Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/ecological-transformation/page/8/)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.’s panel on climate science said Sunday. The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s giant climate assessment didn’t offer any surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three earlier reports released in the past 13 months.
Editor’s note: The following is a note from the radio and tv show Democracy Now
As voters in Oregon and Colorado head to the polls next week to decide if they support labeling laws for genetically modified organisms, on Tuesday we will be joined by Sheldon Krimsky to discuss his new book, The GMO Deception: What You Need to Know about the Food, Corporations, and Government Agencies Putting Our Families and Our Environment at Risk. The book has a forward by Ralph Nader and is a compilation of thought-provoking essays by leading scientists, science writers and public health advocates who, in their writing, explore the social, environmental and moral consequences of GMOs. You can read the introduction below. Sheldon Krimsky is professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University as well as an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health and Family Medicine at the Tufts School of Medicine. Krimsky is also a board member of the Council for Responsible Genetics.
Tired of fake organic food and phony eco-forestry lumber? Get ready for recreational marijuana –
brought to you by Monsanto Corporation!
By Paul Cienfuegos, published October 20, 2014
I am really worried that the social movement to legalize recreational marijuana is going to end up being taken over by giant agricultural corporations, like monsanto, if the folks who are leading these legalization efforts don’t start paying a lot more attention – and soon – to the problem of constitutional so-called “rights” for corporations. In fact I think it’s inevitable. At this point, there is nothing to stop corporations like monsanto from growing and selling genetically modified marijuana, because the folks who are writing our marijuana legalization laws are not paying attention to the very real difference between actual human persons and corporate persons, and who gets to play.
I’d start The Big Picture with a frame showing the earth: from every spot on it zillions of people reach their hands toward what they imagine heaven to be and shout to the God they believe in: “Please God, please universe, give us a world in which love, kindness, generosity, caring for each other, and caring for the earth have replaced violence, wars, economic and social injustice, and environmental destructiveness.”
After that prayer, someone says, “What has God done for me lately? To hell with God. Why should I believe in a God that doesn’t deliver for me?” And suddenly the zillions of people fall silent, withdrawing into their own private isolation, despairing that their prayers and actions could ever make a difference. The film thus opens into the planet-destroying phase of human history in which people actually know that they are collectively destroying the life-support system of the earth but feel there’s no point in doing anything but maximizing their own advantage because they cannot believe that others will ever act from anything more than selfish motives. How did we get here?
Dear friends,
The People’s Climate March on Sunday, September 21, in New York City will be the largest demonstration yet for climate sanity. We hope you can join us there that day. Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) have been working in coalition with hundreds of other groups to make this important event an impactful assembly of those who do not want to stand by passively while our global environment is being destroyed. We at the NSP believe that there are three things that can be done right now to begin the process of preventing global environmental disaster:
1. Plan local and national demonstrations to call attention to the urgency of the problem
2.
Contrary to public opinion, Christianity is an animist religion that celebrates the enfleshment of God in many forms. Sometimes, the Spirit is a dove!
The fossil fuel companies aren’t normal companies. In the last few years we’ve come to understand that they have five times as much carbon in their reserves as we can safely burn if the world is to meet its agreed climate target of limiting rises in temperature to below 2 degrees. That is to say, if they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks. What this means in turn is that if you hold these stocks you in effect are wagering that the planet will do nothing to limit climate change.
On the morning of January 9, 2014, Charleston residents noticed that the air smelled like licorice and that the water tasted like it too. Inspectors soon traced the odor and taste to a chemical storage facility owned by a company called Freedom Industries. There, near the bank of the Elk River, inspectors discovered that a 48,000-gallon tank was leaking an industrial chemical called MCHM (methylcyclohexane methanol) used to cleanse coal.
It’s time to join in a campaign to Move Our Money/Protect Our Planet—a spiritually rooted, strategically focused plan of action on the climate crisis!
by Antonio González and George S. Johnson
As we enter an age of ecological catastrophe, we need new theologies. Political campaigns are not enough—we need to rethink our place in the world.
Thad Williamson reviews Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda.
by Joel Magnuson, Lester R. Brown, and James Gustave Speth
I call this Love’s Rebellion—a refusal to accept the ethos of materialism and selfishness as the ultimate truth of our lives, an insistence on seeing the goodness in others, and a determination to replace “power over” with caring for each other and the earth! It’s time now to give Love’s Rebellion a political platform. And to make that happen, we need your help to push these issues into the public sphere. The most effective way to help introduce a spiritual progressive voice is for you to build a caucus in your union, professional organization, church, synagogue, mosque, political party, or run for some sort of office.
Scorching heat, floods, and wildfires are not just environmental crises—they’re social ones too. We need a Left that sees the primacy of this threat.