A New Years Eve Message December 31, 2014 at 6:51pm I will begin by thanking the Great I Am for His mercy,guidance, and protection. His requirement of the human life is to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly, mind fully aware of Him each and every day. The standard, the measuring stick, I hold others to is the very one He holds me to, so my daily struggle is within my own heart to live in right relation with those around me. I fall far from my own standard most days therefore I continue onward on my own journey seeking His mercy, guidance and protection. Another year draws to a close. As I take time to reflect on the last twelve months, I am filled with a deep sense of duty to try to capture in words my understanding of the times within which I have been born. Over my lifetime, I have seen many changes and stand as witness to how the corrupted actions of man have resulted in widespread injustice both near and far. The greed and ego-driven show disdain for the poor – those driven by arrogance and pride, with much excess of food, “stuff” and prosperous ease - close their hearts and homes to those in need. We may have “developed” a “civilization” that can turn uranium into bombs and energy, build slaughter houses that can kill thousands of animals a day, build factories that can package endless toys in wrap made from oil products, and have airplanes that can fly to every corner of our world….but, we have not taken that same level of the application of sacred knowledge and focused it on how to make every homefire, every family, self-sustaining. In fact, over the last five hundred years, this global colonial system has accomplished the opposite – it has stolen lands and “resources” from tribal peoples all over the world and made all peoples dependent sheep, slaves to a global economic, political and military force that today in many parts of our world prepares to turn itself against the people. The challenge before the human family is to undergo a transformation on a global scale: the transformation must occur on key dimensions: 1. local autonomy & livelihood/local sustainability (from globalization to localization/tribal autonomy), 2. relationships/sacredness of relations (the social challenge), 3. governance/personal sovereignty (the political challenge), 4. subduing ego/serving others & becoming human again (the moral & ethical challenge) In Search of Justice I began 2014 overwhelmed by a strong sense of the urgency to create awareness of climate change and the reality of global warming. On December 31, 2013, August was still fresh in my memory: the month in 2013 when it was confirmed that the Tundra had begun to melt and indeed the northern regions of so-called Canada experienced the largest widespread warming event in modern history. Since 1980, Arctic sea ice has been steadily reducing - from 7M sq km to less than 3.5M. The significance of this event being that below the shield of snow and ice lies permafrost and with each successive warming event the thawing goes deeper into the upper layers of the earth where below the surface greenhouse gasses up til now have remained frozen, and, if released, will make the global reckless burning of fossil fuels child’s play. Permafrost covers about 24% of the Northern Hemisphere and, as this layer continues to thaw, the ratio of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) changes from 10:1 to 1:1 - more and more methane will be released. Methane is 33X more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century timescale relative to carbon dioxide (December 30, 2014 LINK: news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/24-7-News-Archive/2014/April/Permafrost-thawing-could-accelerate-global-warming). So, last New Year’s Eve, I was deeply troubled that this global warming event went below the radar of mainstream news reports. Instead the main stories of all mainstream media of the last months of 2013 were focused on the “economic” opportunity that the Arctic melting would bring to so-called Canada’s “economic prosperity: with less ice over the Arctic Ocean, oil and gas companies would now be able to construct oil rigs below the surface of the ocean and begin to extract the millions of “oil reserves” that prior to this point in history were inaccessible. THIS insanity was the headlines across this “great” country despite the recent disaster and horrific images of the BP spill off the coast of Florida. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing an oil spill that became the worst environmental disaster in US history: It took BP until September19th (87 days) to finally stop the leaking of the oil out of this out-of-control deepwater well that, by this time, has spewed over 200M gallons of crude oil into the bottom of the ocean floor of Gulf of Mexico. To this day, marine life has not recovered and there are clear signs that the poisons from the spill are now within the foodchain of the area and that the spill has left irreversible destruction. Over 16,000 total miles of coastline have been affected, including the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and oil is still washing up on shores, which no doubt will cause long-term health and well-being issues for all life living in the area. But