It remined me of the Buddha’s conversation with a deva in SN1.23
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Maybe there aren’t just those two alternatives?
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This was well said, and conducive to relinquishing personal views
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yes very appropriate, thank you 
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I talked to Bhikkhu Sujato about climate change. I tried to understand what I talked with Sujato about. I asked about what action we actually can take? What is actually sustainable? Im not quoting him but the impression I got is that the village idea based on balanced fire element tech like manual labour and horses was the only solution that has been proven to work.
Are people prepared to rely more on less powerful alternatives like horse drawn carts if thats what is sustainable? I personally like my comforts and conveniences so I’m a hypocrit. Im guessing its about finding the middle ground between safe primitive tech and powerful dangerous tech? Then when inevitable change happens and people move it is allowed to happen whilst maintaining peoples humanity.
What are others opinions on this topic? Do we need to be buying land on hills so when the floods happen there is new places for people to emigrate.
I like what has been said here. instead of trying to fight change we need to find solutions that are working with change. Mould yourself to the trend.
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I haven’t been keeping up with Cop updates, but here’s one article that’s essential reading:
For background, since the English invasion, Australia has decimated forests enough to cover France, Germany, and Spain. The current government is doing nothing on climate change, and its claims for emissions reductions are entirely based on the supposed reduction in land clearing. But it turns out, that’s all just lies. The entire physical basis of our climate change strategy, such as it is, is just wrong.
This is why it’s so important to be highly skeptical about any pledges or supposed measurements. We’ve seen this kind of thing happening time and again, with for example methane emissions, or carbon offsets, or the economic cost. We trust that the figures we have mean something, but then they turn out to be completely wrong, and all the supposed gains just disappear. It’s not that all the figures are wrong, of course, it’s that they are complicated and error-prone, and it is hard to assess their reliability.
The only really reliable and clear indication of progress is the amount of atmospheric CO2, the Keeling Curve. This gives a direct measure of the most critical factor in climate change. It is a simple physical measure, rigorously tested, and performed consistently since 1958.
What we can say is that the only purely beneficial response is to use less. Villages have been an adaptive and sustainable model for human societies for thousands of years. Most humans, for most of history, have lived like that, and our current lifestyle is only an extreme and highly temporary aberration. It’s not going to last.
We all do! The question is not, “will we keep what we want?” But, “will we gracefully consider what it is that we really need, or will we have our baubles torn from our hands with fire and flood?”
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Thats right. A lot of the things I’m clinging to are not that important. I just believe its convenient. Im guessing that’s the result of free market capitalism encouraging me to buy things we don’t need with clever marketing? Also I want to fit in with others around me because there’s a camaraderie to over using resources. It’s a culture with a strong current. Maybe with marketing that is based on what us buddhists think is true could present counter values. Maybe thats propaganda though. I guess if your not lying its ok?
Something like. ‘Support an endangered environmentalist for the day, ride a bike’ or ‘Greta’s getting angry so bike, break sweat and balance’ or ‘Happiness is in your heart so don’t drive too far away from it’.
Also if we get money to work for us instead of working for money we might get the results we want. Money flowing in the right directions theoretically is a force for good. Not to be scared of. Rich dad Poor dad is a book I like that talks about this.
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Is this true for some?
What we believe is true informs our culture. We are influenced by our culture. We then feel we are making free choices to buy what we want.
The problem is what we think is true is infact wrong when we want certain results. So…
We state clear trues that are hard to argue with. This informs a culture. People are influenced by the culture. They then make ‘free’ decisions to fulfil their desires. The difference this time is they actually get good results.
Is that how evil genius’s think. Maybe I should get a white cat! 
Maybe a focus on conventional right view is somewhere to start?
‘Mums and Dads make your world go round, keep strong bonds and expect your world to blossom’
‘Some holy people are cool and wise, I’m definitely not joking, lol’
Is that too evangelical?
‘A cool heart creates a cool world, hold an ice cube.’
‘Your mum may be flawed but she is still your world 
’
‘Family and friends are most of your world, look after your world 
’
‘Create good causes and reap good results, Kammas a faithful friend’
‘Look after Kamma and Kammas results look after you’
Or start campaigns like ‘Save the Party Animal’ Hashtag ;- A better way to party.
Fossil fuel industry has largest delegation at summit:
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Wow, this is interesting. Never looked at it that way. Any recommended reading on this?
And what about so-called green cities, does such thing even exist?
In the survey reported by The Guardian 74 % is proud of what they are doing but at the same time 46 % thinks they don’t need to change their habits. But to be honest, these answers are incompatible, right? You can really be proud of your efforts only if you try to constantly do a bit better, IMO.
Of course this is not how most people seem to think (because of sense of self and all that) and I have to admit, sometimes I also catch myself thinking the exact opposite. It’s so tempting to try and find some sweet-spot in this mess where I could just “be the good guy”, hang around with my sense of superiority and not be bothered. You know, like all of the rich guys and most politicians are doing. But thanks to the Buddha I know better…
Snp 4.15 This world completely lacks essence;
It trembles in all directions.
