Yes, I think we still have faith that they will change their view of what is really important in life, and use their power and wealth to help avert global disasters and bring about better world here for everyone.
Your words reminded me of Christ teaching, recorded in Matthew 12:5:
“Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.” (Bible, New International Version)
And this is what we can see at present - divisions and conflicts among people, religions and nations, and environmental pollution that has grown to global scale proportions with danger of nuclear accidents looming in the background. Competitive, exploitative system and ongoing population growth cannot continue on indefinitely. Now collectively we have a unique opportunity to change it , because results of such system are clearly visible. But this COP26 could be our last collective opportunity to prevent even worse environmental decline.
Personally, I find comfort and support in the Buddha’s advice to Kalamas (AN 3.65) and His teaching of the 4 Noble Truths, because they are sensible, universal and conducive to peace and to uniting people, not dividing up. But I respect teachings from other religious traditions, that too are conducive to peace and harmony.
The past few years in US it has been increasingly divided and hateful. It has been very good inspiration to practice. “So, Cunda … Out of compassion, I’ve done what a teacher should do who wants what’s best for their disciples. Here are these roots of trees, and here are these empty huts. Practice absorption, Cunda! Don’t be negligent! Don’t regret it later! This is my instruction.” Sallekhasutta MN
I think the people you are quoting are indeed downplaying the negatives, but you may be miscommunicating on this somewhat.
What measures like, “share of green energy” reflect for global CO2 is analogous to jerk . It is a decrease in the acceleration of the release in CO2. (further this makes it analogous to snap for temperature).
If you are on a train with no breaks headed towards a fallen bridge (several miles away), you try to starve the engine, and you perceive a negative jerk, you don’t pat yourself on the back and think the job is done, but neither do you declare that the negative jerk is meaningless. You strive to increase the negative jerk hoping it will create deceleration and eventually put things to a stop.
If the year 1 mix is 10% “green” to 90% “not”, and next year we consume 10% more energy and shift to a 15% / 85% mix, emissions still increase (by about 4%). Following this pattern, only in year 10 do we see year-over-year decreases (analogous to deceleration), Then it takes until year 14 for this pattern to give us lower emissions than in year 1. Then, rather quickly, at year 18 we’re at under 50% of baseline emissions, and at year 19 we’re at zero emissions (meaning ~ stable atmospheric CO2, analogous to velocity reaching 0 and your position staying put)
Year
Energy
Proportion of Dirty Energy
Emissions
Compared to Last Year
Compared to Year 1
1
100.0
0.9
90.0
–%
100.00%
2
110.0
0.85
93.5
103.89%
103.89%
3
121.0
0.8
96.8
103.53%
107.56%
4
133.1
0.75
99.8
103.13%
110.92%
5
146.4
0.7
102.5
102.67%
113.87%
6
161.1
0.65
104.7
102.14%
116.31%
7
177.2
0.6
106.3
101.54%
118.10%
8
194.9
0.55
107.2
100.83%
119.09%
9
214.4
0.5
107.2
100.00%
119.09%
10
235.8
0.45
106.1
99.00%
117.90%
11
259.4
0.4
103.7
97.78%
115.28%
12
285.3
0.35
99.9
96.25%
110.95%
13
313.8
0.3
94.2
94.29%
104.61%
14
345.2
0.25
86.3
91.67%
95.90%
15
379.7
0.2
75.9
88.00%
84.39%
16
417.7
0.15
62.7
82.50%
69.62%
17
459.5
0.1
45.9
73.33%
51.06%
18
505.4
0.05
25.3
55.00%
28.08%
19
556.0
0
0.0
0.00%
0.00%
Obviously this is just napkin math. I don’t know if that’s a realistic course, or how much would be destroyed under such a path. I’m just providing it as an example of how this sort of jerk can be significant over time and is worth paying attention to.
No matter how aggressive you think we should be, it’s important to have a sensitive eye on these sorts of advanced indicators. Because it is necessarily the case that jerk precedes acceleration precedes speed precedes position.
I could easily create a similar table with “percentage of people engaging in low-tech sustainable lifestyles” and you’d see the jerk from the adoption of such lifestyles failing to decrease emissions until certain inflection points are reached.
