Chapter VI of Rio Plus 20 by Cho Tab Khen Zambuling (Alfredo Sfeir-Younis)
VI. Interdependence: Beyond Material Choices
In addressing global warming, countries must go beyond material choices alone.
For the moment, debates and private or public decision making processes regarding global warming are dominated by purely material considerations, as if global warming were only material in nature. This is said, notwithstanding the fact that many material interventions are crucial to curving down global warming (e.g., carbon fund, taxes, technological change, regulations). Today, the emphasis of policy makers is on attending only material/external solutions to environmental problems in general and global warming in particular. These solutions have reached serious limits in effectiveness terms –particularly when applied as single standing and separate from other possible non-material solutions.
I am of the view that material solutions ought to be complemented with spiritual ones.
It is not difficult to see why this is so, when dogmas, some cultural knots, or daily trends and fashions convey the idea that our material existence is all that really matters. It is in this context that spirituality, as intimately linked to the states of nature, has been trivialized, negated, denied, or lost. For the moment, we have become insensitive and we are unable to feel existing relationships, or we neither believe in nor embrace them. By refocusing on the non-material dimensions of life and on our spirituality, we suggest very strongly: (a) that once again there is a direct link between the state of our inner welfare and global warming (outer welfare) and (b) that global warming may deeply affect our process of spiritual transformation. These suggestions apply more forcefully to our collective forms of transformation.
During the sixties and early seventies, many scientists and policy makers suggested that opening up to a debate on global warming was too premature. In part, this choice was so because of their notion that global warming was simply an exaggeration of what they saw as being a passing phenomenon. At that time, we were also told –another choice– that global warming was not really a man-made natural phenomenon and, thus, by implication, we could do little or nothing about it. For example, we were told that the weather and related environmental conditions would be self-corrected in due course. International debates at the United Nations and elsewhere have shown that there are still many key countries that act as if individual, separate, and uncoordinated choices and corresponding actions would resolve their problem around global warming. These countries like to be left alone from the rest of the world, to make their own separate independent/individual decisions, as if global warming could be managed and be curved down solely from within one given set of country borders.
This choice ignores or disregards that we are indeed a collection of interdependent societies. It also ignores that the weather experienced in one country is influenced and affected by the weather in another country.
Still, there are others who believe that material-technology-driven solutions will eventually make global warming go away. For these people, technology always represents the magic bullet. May be yes or may be not, as the quality and pace of technological change depends upon human creativity which, in turn, may be greatly damaged by global warming.
In terms of evaluating such a choice, it may not be always possible to rely exclusively on technological change, as the level of our inner warming (anger, loss of identity, stress – see below) may affect our capacity to bring about lasting and effective technological solutions. You may meditate on your own past experiences in relation to how stress blocks and affects your capacities (memory, clarity, imagination) as these may illustrate more clearly this latter point. Technology is a product of our inner development, which materializes into physical and tangible solutions. The ultimate source of technological change is intelligence and human consciousness. Once again, this leads us back to addressing the non-material dimensions of our human lives.
By going beyond the character of material-based choices, and seeking a more spiritual perspective, it is evident that global warming is not something that could be sought as being in the realms of either the rich or the poor. Or, of a rich nation, or a poor nation. Global warming is something affecting everyone. Thus, rich people, or those who pollute more must stop now and should give a chance to the unfolding of better material and spiritual forms of transformation. Equally important, is the spiritual work all people and all nations can make in developing their inner souls to assist in addressing global warming everywhere. Nobody should feel dis-empowered to act or intervene. Addressing the theme of spirituality and natural environment in simple and transformational ways is not an easy task, as one often encounters major barriers coming from cultural biases, values and beliefs or, simply, existing western modern thinking.
All that is proposed here is about shifting into a new form of human transformation.
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