Thursday 30 November 2017

Donald Trump: purveyor of hate called out by Theresa May

Donald Trump wrong to share far-right videos - PM


Theresa May and Donald TrumpImage copyrightPA
Image captionDonald Trump met Theresa May at the White House in January

It was wrong for US President Donald Trump to retweet videos posted by far-right group Britain First, Downing Street has said.
Mr Trump shared three posts by the group's deputy leader, including unverified footage purporting to show Muslims committing crimes.
Theresa May's spokesman said Britain First used "hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions".
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn called the retweets "abhorrent" and "dangerous".
Britain First was founded in 2011 by former members of the far-right British National Party (BNP).
The group has grabbed attention on social media with controversial posts about what it deems "the Islamification of the UK".

Tuesday 28 November 2017

Peacemakers invade an American defence facility in Australia and stand trial



An American Spy Base Hidden in Australia’s Outback

The Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap, photographed in 2014. Born at the height of the Cold War, the base near the town of Alice Springs was originally presented to the Australian public as a space research facility. Kristian Laemmle-Ruff

By JACKIE DENT
November 23, 2017
ALICE SPRINGS, Australia — Margaret Pestorius arrived at court last week in her wedding dress, a bright orange-and-cream creation painted with doves, peace signs and suns with faces.
“It’s the colors of Easter, so I always think of it as being a resurrection dress,” said Ms. Pestorius, a 53-year-old antiwar activist and devout Catholic, who on Friday was convicted of trespassing at a top-secret military base operated by the United States and hidden in the Australian outback.
From the base, known as the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap, the United States controls satellites that gather information used to pinpoint airstrikes around the world and target nuclear weapons, among other military and intelligence tasks, according to experts and leaked National Security Agency documents.
As a result, the facility, dotted with satellite dishes and isolated in the desert, has become a magnet for Australian antiwar protesters. Over the past two weeks, Ms. Pestorius and five other Christian demonstrators were convicted in two separate trials of breaching the site’s security perimeter last year. They could face seven years in prison.

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Margaret Pestorius, a 53-year-old Catholic peace activist, was arrested last year for trespassing at Pine Gap. The base’s role in U.S. military operations has made it a magnet for antiwar protesters. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
“In terms of actions like this, it’s pretty basic: We are called to love our enemies,” said Jim Dowling, 62, a member of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement who was one of the protesters. “Do good to those who persecute you. To turn the other cheek. Put up our swords. All the teachings of Jesus on nonviolence.”
The trials — and the Australian government’s uncompromising prosecution of the protesters — has put a spotlight on a facility that the United States would prefer remain in the shadows.
Born at the height of the Cold War, Pine Gap was presented to the Australian public in 1966 as a space research facility. But behind the scenes, the station was run by the C.I.A. to collect information from American spy satellites about the Soviet Union’s missile program.
Since then, American spies, engineers, cryptologists and linguists have flocked to Alice Springs, the small town closest to the base, to work at the facility. At least 599 Americans lived there in 2016, according to the latest census. Though their presence in town is low-key, there are some telltale signs: a baseball diamond at a local sports complex, Oreo cookies and Dr Pepper in the supermarket, and beef brisket on sale at a butcher shop.
“Americans, from the time they came here, have never been isolated from the rest of the community,” said Damien Ryan, the mayor of Alice Springs, who could remember a time when Americans in left-hand-drive cars were frequently seen on the town’s roads. “They’ve been part of the community the whole time.”

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A satellite image of Pine Gap from October. Inside the white spheres, called radomes, are antenna systems that send and receive information from dozens of satellites.
TerraServer / DigitalGlobe
The base is reached by a dead-end road, marked with a sign warning away visitors. Without clearance, the only way to see Pine Gap is by air, or by climbing the craggy ridges of the MacDonnell Ranges that surround the site.
Photos taken from the air show a sprawling campus punctuated by white geodesic domes that look like giant golf balls. Inside these spheres, called radomes, are antenna systems that send and receive information from satellites in constant orbit above the earth.
The staff at Pine Gap was predominantly American until the 1980s, when the two governments, responding in part to public pressure here, made it about half Australian. Today, more than 800 people from both countries are believed to work at the base. But the United States is firmly in control.
“Pine Gap has changed and developed enormously,” said Richard Tanter, a senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute and honorary Melbourne University professor who has investigated and criticized the base for years.
In documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the American intelligence contractor turned whistle-blower, Pine Gap is described as playing “a significant role in supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.”
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Defendants with supporters this month in Alice Springs, where their trials were held. 
The proceedings have put a spotlight on a facility that the United States 
would prefer remained in the shadows. 
David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

