A Tale of Grace

posted by Link on Dec 15

Dear Friends,

This week an unprecedented 115 world leaders will convene in Copenhagen to forge a global agreement on climate change.  Thanks to the organizing efforts of citizens around the world, all of these decision makers will be in the same room.  As a global community, we need to ensure they make the right decisions.

The bad news is: there is only one week left and the climate negotiations are still deadlocked.

The good news is: this is our opportunity to shift the debate.

To our leaders:  Give us the deal we need for survival.  Give us the tools to transform our world.

Citizens around the world have the moral high ground. Let us not wait any longer.  We must unite and make the moral declaration that nothing short of an equitable science-based treaty is acceptable.

The science is clear.  The technological and social tools needed to reduce carbon pollution are ready.  The public is waiting .

Our governments are stalling.

We call for all people across the world, to join us in a global day of action on climate justice: Hunger for Survival.

People all over the world for one day will voluntarily go without food, drinking only water - on Thursday 17th December.

We call for moral leadership, from our world leaders:

• Reduce the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere to well below 350ppm as rapidly as possible
• Commit to end both fossil fuel use and deforestation, beginning with eliminating subsidies for these industries, wholly redirect them into renewable energy, reforestation and sustainable agriculture.
• Ensure protection for the world’s most vulnerable people by making adequate provisions for climate finance for developing countries to deal with the effects of climate change, and promote sustainable energy development  that is economically sound and consistent with science

While we demand that our governments act,  we also commit to examining our own lifestyles and priorities.
We want to break our habit of over-consumption. While others struggle world wide to meet basic needs, we challenge the idea that excess is virtuous.  We will us our daily economic and political choices to reward those who promote nourishing and life-sustaining policies, rather than those who abuse the planet and its people.

As we experience hunger this Thursday, our collective expression of devotion and self-sacrifice will send a strong signal to our leaders that we are united and ready to overcome these global challenges as one people.

We stand in solidarity with the millions who have and will lose their lives due to the preventable and involuntary hunger, disease and conflict resulting from climate change. Copenhagen is the moment, we all need to show leadership and courage.

History has shown the power of fasting. Gandhi used it as a tool to unseat the British Empire’s powerful grip over India. The American, English and Irish women suffragists used it to gain the right to vote.

On the day of our fast, world leaders will be presented with the names and stories of all the participants. Images and articles about your fasting will flood the international media. Your actions will clearly demonstrate that the time for political compromise is over.

Commit to join Hunger for Survival, the global day of fasting for climate justice, here.

You can also help to promote the day of fasting on Facebook!

With Love,

The ‘Hunger for Survival’ team - Anna, Sara and Paul, Deepa, Marcie, Madeline, Shadia and many others - supported by members of the International Youth Climate Movement present in Copenhagen.

P.S. Together we will be joining 3 courageous individuals who have been fasting for 42 days – supported by hundreds of others – in the lead up to these negotiations as part of the Climate Justice Fast! Their dedication and sacrifice is the inspiration for this ambitious project.

P.P.S. Many notable leaders in the climate justice movements, including author and activist Vandana Shiva, Former Prime Minister of Ireland Mary Robinson, Head of the UN World Food Programme Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of Greenpeace Kumi Naidoo, Naomi Klein and President of the Maldives Mohammed Nasheed will also be joining in this fast and moral call. Click here to see the list of participating leaders.

And promote the event on Facebook by joining our event page.

posted by Kamala on Dec 15

By P.K. Willey, Ph.D. Copyright 2009.

Today, the Climate Justice Fast has entered its 40^th day, the timespan of Jesus Christ’s legendary 40 days of fasting and prayer in the desert. For the Climate Justice Fasters, the Fast has been a public penance, an act of atonement on behalf of humanity and a call for awakening. This article examines the Climate Justice Fast in light of the criterion that Gandhi held out as being indispensable for its deepest and greatest societal success: a necessary moral atmosphere.

Public awakening has been phenomenonal. December 12^th’s peaceful protest march saw the size of the crowd that swelled to over 100,000 people. They marched from Copenhagen City to the doors of the Belle Center. The people of the Earth have been touched. Nature smiled with blue skies and sun, the first in over 15 grey, cloudy days in Copenhagen.

Yet, in the Bella Center where the negotiations are taking place there has not been much progress. Plantations of mono-species tree crops have been confused with Forests. Development has long been confused with industrial development using the capitalist model. The rich nations are willing to make deals as long as the new markets for green technology, remain in their hands for exploiting and profiting, and as long as we all agree that to become part of the failing model of development for human civilization upon Earth is a necessity. No one, it appears is allowed to question the basic premise of the engines driving this development – greed and the need to sequester greed.