I longed to find myself a place
Unscathed — but I could not see it.
Don’t know that it’ll “save the planet”, but check out South Australia:
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Yeah. The rich and powerful fly in on their private jets, feast with the oil and coal barons at tables groaning with meat, and fight to see how much of the world they get to destroy. The whole incentive is to take it right up to the edge, figure out exactly how much they can get away with, then bargain and deal so that your country gets to eat the biggest slice of the world-pie.
The incentives are all upside down, which is why everyone lies. There’s a shocking new report by the Washington Post, which reveals that there’s up to 23% undercounting of emissions.
I’m sure there is, but I don’t know too much, just my own intuition. Interestingly, at a recent discussion with some of the folks from CSIRO, one of them was giving a presentation along similar lines.
If you look in countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand, there are major initiatives that build on the traditional wisdom of the villagers in land use and cultivation, based on Buddhist ideas. Organization like Sarvodaya are working with villages to promote sustainable practices.
Yes, our intuitions are confused and messy. This is the psychology of denial, which is something we all do to one degree or another.
Denial is not absence, and denialists are not simply those who happen to not believe in the reality of the science. They have to actively work to suppress reality, push it out, develop new anti-reality ideologies, explain everything away. That’s what delusion does. It is a lot of work and effort! It is driven by fear and plain incapacity to face facts. The further it goes, the deeper the denial, the more twisted and distorted the reality becomes, until you end up with bizarre belief systems in an alternate reality like Qanon or, you know, the Australian government.
And that’s the difference. We all deny sometimes, in fact it’s essential. No-one can be aware of everything all the time. But we can reflect on it, learn, and try to do better.
I don’t have any solutions, but at least I know that. So I try to live each day in that knowledge, just to be as aware as I can, and face up to the reality.
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WWF Sacred Earth Program helps monasteries including with the installation of solar panels:
“In the Greater Mekong, WWF works to protect endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in collaboration with His Holiness the Mahasangharaja Bour Kry, the Great Supreme Patriarch of Buddhism in Cambodia, and Buddhist temples that flank the Mekong River. Monks train to be effective advocates for freshwater conservation in an effort to ensure that the population of fewer than 80 Mekong Irrawaddy dolphins continues to survive.”
Resources:
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Yesterday former president of the USA Barack Obama addressed the younger generations at the COP26. He’s one of the very few male (former) politicians worldwide that I still find inspiring. Those were his words in Glasgow yesterday:
“It’s a reminder that if you all want to paddle a canoe you better all be rowing in the same direction and at the same time, every oar has to move in unison, that’s the only way that you move forward.”
But also Barack Obama flied in on his private jet. After landing, he was whisked away in a convoy of eight armoured vehicles. I get it, safety first. And it’s a long trip. But if speaking at a global climate summit, even if you are an excellent orator like Obama, paddling would be a better way of transport than taking private jets. If only I were the secretary-general of the UN 
Right, that could never happen cause in 76 years the UN has not once appointed a woman as their secretary - general. Guterres, an old man who keeps boasting about his gender equality policy, recently accepted a second term, knowing that talented female leaders were candidating for his position. That’s what is called hypocrisy. Still, if I were the secretary-general of the UN, I would have accepted the COP26 to take place but on one condition: every single president and prime minister would have to paddle a private canoe to Glasgow. Sure, they’d get a warm cup of tea upon arrival and some teenagers who fled their countries because of drought and war would welcome them and whisper: “That was pretty tough, right? Don’t tell me. Been there, done that.”
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Canoe would be extreme aceticism, Greta Thunberg travelled to Glasgow by train, that is the Buddhist middle way.
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That’s very right!
Now, canoeing the world can be super fun
compared to floating in the Mediterranean
as a climate refugee.
They had the change to take the middle way.
But they took the self-gratification way.
Young people will have no choice but to fight
their way through climate disasters.
They could have taken a commercial flight.
They could have hold the entire COP24 online.
But they came up with no better idea than taking
a private jet and selling us hot air. Bad on them.
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Yes, this is the thing. The rich and powerful have had decades to do something, and here we are. Why are we still listening to them, exactly?
I came across this excellent interview with a woman who has been tracking methane emissions for years. Well worth a read!
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Correct. In South Australia it’s the consumers that are supplying the power:
"Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Fewer people are voting or joining political parties, and our interest in parliamentary politics is declining fast. Even oppositional and radical parties that should be benefitting from public disenchantment with politics are suffering.
Tormey argues that the easy assumptions that informed our thinking about the nature and role of parties, and ‘party based democracy’ have to be rethought. We are entering a period of fast politics, evanescent politics, a politics of the street, of the squares, of micro-parties, pop-up parties, and demonstrations. This may well be the end of representative politics as we know it, but an exciting new era of political engagement is just beginning."—“The End of Representative Politics.”
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It frightens me a lot.
It seems a way of the majority admitting that they don’t give about us.
Would we otherwise not collectively resist the demise of the human race?
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