What that actually means, Professor Tanter said, is that the station is involved in real-time contributions to the United States’ global military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Pine Gap, he added, also “contributes data for C.I.A. drone operations in countries in which the United States is not at war — Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth. It is also critically important in whatever the United States is going to do on the Korean Peninsula.”
Professor Tanter has gleaned information about the secret site from unexpected public records, including the LinkedIn profiles of Pine Gap contractors and satellite photos that reveal new construction at the site.

Professor Tanter, who is president of the Australian board of the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, said he wanted the government to “make a very clearheaded assessment” of whether it is in Australia’s best interest to contribute data for drone assassinations and targeting nuclear weapons.

Other experts, however, said that hosting a base like Pine Gap helps maintain the country’s alliance with the United States, and that other partners of the Americans carry considerably larger burdens.
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The defendant Jim Dowling, 62, of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement, appeared in court barefoot. “In terms of actions like this, it’s pretty basic: We are called to love our enemies,” he said of the protest at Pine Gap last year. 
David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Australians are “not doing a lot of things that our allies are doing,” including permanently hosting American nuclear weapons and soldiers, said Stephan Frühling, a professor at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center of the Australian National University.

Last year, in the early hours of a cold, dark September morning, Ms. Pestorius, Mr. Dowling and three other “peace pilgrims,” as they call themselves, breached Pine Gap’s security perimeter.

As the activists scrambled up a rocky hill to get closer to the base, and with the police moving in, Ms. Pestorius picked up her viola. Another protester strummed his guitar. As they played a lament for those killed in war, Mr. Dowling held up a large, laminated photograph showing a bloodied young woman with her foot missing.

A sixth activist, Paul Christie, 44, carried out his own protest at Pine Gap days later; he was tried separately and convicted last week, charged, like the others, with entering a prohibited area. During the activists’ back-to-back trials this month, a modest band of supporters gathered at the courthouse. Many were members of the country’s antiwar movement, parts of which are religion-infused.

A Quaker knitted flower brooches. A Buddhist brewed coffee from the back of his van. A collection of colourful banners tied to fences read “Close Pine Gap” and “End the U.S. Alliance and Pine Gap Terror Base.”
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The base is reached by a dead-end road, marked with a sign warning visitors away. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
Mr. Dowling, who said he had been arrested between 50 and 100 times, was found guilty once before of trespassing at Pine Gap, in 2005. The conviction was later overturned.
One of his co-defendants this time was his 20-year-old son Franz, the guitar player at the protest last year. The younger Mr. Dowling and two other defendants — Andrew Paine, 31, and Timothy Webb, 23 — live together in a Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Brisbane, where they regularly take in homeless people.
All five were found guilty of entering a prohibited area, and Mr. Paine was convicted of an additional charge of possessing a photographic device.
During their trial, the five — who acted as their own attorneys — tried to argue that they had acted in the defense of others, but Justice John Reeves did not allow it.
Pine Gap has “to bear a big responsibility for all the murder and mayhem that has taken place in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Jim Dowling, who appeared in court barefoot.
Mr. Dowling seemed unperturbed by how few activists had traveled to remote Alice Springs to support him and the other defendants.
“There’s not a huge number engaged in nonviolent resistance in the name of their faith, but numbers don’t matter, do they?” he said. “Just follow your conscience, you know?”
     Source from the New York Times: 
         

