Chapter II of Rio Plus 20 Document by Cho Tab Khen Zambuling (Alfredo Sfeir-Younis)
II. Global Warming
The earliest debates saw global warming as a physical phenomenon resulting from economic activities happening outside us. In this regard, all the efforts were made to bring the best scientific evidence to construct a correlation between man-made activities and the warming up of our Planet Earth. In the sixties and seventies, the evidence showed little or no correlation. It is only recently that this correlation has been heightened and actors are paying more attention to the way in which our human activities are affecting the environment.
It is only now that major attention has been given to the “public good” aspects of managing our Earth resources. These resources belong to all of us and to future generations, and imposed market solutions to our collective destiny will simply not do. The “invisible hand”, promoted by Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations –as a mechanism to reconcile individual objectives with attaining higher levels of collective human welfare– is now dirty and polluted; may be, with gangrene. Market solutions are a main source of environmental destruction.
Putting a face on global warming, at both the international and national levels, created heated debates and lots of controversy, as it was immediately apparent that the benefits and costs of such degradation are often asymmetric in their distribution. This is to say that those who pollute most do not bear the true cost of pollution. Similarly, it became known that the major negative external effects as a result of global warming are being born by societies that have little or nothing to do, for example, with emissions of CO2. The world knows, for example, that Small Island States will suffer immensely as a result of sea water rising while, at the same time, we also know that those States essentially do not pollute the air.
In addressing why people pollute, and doing this comprehensively, it demands a shift to focus mainly on the interplay between environmental management and human consciousness. This shift opens the door for a debate on more subtle levels of human existence and it understands the phenomenon of global warming in many other different ways. In particular, one of the fundamental messages here is that while global warming –“outer warming” or “external warming”– is happening as a result of pollution (generally), it also rises because we are experiencing warming inside us — “inner warming”. Inner warming is also a major cause of global warming. For those who operate strictly from their rational mind, and who happen to be individualistic or materialistic in nature, such a proposition will appear ludicrous and without much interest.
However, in the end, global warming and inner warming are to be understood as ‘experiential’ phenomena. Not as a rational phenomena. Thus, to approve or disapprove of such a major proposition, it demands that we as human beings experience our inner warming and the influence on the outer warming. For this to happen,we have to develop a special sensitivity through the wisdom of our five senses, the mind and our different forms of interaction. This experience will show that there are no boundaries separating our inner-self from some or all the outer-phenomena. In essence, we live in a world with no boundaries. By implication, as the outer phenomena affects us in many ways (the rays of the sun can burn us), so our inner self may affect the state of external phenomena as well. Therefore, one may conclude that powerful and sustainable ways to address global warming will not result from external actions alone.
In summary, it is here, where we must reflect upon how our inner human transformation often leads to the transformation of our external environments and, thus, influences the levels of global warming. All that belongs to life is alive. All that belongs to life is sentient. Nothing is inert or lifeless. Within the infinite manifestations of life, spiritual and material, there are neither boundaries nor unequal intelligence. Thus, every manifestation, including us humans, belongs to a One Shared Reality. We live in an infinitely interdependent, interconnected and indivisible reality.
The people who, on the other hand, live in duality between the inner and outer reality, and feel or act as if they were independent and segmented away from the rest of the world and from nature, must understand that such a way of life represents a very limited form of existence. It is now essential to have a global understanding of life.
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