Why is there so much confusion on things that are so common sense?

As an official UN observer, I note that there is a moral crisis here that has crept up upon us, unawares, that we must look at.

Consider the following:

An Olympic sports competitor will be disqualified from participating in the games if drugs are found in his blood or urine. If substances used within 3 days - 6 weeks are picked up, he is disqualified from competing. He is representing his country at the games, its considered important that his body be clean for them. That he be fully prepared, alert and capable, of giving it his best shot.

Yet, people who are here at the UNFCCC COP-15 to make decisions that affect the lives of millions and billions of people, have no such qualifications. In fact, alcohol is served to the official party delegates freely. We do not check their psychological qualifications, nor their medications and personal substance abuse habits, including tobacco.

Every evening, and even at lunchtime, at the COP-15, wine and beer are served and the party delegates grow ‘happy’ together.

It has been found that alcohol removes water from the brain and impairs neural functioning. It is hard to say for each individual, how long, after a glass of wine, it will take for their brains to be at optimum functioning levels again.

We should carefully consider if it is possible that part of the reason for the confusion on commonsense definitions, visions and other issues is due to these abuses and other issues that impair delegates from being able to take in the information that over 100,000 people walked to their door to give them on Saturday? That over 500,000,000 signatures requesting a just and sustainable deal here at the COP attest to? That 1000’s are in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fast undertaking physical penance in some form all around the planet?

Holy Mother Amma has commented that, “A government alone cannot do anything without the sincere and whole hearted cooperation of the people. For this to happen, it should be a government which works in accordance with the will and wishes of the people who love Nature. This again demands support from political leaders and government officials. They should not just be a group of people who ar craving money and position. Their aim should be the upliftment of the country and its people. A great deal will be achieved if they are people endowed with a selfless and universal outlook in their judgment.” (Amritanandamayi, Mata. (1994, 2000) Man and Nature. p.36-37.)

At present, in all governments, it is the hand of business and money that guides government’s governing. The results are in. Billions are hungry and suffering. Human misery is unprecedented.

Gandhi observed that: “For a fast, too, a certain atmosphere is necessary.” (CWMG 40:407 May 19, 1929. Age 59)

This atmosphere must be one that has become subtle, that is, full of awareness. This awareness is an awareness of Truth, of Oneness, of the Love that holds our very atoms together in the mutual attraction of components. It is an awareness of the moral fibers that sustain the universe. Gandhi saw the use of the Fast as essential to the refinement of his person and mind in relation to this awareness.

“I must undergo personal cleansing. I must become a fitter instrument able to register the slightest variation in the moral atmosphere about me. My prayers must have much deeper truth and humility about them than they evidence…there is nothing so helpful and cleansing as a Fast accompanied by the necessary mental co-operation.” (CWMG 22:419. February 16, 1922. Age 52.)

The media has played an unwitting role in the degradation of human values and human civilization, espousing actions and behaviors that are damaging to the human organism and the human psyche. This is the atmosphere that our Youth have also grown up in. Media’s role is more insidious and penetrating to our psyches that we can imagine. Our education has served politics and power, not each other, not the Earth not ethics of Justice and Love. Contemporary public media has married the ugly hands that drive political power.

Gandhi noted: “I Fasted to reform those who loved me. You cannot Fast against a tyrant.” (Tendulkar,~D.G., Mahatma, the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, p.156.)

Interestingly, none of the Climate Justice Fasters watch television.

Holy Mother Amma has commented:

“The foremost dharma [righteous duty] of the media is to find and express the beauty in human life and nature. Only the true and auspicious can lead us to real beauty. The media should not just cater to what people like; they should also aim to do what is good and beneficial for them. We should offer people…[ethically] based entertainment and knowledge. Only through them can we behold Truth and beauty. (Matruvani 16:11 July 2005, p.4 Amma’s Message.)

Our Youth have had their minds and bodies polluted, along with the Earth, by going along with and being inducted into the short-sighted and blind goals of media. Holy Mother Amma has commented that whereas before, youth were the breath of life to the Earth, now they are like flowers in the bud stage, infected with worms. They have become confused in many ways, yet, there is one thing that unites them, the perilous prospects of their future on a planet with damaged natural systems, limited purity left, and unbridled greed towards what is left on Earth.

In such an atmosphere, the Climate Justice Fast has been held.

The Climate Justice Fast has been an urgent call, a loud strum in the dark, on the string of moral fibre present in everyone. Not all have been able to feel it within them nor respond to it, nor even understand it. Yet, it has cleared the dross out of the way for millions, to understand the urgency, to realize we are united across all borders.