Monday 27 November 2017

THE 2ND WORLD MARCH FOR PEACE & NON-VIOLENCE SCHEDULED FOR 2ND OCTOBEER 2019 TO 8 MARCH 2020 STARTING IN MADRID


The 2nd World March for Peace and Nonviolence to start in 2019


From Ecumenics and Quakers
21.11.2017 – Madrid, Spain – Rafael de la Rubia

This post is also available in: SpanishItalianCatalan


The 2nd World March for Peace and Nonviolence was announced during the Conference for Nonviolence that took place between the 15th and 18th of November in Madrid, Spain.  It is scheduled to start on the 2nd of October 2019 (International Nonviolence Day) and end on the 8th of March 2020 (International Women’s Day).  The March will start and end in Madrid.
The conference was organised by World without Wars and Violence with support from PNND(i), the Peace Culture Foundation, WILPF (Spain), the Spanish campaign “Nonviolence 2018”, Ecologists in Action, Pressenza and the Spanish Peace Research Association among others and was held in several locations of the Spanish capital: from the symbolic Congress of Deputies to the more humble district of Vallecas, passing through the Madrid City Council in Cibeles Square.  The organisers’ interest was to introduce the subject of nonviolence in its various expressions in all social fields, from national, to city and neighbourhood level.  This will be strengthened by the development of the 2nd World March which will try to impact all sectors of society with the subjects of peace and nonviolence.
Global security was the subject tackled on the 15th of November, in the Clara Campoamor Hall in the Spanish Congress of Deputies, including the increasing risk of the use of nuclear weapons and its relationship to the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons(ii) the ratification of which is currently underway in the United Nations but without Spain’s support.  In this session, Congress Deputy Pedro Arrojo(iii) announced that 50 colleagues from the Podemos parliamentary block had joined the PNND network.  There was also a meeting between Congress Deputy Pablo Bustinduy and Alyn Ware(v), the international coordinator of PNND, on the subject of how New Zealand managed to get and maintain a defence agreement with Australia and the United States which respected the decision of the New Zealand people to reject the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory.  Arrojo also announced the activation of an international network of parliamentarians to support the 2nd World March.
This is an abbreviation of the original article.

Israeli health minister Yaakov Litzman resigns in protest over railway work on the Sabbath

Updated 23 minutes ago
Israel's health minister has resigned, saying he opposed continued maintenance work on the country's railways on the Sabbath, when all labour is strictly prohibited by Jewish law.

Key points:

  • Mr Litzman said he took issue with government-sanctioned Sabbath "desecration"
  • Israel's railways authority said it must carry out work on Saturday so it did not disrupt transportation during the work week
  • Much of Israel comes to a halt at sundown on Friday for the Sabbath, but few Israelis strictly observe the day of rest
Yaakov Litzman, who heads a powerful ultra-Orthodox political party in Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, said the work conducted publicly on the railway prompted him to resign.
He said, "As a minister in Israel, I can't maintain the ministerial responsibility" of government-sanctioned Sabbath "desecration" that contradicts the "holy values of the Jewish people".
While Mr Litzman said the weekend maintenance work on the railway was not warranted, Israel's railways authority said it must carry out work on Saturday so it did not disrupt transportation for thousands of Israelis during the work week.
Railway and some other public works have occurred for years on the Sabbath, which begins at sundown on Friday.
Mr Netanyahu said later at a government meeting he regretted Mr Litzman's decision, describing him as, "an excellent health minister who did much for the health of Israel's citizens".
He said his coalition would not dissolve over the issue.
Mr Netanyahu stressed the Sabbath was important to all Israelis — as is the need for "safe and continuous" transportation — and added he was convinced a solution could be found.

The chasm between secular and orthodox

Ultra-Orthodox parties provide Mr Netanyahu with support to stabilise his coalition, while the Government carves out large budgets for the minority community.
They have traditionally acted as kingmakers in Israel's fractious coalition building and have in the past threatened to topple coalition governments by robbing them of their majority.
The issue of desecration of the Sabbath has triggered crisis in the past and highlights the cultural chasm between Israel's ultra-Orthodox population and its secular majority.
Much of Israel, including public transportation, comes to a halt at sundown on Friday, but few Israelis strictly observe the day of rest.
Many restaurants, movie theatres, sporting events and national parks operate, and in secular bastions such as Tel Aviv even some corner stores and shopping centres are open.
Mr Litzman's resignation did not immediately threaten Mr Netanyahu's coalition, but it risked setting off a chain reaction that might.
Later on Sunday however, any crisis appeared to have been averted when Mr Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox coalition partners agreed to maintain the Sabbath status quo.
Mr Litzman's resignation could have exerted pressure on the other two ultra-Orthodox coalition partners to squeeze out concessions from Mr Netanyahu to prove to their constituents that they respect the Sabbath as much as the resigning health minister.
Mr Netanyahu may be hesitant to offer anything perceived as being too generous for fear of alienating secular voters at a time when opposition party Yesh Atid, led by charismatic former journalist Yair Lapid, has been gaining traction in polls.
AP

