation and jobs in forest care and management.

3. Leader-ji, we need education that will enable us to meaningfully live in an over-populated world with tremendous human suffering at our doorsteps. We need education that will teach us how to clean up the planet, how to create and use technology that is applicable to our inheritance: the travesty of the natural creation and natural systems. We want to see India leading the world in using Her skilled scientists, Her engineers applying their education to find means to solve the toxic mess our planet is in. At the same time, out of the whole planet, our India has a unique culture, born of ethical thought and living. We do not see any other country having the high level of ethical human philosophy that India espouses.

We encourage you to call for education that takes these two facets, of living in our environmentally stressed world, and of making the right decisions for the good of all, no matter how difficult, into one curriculum.

4. Leader-ji, India has demonstrated that She has the capacity to engage in massive cooperation with righteous action. We want to see India leading the world in a one day a week moratorium on all polluting vehicles and industries, until industry and political agreements are able to bring down carbon emissions to pre-1960 levels or less.

We encourage you to call for our country and all countries to agree to participate in this world-wide moratorium on air pollution one blessed day a week.

5.Leader-ji, we want to see India’s development guided by ethics, Earth ethics. We want industry that takes into account environmental and ecological sustainability, human necessity and justification. The earth is running out of ‘raw resources’ to produce items to feed a consumer based mentality and media. Please demand the use of the Precautionary Principle of Development to guide India.

We encourage you to call for industrial development and production that is based upon ecological realities and actual need, not individual greed.

6. Leader-ji, we want adults to take control of media to ensure that it promotes ethical values, not immoral ones. Values that will promote and encourage ecologically ethical and sustainable life and human relations. Adults feel it is their right to enjoy immoral values, and currently thrust them into our faces against our will, by newspapers, billboards, movies, television and advertisements. Our childhoods are short, we want to make the best use of them to gain noble character qualities to help us cope and lead us through life. We demand our right not to be exposed to their thinking unless and until we seek it of our own.

7. Leader-ji, India does not need to be in the tragic mess She is in, with 50% of the world’s malnourished, the hungry and the poor. India has the resources herself to change things, the greatest resource is each and every Indian.

Leader-ji, without the participation of each individual, the destruction going on in the planet cannot be stopped. We urge you to demand democratic decision making power for all citizens beginning at the community level. We want to see our families and communities having power and control over the environments we are in and resources to create, and make political and economic decisions that effect us. We can do this through an ever widening circle of participatory democracy beginning at the level of neighbourhood parliaments.

Leader-ji, these are the calls for action by India’s Youth today for ourselves and the unborn for generations to come. We ask you to carry our concerns into every activity that your position causes you to undertake. Please, help us to help the Earth, and restore the balance of Nature through intelligent and sane decisions, respect for one another and humane ethics.

Linkesh Diwan,
Indian Youth Delegate to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7-18 December 2009.

www.iycn.in/aoc

Tomorrow Link gives a talk at a local university. As a team member he has tremendous responsibilities, not the least is raising funds for the whole team to get to Copenhagen. Another IYCN member has begun a well-publicized ‘green ride’ for one month, from Trivandrum throughout India. Link’s university, Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetham is hosting the cyclists on Saturday night.
President Nasheed, of the Maldives, a 1600 island country that is 1 meter above sea level, is a remarkable man, who used Gandhi’s ideals to change the government of country into a democratic one. In full support of IYCN, he is sending his personal secretary and attache to be part of the month long cycle run.
I am trying to be a useful secretary, as the work is really full-on, plus his college, exams coming, etc.
To this end, we want to open Anni’s Care Fund for your donations to help the Indian Youth Climate Network team of 20 souls get to Copenhagen. The estimated budget for each team member, including air-fare and ground expenses for 3 weeks of hectic activities is approximately $2200 per person.
As you all may recall, we had donated all the funds in Anni’s Care Fund to Amma in 2008 for scholarships for children in need. Since then, the account has had no activity.
We feel that this effort to influence the directions that the planet is going, is also part of Anni’s Care, particularly now, as she told me she is ‘that which communicates in the cell and between the cells’.
Hence we ask for your generous support and assistance in getting the team off the ground here. All money gathered in this effort before December 1, will be given to the IYCN coordinator for the team as a whole.
Thanking You,
Onward! Through the Fog! Let us all join hands and make it happen! For these Youth, for positive ethical ideals, for India, for the Planet! For us all!
Loving you,
Aunty Kamala