Mobilizing for People’s Climate March

With less than a week remaining before the People’s Climate March in NYC, Bhikkhu Bodhi speaks to the urgency of the problem and the need for us to take action.

Lion’s Roar
16 September 2014

With less than a week remaining before the People’s Climate March in NYC, Bhikkhu Bodhi speaks to the urgency of the problem and the need for us to take action.

Moving from a Culture of Death to a Culture of Life

By Bhikku Bodhi

On September 21, concerned citizens from all across the United States, and from many other lands, will be converging on New York City for the People’s Climate March, billed to be the biggest climate march in history. The immediate occasion for the march is the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations for a summit on the climate crisis being convened by the UN Secretary General. The march’s purpose is to tell global leaders that the time for denial and delay is over, that we have to act now if we’re going to secure the world against the ravages of climate change.

If we’re going to emerge intact, what we need at minimum are binding and enforceable commitments to steep cuts in carbon emissions coupled with a mass-scale transition to renewable sources of energy. However, while clean energy policies are clearly essential in combating climate disruption, a long-term solution must go deeper than adopting new technologies and such pragmatic measures as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. The climate instability we are facing today is symptomatic of a deeper malady, a cancer spreading through the inner organs of global civilization. The extreme weather events we have experienced come to us as a wake-up call demanding that we treat the underlying cause, the paradigm that underlies our industrial-commercial-financial economy.

Continue reading at buddhistglobalrelief.org.

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