Friday 17 November 2017

Humanity, Nature & Faith - Lessons from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam & Judaism

These are the five original Faith Declarations on Nature which were created in 1986, at a meeting held in Assisi by WWF-International. The meeting stemmed from an idea by HRH the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at which five leaders of the five major world religions – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism – were invited to come and discuss how their faiths could and should help save the natural world. 

By 1995 when the Alliance of Religions and Conservation was formed, the five initial faiths had issued more detailed statements, and six other significant world faiths had also made their statements about the environment. Links to the book, Faith in Conservation, published by the World Bank, in which all these eleven statements were published together for the first time, can be found at the end of this document.


The Religious Imperative To Fight Climate Change: Environmental Stewardship And World Religions

earth
One may easily argue that climate change represents the greatest ever threat to the continued existence of civilization. And such a threat, global and multi-generational in its scope, cannot long go unabated. Let me be very clear: We humans cannot, under any circumstances, afford to ignore climate change. Rather, we have to muster our very best efforts to combat it, both for our own safety and the safety of all future persons.
But how can we effectively communicate the kind of peril that a rapidly warming planet poses? Despite a nearly continuous stream of headlines referencing the dire reality of the environmental crisis, many people around the world continue to ignore climate change, simply do not know about or understand it—thus underestimating it—and still others deny its destructive capabilities, or even its very existence, altogether.
If there are inroads to be made for the cause of confronting climate change, they will be made through convincing individuals that it is in their best interests, and in the interests of their loved ones, to pursue environmental wellbeing. We must convince the people of the world that maintaining a stable climate is in line with their values. We must appeal to them on an almost spiritual level.
One of the most effective ways to open the hearts and minds of the masses is through religion. On an individual basis, religion represents our inmost principles: those concepts and ideals closest to and most comfortable for us. Religion usually provides, for those who adhere to it, useful notions for navigating and enjoying life in what is otherwise an indifferent and often unfair world.
However, despite humanity’s predilection for religion—the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that, in 2012, 84 percent of all people adhered to some form of religion—religious values have not kept us from pursuing the selfish practices which have led to the ecological disaster we now find ourselves in the midst of. I think it best, then, that we review some of the world’s great faith traditions and see for ourselves what they have to say (or at least imply) about environmental stewardship:
BUDDHISM:
One of Buddhism’s central tenets, a so-called brahmavihara—a cardinal virtue—is compassion (karuna). Indeed, the Buddhist tradition is built upon the fundamental principle of reducing suffering—an ethical concept that has come to be known as “negative utilitarianism.” According to the Buddha, an enlightened person is one who has relinquished the “three poisons” (trivisa) of ignorance (moha), ill-will (dvesha), and greed (raga), which together form the root of endless attachments or cravings (tanha), none of which can ever be fully satisfied in a world of impermanent phenomena, thus ultimately leading to suffering or dis-ease (dukkha). The enlightened person, overcoming his ego and attachments, renounces the pursuit of needless pleasures and looks upon the world—rife with the suffering of living beings—with an eye of compassion, as well as loving-kindness. (Metta.)
The spirit of renunciation, humility, love, and simplicity is totally anathema to the kind of wasteful consumer culture which has given rise to anthropogenic climate change.
Among the Buddha’s five precepts (pancasilani), which practitioners are expected to undertake in almost all schools of Buddhism, there is the vow “to abstain from killing,” with the following elaboration from the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta, a section of the Buddhist Pali Canon: “There is the case where a certain person, abandoning the taking of life, abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.”
The fourteenth and current Dalai Lama, the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and probably the most well-known Buddhist in the public imagination, has repeatedly called for strong action to combat climate change.
CHRISTIANITY:
In the Old Testament’s Book of Jeremiah we read: “And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.” (Jeremiah 2:7.) Elsewhere in that book, we read: “How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither? For the evil of those who dwell in it the beasts and the birds are swept away, because they said, “He will not see our latter end.”” (Jeremiah 12:4.)
