COP15 Copenhagen

Earth Day Network’s Vision and Challenge:

Building on the Environmental Momentum Following COP15

By Rabbi Warren Stone

COP15 Copenhagen has become a world stage as 192 nations and thousands converge upon this Danish city. I will be among them with a delegation from Earth Day Network. The question is on many minds: will a world agreement, a Copenhagen UN Treaty, be the next step for humanity’s future?

As we wait and watch for the outcome of the Copenhagen proceedings as well as the fate of the current climate bill stalled in the United States Senate, each of us has a task beyond waiting and watching. Arguably, it is the most important task, for the real change that matters is cultural change and a shift in the way we live. Think back to the Civil Rights movement. Transformation was triggered not by slow-moving legislation but rather the many civil rights protests for the integration of America’s schools and the massive march for voting rights in Selma. It was the popular voice and massive grass roots engagement on this moral issue that moved legislation, and with it, lasting change forward.

The same is true with regard to the major threat we now face to our civilization’s future. How do we meet the grave challenge of climate change and its potential impact on world food supply, world refugees and world health? The growing curve of human consumption, not only of CO2 emissions, but our overall culture of consumption, is staggering. Jared Diamond, writing in The New York Times, “What’s Your Consumption factor?” (January 2, 2008) shows that world consumption is growing at an unsustainable rate in the face of a growing world population. Our natural resources simply will not be able to sustain this demographic explosion. Diamond didn’t add the obvious corollary; as our consumption grows, so does our CO2 usage. Imagine the impact as China’s population, the largest in the world, increasing seeks new gas-fueled vehicles for the already clogged roads. Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, we have reached the end of the Western consumption ethic, which encourages more growth, more cars, and more consumption. This “ethic” can no longer animate our policy decisions and our actions, and as a template for the rest of the world, it leads nowhere but disaster. Not only are we using up the world’s diminishing resources; we are contributing to climate change and threatening the world’s species in a silent genocide.

Earth Day 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day in 1970. One hundred ninety countries will participate in the world’s largest observance, just months after the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. As diplomats seek a legislative treaty, so the world populations can now plan and honor Earth Day 2010 under a common goal of collecting massive acts of service and advocacy under Earth Day Network’s Billion Acts of Green™ campaign. Seventeen thousand international groups in 190 countries are expected to register acts of service and advocacy as a model of the environmental leadership and activism that is possible in our world. Earth Day Network has worked for this cultural shift by raising global awareness of the possible.

We will leave Copenhagen, with or without treaty in hand, with new vision and activism. Now is the time for a cultural shift in our way of living. Now is the time for simplifying lifestyles, living locally and celebrating a new ethic of caring for the Earth. Let’s begin:

• by greening our world governments and their diverse institutions. The Capitol, the White House and Congress, our state and our local governments should be green examples to the nation;
• by supporting bold initiatives for alternative energies and their rapid development to wean us from fossil fuel dependency;
• by greening all schools and universities and mandating that state, county and local fleets, buses and public transportation become hybrid or new fuel cell vehicles. Let’s encourage the private sector with financial incentives to follow suit;
• by devoting resources to public transportation and bicycle paths in all cities and encouraging their usage;
• by making all religious institutions models of environmental possibilities with green architecture, use of solar and wind power, community recycling and gardening and a true application of the spiritual teachings and truths of the earth;
• by developing awards in environmental activism for architects, engineers, artists, statesmen, journalists and people of faith who set the bar for creativity and effectiveness;
• by encouraging writers, poets, artists, and musicians to use their gifts to further an environmental vision and activism; and
• by supporting a new green foods movement that encourages a more vegetarian diet, a diet that is not only healthier and more just, but far more sustainable for the people of our world.

Paradigm shifts start from the grassroots up, and the answers are within us.
Let’s focus on the positive and the doable. We don’t want our children and future generations to inherit a sense of doom and gloom but rather to feel in full measure the innate and infinite capacity of the human spirit to arise and overcome the most demanding challenges humanity may face. We want them to see all life, including their own, as a miracle worthy of celebration. We want them to see the preservation of life on our planet as a mission worthy of their greatest passions and energies and to feel the joy that comes from joining in a common cause for the greater good.

Let me end with a prayer by a visionary poet, e.e. cummings: “ I thank God for this amazing day: for the leaping green spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”

Rabbi Warren Stone participated in the 1997 UN Conference on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan and will be attending COP15 in Copenhagen. He serves on the Global Advisory Committee of Earth Day Network and also will represent North American Jewish Organizations on issues of climate change.