Gandhi said:

“A Fast is not remedy in every situation. It is only one of the many ways available for self purification. The highest degree of purity is achieved only by gaining control over one’s thoughts. In the final analysis, such purity is the only true purity.” (CWMG 31:231 July 29, 1926. Age 56. To S.)

The Climate Justice Fast has sounded the call for the reestablishment of ethical life. The tremendous penance of Anna Keenan, Sara Svensson, Daniel Lau and Matthieu Balle, the grueling days that they have lived through here in the Belle Center, at the heart of the COP-15, will have powerful effects world wide, for they have been heard by the Truth that sustains the Universe, they have touched the Love that holds the atoms together.

The Climate Justice Fast has succeeded as far as it can in the environment and moral atmosphere that is present now upon the Earth.

The work of Youth has just begun. We must go out and continue the touch of the Climate Justice Fast, reaching out to one and all, spreading awareness of our unity, the Truth that faces us, and why the systems we have been educated into following don’t work for us, for the Earth, for our survival. The time for protest against tyranny and inhumanity is over. We can no longer wait for our leaders to lead. We have to gather ourselves together, and start to reclaim the Earth piece by piece with our own cooperative means and methods, for the people and by the people, with intelligent agriculture and farming methods, with fair distribution and consideration of each other. We have to start rebuilding our communities, and clear our minds and bodies of the pollutions that we have been indoctrinated into seeking and receiving.

Now is the time for ethical reconstruction of our human civilization, based upon our unity, refinding our purity, as Life has intended, so that we can respond Truthfully to the Great Mother that sustains us all. As we begin this mighty and yet truly simple task, everything else will fall into its rightful place.

posted by Link on Dec 13

Today, Nobel Laureat Reverend Desmond Tutu presented more than half a million signatures on the “Countdown to Copenhagen” petition to Mr Yvo de Boer, in a function held at the City Square, in Copenhagen.

Despite temperatures hovering around zero, a huge croud of people clapped and cheered as Reverend Desmond Tutu entered the stage.  Reverend Tutu delivered a rousing speach.  Liking the climate campaigns to the protests against the Berlin Wall and the marches against apartheid, Reverend Tutu said that we must carry on “demonstrating, and the injustice of climate change will end.”

Leading the crowd in calling “NO to the injustice of climate change,” he stated the position of non-annex 1 countries simply and sweetly: “Ok, Ok, we [non-annex 1] want to develop.  But we don’t want to develop the way in which you [Annex 1] developed, causing the ozone layer to thin, causing droughts, causing floods… but it will cost a little money.”

With comedy and poignancy, Reverend Tutu touched on the amazing disparities in the pledges of support made by Annex 1 nations, and their expenditures in other arenas.  While Annex 1 nations have forwarded a draft text that pledges 2 billion dollars of money to the adaptation fund, “just think of the billions and billions that is being spent on arms… the billions they are paying to destroy their brothers and sisters.”

Reminding us that we are on the winning side, that we have Right on our side, that we have Justice on our side, and that God is on our side, Reverend Tutu expressed our campaign as a prayer to God, us saying “Come on God, Do something!  Well God says ‘Yea, I will do something, and I will have all of you be my partners, working with me, to make this a better world.’”

“You and I are going to make this world a better place for all of us… We are sisters and brothers, we belong to one family, the human family.”

Reverend Tutu expressed that God must be happy with us in Copenhagen: here are people finally doing something good!

The contents of the petition requires developed nations to reduce their emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by year 2050, limit temperature rise worldwide to a maximum of 2 degrees celsius, and all nations to c

reate a legally binding framework in Copenhagen, at the COP15.

Concluding his speech, Desmond Tutu called out to politions to join the winning side, and make this world a place of joy, laughter, without hunger and poverty.  After all, he pointed out, if we loose, there is no survival for any of us!

After his speech, Desmond Tutu was met by Yvo de Boer onstage, to deliver the 512894 signatures on the “Countdown to Copenhagen: Time for Climate Justice” petition to him.

“On behalf of all of the people of the world, on behalf of all of these wonderful people, we

say, this is the number of people who signed, and say they know you are a smart man.  You are, aren’t you?  Well you persuade them to be sensible like you.”

In his acknowledgement speech, Yvo de Boer said that 40% on 1990 levels was a little too modest, that he believed that 80% was achievable.  Pragmatically, he then adressed the crowd, telling us that if this is to happen, we need to make our polititions know that it is what we want, we need to make it ourselves.

The function was followed by a live concert by Outlandish.  I’ve never heard of them before, and though I’m not a fan yet, I would like to hear more of their music.