Does this not suggest that God looks down upon—seriously judges—those who would abuse and destroy his creation? Christ himself speaks in near-poetic terms about the beauty and glory inherent in nature, God’s original providence: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:28-29.)
Pope Francis, the current head of the Catholic Church, has, on many occasions, called on the world to better protect the environment. Notably, in 2015, Francis released the papal encyclical Laudeto si’, a critique of unabated consumerism and continued ecological harm.
In September of 2017, Pope Francis released a joint message alongside the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church—the largest Christian church after the Catholic Church—urging humanity to “care for the whole of creation”. In their message they state: “Our propensity to interrupt the world’s delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet’s limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets – all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation.”
HINDUISM:
Hinduism, arguably the world’s oldest organized religion—or, more realistically, a complex of many different religions bound together by similar ideas and origins—places a special emphasis on the value of the natural world. On this topic, Dr. Pankaj Jain, associate professor of philosophy and religion at the University of North Texas, writes in the Huffington Post, “Our environmental actions affect our karma. Karma, a central Hindu teaching, holds that each of our actions creates consequences — good and bad — which constitute our karma and determine our future fate… Moral behavior creates good karma, and our behavior toward the environment has karmic consequences.” Dr. Jain, a leading expert on the intersection of environmentalism and the Hindu faith, also writes, “The earth — Devi — is a goddess and our mother and deserves our devotion and protection.” He goes on to note that, “Non-violence — ahimsa — is the greatest dharma,” dharma being one’s moral duty or obligation, that, “Ahimsa to the earth improves one’s karma,” and that, “For observant Hindus, hurting or harming another being damages one’s karma and obstructs advancement toward moksha — liberation.”
On a related note: There is a profound, sacred phrase which comes to us from the Isha Upanishad of the Shukla (“white”) Yajurveda, itself one of the Vedas, the foundational texts of the Hindu tradition: Ishavasyam idam sarvam. This roughly translates to “The entire cosmos is to be seen as being one with God.”
So, if God inhabits everything, and God is worthy of reverence, should we not, then, give due respect to all existence? And if all existence is sacred, then surely the Earth itself—the one place in the entire universe that we know can support life—must be so utterly sacred that it is impossible to overstate its importance!
I will cap off this section by mentioning the Assisi Declarations on Nature: In 1986, the World Wildlife Fund, via its president Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, invited five leaders representing five of the world’s great religions to assemble in Assisi, Italy, discuss how their respective faiths could help preserve the environment, and make declarations on the issue thereafter.
The Hindu declaration included the following statements: “Nature is sacred and the divine is expressed through all its forms. Reverence for life is an essential principle, as is ahimsa (non-violence)… Nature cannot be destroyed without humanity destroying itself… The divine is not exterior to creation, but expresses itself through natural phenomena.”
ISLAM:
Just as in the Bible, we find examples of environmental concern in the Qur’an. In the Qur’an’s fifty-fifth chapter (surah), ar-Rahman (“The Most Merciful”) we read: “He raised the heaven[s] and established the balance / So that you would not transgress the balance. / Give just weight – do not skimp in the balance. / He laid out the earth for all living creatures.” (Qur’an 55: 7-10.)
The Prophet Muhammad himself understood the value of nature, and saw that the mindful use of its bounty, by humans, represents a form of charity—indeed, almost a sacred duty—on behalf of both God’s creation (the ecosystem) and other human beings. As we read in the hadith of Sahih Bukhari: “If any Muslim plants any plant and a human being or an animal eats of it, he will be rewarded as if he had given that much in charity.”
The Prophet is also reported to have said, as recorded in the Ibadi Jami Sahih, “If the Hour is about to be established and one of you was holding a palm shoot, let him take advantage of even one second before the Hour is established to plant it.”
In 2015, 60 high-ranking Islamic clerics gathered together to issue the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, which states: “Our species, though selected to be a caretaker or steward [khalifah] on the earth, has been the cause of such corruption and devastation on it that we are in danger of ending life as we know it on our planet. This current rate of climate change cannot be sustained, and the earth’s fine equilibrium [mizan] may soon be lost.”
