Go ahead, ruin the planet, just don't ruin the view

Image source:  CBC.ca

The Winnipeg Free Press ran this column by Gwynne Dyer on Monday, August 26.  Dyer writes about the leadership Ecuador has shown in protecting their ecosystem, including being the first country to include the "rights of nature" in its new constitution.  He also shows how the rest of the world hasn't participated in Ecuador's creative approach that may "ultimately bear much fruit", but so far is "just too great an intellectual and political leap".

Dyer's column concludes by reporting the contrast between Ecuador's courageous attempts to protect the environment and the Conservatives in  Great Britain, who have expanded fracking across the country without any regulation regarding the minimum distance between fracking rigs and people's houses.  On the other hand, local people in Britain have a veto when wind turbines are being considered for their neighbourhood.  The contrast between Ecuador and Britain explains the column title:  "Go ahead, ruin the planet, just don't ruin the view".

The first paragraph of the print edition wasn't included in the online article.  It has been included in this post.

"The world has failed us," said Ecuador President Rafael Correa.  "I have signed the executive decree for the liquidation of the Yasuni-ITT trust fund and with this, ended the initiative."  What might have been a model for a system that helps poor countries avoid the need to ruin their environment in order to make ends meet has failed, because the rich countries would not support it. 
In 2007, oil drillers found a reservoir of an estimated 846 million barrels of heavy crude in Yasuni National Park, in Ecuador's part of the Amazon. But the park is home to two indigenous tribes that have so far succeeded in living in voluntary isolation -- and it is listed by UNESCO as a world biosphere reserve. A single hectare of Yasuni contains more species of trees than all of North America. Ecuador, which cannot access finance on international markets, desperately needs money, and the oil meant money: an estimated $7.2 billion over the next decade. Nevertheless, Ecuadorians were horrified by the pollution, deforestation, and cultural destruction the drilling would cause. A large majority of them opposed drilling in the park. And then Energy Minister Alberto Acosta had an idea.
What if Ecuador just left the oil in the ground? In return, Acosta hoped the rest of the world would come up with $3.6 billion (half of the forecast income from oil revenues) over the next decade, to be spent on non-polluting energy generation such as hydroelectric and solar-power schemes and on social programmes to help Ecuador's many poor.
The payoff for the foreign contributors to this fund would come mainly from the fact the oil under Yasuni would never be burned, thereby preventing more than 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere. Only a drop in the bucket, perhaps, but if the model worked it could be applied widely elsewhere, offering the poor countries an alternative to selling everything they can dig up or cut down.
The idea won the support of the United Nations Development Programme, which agreed to administer the Yasuni-ITT trust fund. It was set up in 2009, and the money started to come in. But it didn't flood in; it just trickled.        ...

To read the entire column, click here. 

- Submitted by Gareth

Knowles-Woodsworth Lecture (October 23, 2013)

Information posted on the Knowles-Woodsworth Centre blog by Bill Blaikie (Director).

"I am pleased to post that the annual Knowles-Woodsworth lecture this year will be given by Allan Gregg, well known Canadian political pollster, advisor, and commentator.  Mr. Gregg has had occasion to  express concern about the attitude of the current federal government toward science and evidence based policy making, and the lecture this fall will be an opportunity for him to comment further about these concerns. The lecture will take place on Thursday October 23rd, and will be entitled, as the heading of the blogpost suggests: Religion, Reason and the Public Good. Location TBA.  My thanks to Allan Gregg for accepting the invitation of theKnowles-Woodsworth Centre."

Note:  Bill Blaikie is the keynote speaker and co-planner of Augustine's first annual Faith in the City conversations, scheduled for November 1-3, 2013.  This year's theme:  "Following Jesus ... Into Politics?"  Bill is also the author of The Blaikie Report:  An Insider's Look at  Faith and Politics.

Wake up to the aboriginal comeback

John Ralston Saul - Source:  Globe and Mail

These excerpts are from the Globe and Mail, August 9, 2013, written by John Ralston Saul.  You can read the whole article here.

When Canadians learn that malnourished aboriginal children were used for nutritional experiments, they cannot really be surprised. Shock is a more plausible reaction. We should never be beyond shock. But not surprised. That would be to feign innocence, when we all know that for more than a century, Canadian authorities of all sorts continually acted badly 
when it came to indigenous peoples. Many Canadians knew this when it was happening. The standard public discourse made these actions possible. These were our governments, our authorities. Our responsibility cannot be denied.

What’s more, this will not be the last shocking revelation. There must be much more to come.
And so an official national apology was a good thing. But it will not be nearly enough. For a start, everything must come out and be made clear. Full responsibility, whatever that involves, must be taken. The political, legal and bureaucratic cringing, prevarication, negotiating over which documents to release, when, in what conditions, only make the whole tragedy more humiliating for all Canadians, aboriginal and otherwise. How can any of us agree to live together in any sort of healthy relationship if there is not clarity, as well as full and concrete responsibility taken for the past?
..........
 I have never heard a First Nations, Métis or Inuit person say they wanted to be seen primarily as a victim. That would be marginalizing and demeaning. What they want is that their situation be understood. They want responsibility taken. They want to be heard. They want their dignity back.
That is why there is such insistence on respect for the treaties. We are all signatories. We are all treaty people. Those treaty agreements shaped Canada. The landed immigrant becomes a treaty person the instant she or he swears allegiance as a citizen of Canada.
What indigenous peoples are after is their full and proper place on this territory. They are the original founding pillar of everything done here. Their influence on the shape and habits of this country has been and remains enormous.
..........
The simple truth is that we are all witnesses to the remarkable comeback of the aboriginal peoples. This will mean fundamental shifts in power, in financing and in how we all live together. We can pretend this is not happening; we can manoeuvre in order to delay it. But it is going to happen. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by embracing this comeback as living proof of the strength of these cultures and peoples. We are witnessing how central they are to the future of this country.
Now is the time to listen to what they are saying and understand what they are calling for.

- Submitted by Gareth

Mourning for the Earth

To confront climate change, we may need to first deal with our grief.

 

Photo Credit: Erik Mark Sandberg (Sojouners)

WHY IS IT so hard for people to respond effectively to the reality of climate change?
Changing people’s minds—with facts, tables, and predictions—has proven extremely difficult. Even showing people the miraculous beauty of the planet alongside the predicted losses is not working. Guilt, anxiety, and anger can be motivating forces, but they have debilitating side effects: They are all soul-destroying.
So I wonder about our hearts. Have we ignored our emotional and spiritual connections to the planet? Could the noise swirling around climate change—science, politics, media blitzes, as well as the weather disasters themselves—drown out the voice of a loss so profound that it rests unnamed in our souls? Could our breaking hearts be part of the reason we are immobilized?

These are the questions Katharine M Preston speaks to in her Sojourners article "Mourning for the Earth" (August 2013).  She invites people of faith to understand that grief is a process, not a state of being, and that the well-known stages of grieving (made familiar by E. Kuebler-Ross) can equip us to move through the profound losses related to climate change.

Preston writes that many turn to faith communities in moments of grief.  She asks:  Could churches help us work through our grief so we can embrace the radical changes that must be made.

The article concludes with this quote from the Talmud (attributed):   Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work. But neither are you free to abandon it.

You can read the entire article here.

-submitted by Gareth