I don’t want to get into too much of economics, technology, and culture, because a nuanced take on overall positive things can easily be misinterpreted as an attack on those things and advocacy for bad things. But I just want to say that statistics on things like the “second shift” and “emotional labor” in service-sector workers shows that these low-remuneration labor has not been “automated away”. It is squarely cultural, not technological, factors that are preventing and will prevent host nations from finding a place for migrants.
I’d just add that some of using less is using things differently. An easy example is of course diet. If you had a steak for dinner every night previously, you can’t just eat 1/20th as much steak (you’d starve), you need to eat different food. Now, most people have heard of vegetarianism, but they often have never even heard of other approaches necessary to sustain life while also sustaining the planet.
Sorry to say so, but you might underestimate people. If someone doesn’t know by now that flying, using disposable plastic, consuming meat and lots of dairy, wasting drinkable water, wasting energy - be it green or not green - creates poverty and destroys humanity, then he is either already living on Mars, either thinking about it, either living in extreme poverty on Earth. This last person suffers the most from climate change and so does his probably very sustainable way of living.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. The bolded items all fall in together with vegetarianism in the category of low-hanging fruit most people have heard of already. But they’re not enough.
An equitable (not sustainable) level of consumption is 17k$ (the PPP GWP per capita). This includes not just what you typically think of as individual consumption, but also net investment and government spending. I directly know several people who literally could not figure out how to sustain themselves on 17k$/yr. Whether it’s transportation, child care, food, clothing, housing, medicine, or some other spending category, they struggle to figure out how to live on a lower budget. And 17k$/person is probably a globally unsustainable consumption level under current technological constraints.
In some cases, there is no conceivable path to reducing the cost of life. For example, platinum-based chemotherapy is a life-sustaining medical treatment that is very expensive even as a generic for obvious reasons.
In other cases, there is no individually achievable path, and collective change is required. For example, you and I individually cannot do much about the cost of our municipal infrastructure.
In yet other cases, there is an individually achievable path, but it requires skills that have not been passed down to certain individuals. I’ve worked with poor people from my country (the USA) and from poorer parts of the world. In my experience, the people who came from elsewhere typically had a lot more diverse skills. They typically knew at least a way to produce their own food dirt-to-table, how to mend personal possessions, and some form of domestic entertainment (storytelling, singing, playing an instrument), as an example. Two individuals, living under similar budget constraints, were able to achieve different levels of wellbeing because of this difference in culturally transmitted skills.
In yet other cases, the path may not require any new skills, but simply out-of-the-box thinking or crossing a cultural taboo. For example, various methods of using “grey water” are not at all technically challenging, but just never occur to people, and when suggested may gross them out.
All-in-all, the culturally normative lifestyle in the anglosphere west is one of upper-middle class luxury (with a few additional twists - e.g. featuring levels of spending on cosmetics only really achievable by the extremely wealthy). This lifestyle is extremely unsustainable - probably by a factor of at least 20.
But the sustainable alternative isn’t simply a scaled-back version of the norm that is presented to us. You can’t, for instance, take the apartment from Friends (in which ~2-4 people lived in the show) and split it 40-80 ways. You can’t take the 100% take-out diet of Gilmore Girls and just skip 19 of 20 meals. Etc. Etc.
We need to adopt alternative lifestyles. Some of these alternative lifestyles (e.g. veganism, home cooking, not using disposable plastic) have already risen to the level of ubiquitous awareness. Some of them literally do not exist yet (I am sure there will be many new inventions for sustainability in the coming years). Many are in-between, and exist, but are not widely known or widely considered as a serious option.
I understand, and all these are perfectly fair points. My point is, what matters is global atmospheric CO2. Anything else is just promises and speculations. If those promises and speculations bear fruit, great! When global atmospheric CO2 starts to decline, I’ll rejoice along with everyone else.
Fair point. I think the aim of technology is to automate away labor; whether it succeeds is a different matter.
It’s an interesting question! You may be right, but my gut feeling would be that maybe 40% of the population does not actually know these things. I wonder if there’s any surveys of this?
The thing is, it depends what we mean by “know”.
Does “not know” mean simply to have not encountered these very logical and simple ideas? I agree, that would only be very few people.
But knowing is complicated. It’s hard. Most of the things we encounter just slip right off us. And particularly when it comes to denial. Denial is not just a lack of knowledge, it’s an active effort to suppress and twist knowledge. For many people, I suspect, these things are effectively rejected; they don’t care, they’re not relevant, they don’t fit into their world view.