The Islamic declaration at the aforementioned 1986 Assisi Declarations on Nature included the following statements: “For the Muslim, mankind’s role on earth is that of a khalifa, vice-regent, or trustee of God. We are God’s stewards and agents on Earth. We are not masters of this Earth; it does not belong to us to do what we wish. It belongs to God and He has entrusted us with its safekeeping. Our function as vice-regents, khalifa of God, is only to oversee the trust… His trustees are responsible for maintaining the unity of His creation, the integrity of the Earth, its flora and fauna, its wildlife and natural environment. Unity cannot be had by discord, by setting one need against another or letting one end predominate over another; it is maintained by balance and harmony.”
JUDAISM:
In the Jewish Tanakh, which is the source of the Christian Old Testament, we find a passage from the Book of Psalms, which reads: “For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills / “I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine / “If I were hungry I would not tell you, / For the world is Mine, and all it contains…”
This statement clearly show’s God’s dominion over all of nature — and that he is intimately connected to it. To destroy it, then, is a sin against God. Thus observant Jews follow the doctrine of bal tashchit, which means “do not destroy”—rooted in the Book of Deuteronomy—the injunction originally used in the context of cutting down an enemy’s fruit trees during a siege in wartime. Bal tashchit implies refraining from engaging in any kind of destruction unless the situation absolutely warrants it, a sort of mindfulness towards one’s actions insofar as they may include damage to or waste of resources.
In 2015, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Ephraim Mirvis, gave the following statement (edited for brevity) ahead of the COP21 Paris climate accord:World leaders convene in Paris this week to agree a global response to Climate Change. The challenge before them is unprecedented in scale and of the greatest consequence. The planet is experiencing a long-term warming trend… this due in part to the injurious actions of mankind. Many nations and major corporations are making admirable pledges to scale back greenhouse gas emissions… These are vitally important steps in safeguarding our collective future. Our planet is a beautiful web of ecosystems, weather patterns and natural resources upon which we depend.
“With the freedom to sample the fruits of God’s creation comes the responsibility to protect and steward, not abuse, our environment. I pray that the efforts of those participating will be blessed with the far-sighted wisdom to agree outcomes that reflect what is, undeniably, in all of our best interests.”
The Jewish declaration at the aforementioned 1986 Assisi Declarations on Nature included the following statements: “Now, when the whole world is in peril, when the environment is in danger of being poisoned and various species, both plant and animal, are becoming extinct, it is our Jewish responsibility to put the defence of the whole of nature at the very centre of our concern. We have a responsibility to life, to defend it everywhere, not only against our own sins but also against those of others… We are all passengers together in the same fragile and glorious world. Let us safeguard our rowboat — and let us row together.”
… In conclusion:
The world’s major religions all stress, in some way or another, the value of the environment, and mindful stewardship of the Earth. Thus the imperative to fight climate change, on behalf of both the environment and the countless species—including our own—which it supports, is, in this time, stronger than ever: Today, the carbon emissions which we have released into the Earth’s atmosphere practically guarantee, in lieu of global-scale “negative emissions” (a speculative technology and form of geo-engineering), a dramatic reshaping of the Earth’s biosphere, including a major loss of surface ice across the world, with all the knock-on effects—both known and unforeseen—that those will bring. Continued emissions, basically inevitable for the foreseeable future, will add unthinkable damage to our world on top of these already devastating effects.
Yes, sadly, awfully, we continue to pump ever more carbon into the air: Not only are our overall carbon emissions increasing—the rate at which they are increasing is accelerating. We have already passed 403 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in our atmosphere—a critical threshold—and will soon blow past 405 ppm. The level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is over 100 ppm higher than at any time in the past 3 million years.
The time to stop climate change and, if possible, to reverse it, is now. It has always—that is, since humans realized climate change is a global issue—been now. And our faith leaders, and our faiths themselves, can pave the way for the development of truly sustainable ways of life, those by which we may exist in harmony with our environment, instead of destroying it.
Ryan V. Stewart is a student and writer concerned with environmental issues. A seventeen-year resident of Connecticut, he originally hails from Austin. He believes in a God who likes to laugh at himself. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym “Vincent St. Clare”.