this spill wasn’t the worse oil spill to occur within our beautiful world’s oceans. Among the worse of the worse: - Ixtoc in Mexico 1979: 3.3M barrels; - Gulf War 1991: over 5.7M barrels. Then, of course, the Exxon Valdez spill off the shores of Alaska in 1991: 260K barrels of black poison.... What is justice? Is it not doing what is right? Surely our collective social conscience need not over-complicate such a simple measure with over-complicated answers. Common sense – that innate ability to see the difference between what is right and wrong – surely tells each of us that this widespread global destruction is not right? Can each of us not see and understand that any reckless exploitation of lands, sea/fresh waters, and air that results in widespread devastation is not right and therefore it cannot be just. At what point must this moral question become part of today’s dialogue? Each of the last three decades have been warmer than all preceding decades since 1850 and the first decade of the 21st century has been the warmest. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 40% since pre-industrial time (and is higher than it has been for the last 800K years) primarily as a result of human activity. As Ice caps melt, more of the sun’s energy is absorbed into ocean and land surfaces, and warmer oceans have significantly impacted global climate patterns. A Local Response to a Global Challenge The world is in desperate need of a collective response that may yet avert the worse case scenarios from unfolding. Substantial wide-ranging impacts are being felt across the world and are impacting: ▪ freshwater reserves ▪ ecosystems ▪ human health ▪ agriculture The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent report details the findings of scientists around the world and continues to call out to human societies around the world to take immediate action: ▪ Climate change poses a significant risk to human societies around the world; ▪ Climate change poses significant risk to food security in the future and is impacting both land and ocean creatures. In the scenario where there is an organized effort to reduce emissions and rapid “adaptability” occurs, local societies will do better than those who do not adapt. What is needed are: 1. Resources - people, knowledge, financial 2. Appropriate governance models 3. Effective leadership from individuals In my humble opinion, climate justice is social justice. And taking steps to address local sustainability is not only addressing climate change, it will move human societies towards a more humane, just and fair world. So many times, I have been humbled by the words of the young people in my life. I have had the privilege to be a teacher during this period of great social change and transformation. What an honour it has been to be one who brings new knowledge, who shares stories, who challenges those coming after me to rise up to the challenges before us. I pray that the seeds I have planted bear fruit. Much of the extreme weather our beautiful world is now experiencing is attributed to the global shifts that have occurred. The Jet streams, the Westerlies, may now be wind patterns of the past. It is expected that some parts of our world will likely have little to no wind indefinitely while others will become vortices of extreme powerful wind events that will occur more frequently and more violently. Sea levels are now on an unstoppable rise and all coastal areas at extreme risk over the short to medium term. The rate of climate change is only being cautiously predicted. Perhaps it’s just as well given how asinine today’s dialogue about climate change is around most kitchen tables. Climate change, like the debate over cigarettes and cancer, is over. There is no debate anymore. It is real. It is now and it is unfolding in real time around the world. Just look out your window wherever you are. And yet, everywhere I go, I still have to engage in “debates” with ignorant individuals and try to convince people that climate change is REAL. Looking Forward As this year draws to a close, I ask myself what if the reality of the climate crisis were recognized for what it truly is? What then would be the response? Social collapse? Widespread panic? Or, perhaps, within the challenges of surviving this crisis/chaos we, the people, would rediscover what at one time we always knew: we need each other much more than we need “things”. We were created to care one for one another and are part of an interconnected circle of the larger circle of all life. And here, in these circles, rather sink into a dark divided world of chaos and cataclysmic end, instead we would re-invent ourselves, our homes, our communities, into havens for the lost, the broken, the enslaved. Here, within these circles, we would rebuild from the ashes of a sick and corrupted world, places where our new journey begins. It is, afterall, during times like these that heros are born. May the Creator of all life be with you and yours this NewYear’s Eve. May He be our guide and take us to a place where we can be safe. I wish all of you a very, very Happy New Year that is shown great mercy, guidance, and protection. Respectfully, Thunder Sky Waiting
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:53:51 +0000