That doesn’t mean that they are absent. On the contrary, it means that the mind is becoming increasingly compartmentalized; the walls are holding back an ever-stronger flood, and the mental effort to do that is growing, and resulting in increasingly deranged behavior.
Anyway, I have just co-signed the following message, from CEESP-FAITH-GENERAL, the COP interreligious group.
Faithleaders urgent call for action at COP26
Time is running out. With the COP26 negotiations hanging in the balance, as faith leaders and members of the global faith movement for climate justice, led by our sisters and brothers from the Global South, we call for urgent and ambitious action for the most vulnerable people and communities.
Where the current negotiation texts are failing:
The current texts remain worryingly unbalanced. While there is progress on mitigation, it is shocking that there is no reference to action needed to address increasing climate impacts.
Simply referencing Loss and Damage (L&D) in the draft decision text without identifying any concrete action is offensive and immoral. The current text not only fails to address a mechanism to deliver action on Loss and Damage, it also does not provide any realistic path to new finance.
The texts on finance provide no confidence that the overdue pledge of $100 billion a year in support for poorer countries will be delivered. The commitment on adaptation, as part of that finance pledge, falls significantly short. The current text doesn’t address the fact that most public finance comes in loans, which are adding to the burden of unsustainable debt for climate-vulnerable countries, nor the challenges on access.
World leaders must now step up and deliver a clear, actionable text that strengthens previous agreements and puts those living on the frontline of the climate crisis at its heart. The richest, most powerful, and most polluting countries bear a particular responsibility.
We call on leaders at COP26 to preserve all of Creation by:
Recognising the urgency of this crisis, including language in the text that encourages all countries, but especially major emitters, to come forward annually at each COP with new ambition announcements that exceed their current NDC targets.
Calling for all Parties to address L&D by mobilising a separate and additional funding stream separate to finance for mitigation and adaptation; making L&D a permanent COP agenda item; and ensuring adequate capacity and resources to support the full operationalization of the Santiago Network by COP27.
Richer governments fulfilling their promises and delivering the $100 billion promised for 2020 and increasing it in 2022 and beyond. This must be evenly split between mitigation and adaptation, must be in the form of grants and not loans, and address access issues so the finance reaches those who need it most.
When this happens, this great earth and Sineru the king of mountains erupt in one burning mass of fire. And as they blaze and burn the flames are swept by the wind as far as the Brahmā realm. Sineru the king of mountains blazes and burns, crumbling as it’s overcome by the great fire. And meanwhile, mountain peaks a hundred leagues high, or two, three, four, or five hundred leagues high disintegrate as they burn. And when the great earth and Sineru the king of mountains blaze and burn, no soot or ash is found. It’s like when ghee or oil blaze and burn, and neither ashes nor soot are found. In the same way, when the great earth and Sineru the king of mountains blaze and burn, no soot or ash is found.
So impermanent are conditions,
so unstable are conditions,
so unreliable are conditions.
I think there is. It uplifts the mind, gladdens the heart, when we may start thinking it is just too much dukkha to be helping others beyond our personal responsibilities and fair share. It helps us to focus on helping those who are already making real effort, who are engaged in climate change to the better, beyond just wishful thinking. Isn’t that what the Buddha did?
I empathise with you Bhante, you have been helping for a long time, well beyond most leaders.
" According to a new paper published in Science , there is a quantifiable answer: Roughly 25% of people need to take a stand before large-scale social change occurs. This idea of a social tipping point applies to standards in the workplace and any type of movement or initiative."
Link to the Abstract of the source article is here.
Is there a general rule that what is written in the sutta should be read literally?
I understand that some parts of the bible should be read metaphorically. The Book of Revelation comes to mind.
I have read dozens of suttas. I would say that metaphors have been used sparingly. Even when they were used, the preceptors would make it clear they were metaphors.
Yes, the global UN survey on sustainability.
Less than half of the respondents worldwide know the UN sustainable development goals.
Your gut feeling is accurate – only 37% knows.
The last global survey has been conducted in 2018 - 2019 :
I don’t think it’s a public letter, it’s for the COP interfaith group, of which I am a member (ever since visiting Vienna for the Religions for Peace conference: thanks Esther!)
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