As most of the accepted studies point out, there is no longer any way to stop global warming. Even if we are able to reduce greenhouse gases to those of the year 2000, global temperature will still increase by 0.6 degree Celsius. But at the rate, we are going the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a rise of up to 2.5% by 2050. The best we can do is prepare for it and, with great collective effort, we can still mitigate its effects. There is no fix. What can we do? Re-trap the carbon in the sea or earth? Revitalize denuded forests? Find some technological fix that will allow us to consume as much while expending less carbon? All these fixes are only going to mitigate the effects of the warming that we have already initiated. According to Mark Maslin, “Scientists believe a cut of between 60 and 80% [of greenhouse emission gases] is required to avoid the worst effects of global warming. And what are these worst effects? The expected 2.5 degrees already spell unpredictable flooding, droughts, deaths of coral reefs, increasing rates of extinction, reduced water supply, drying up of rain forests, melting of glaciers, increased spread of disease, the deaths of hundreds of thousand of people and the displacement of millions more. How do we stop this? What can we do when the very mechanism of our planet has somehow been misaligned? How does one fix a mechanism which is so complex that one purported fix could effect countless devastating side-effects?
And so here I am in my helplessness while I watch the world I love turn inhospitable to the deadly, ungrateful parasite that calls it home. Maybe global warming is the fever that is meant to purge mother earth of parasites like us—if there are any others like us, which is unlikely. I want to think that there is hope and most writers on the environmental crisis seem to think so. But from where I swelter in earth's rising fever, pest that I am, I can only feel that my host is determined to rid herself of my kind. I cannot think of a fix in this heat, and the more I learn about what is going on, the more I feel that I should give up in utter atonement for my sins and the sins of my fathers and my colonizers.
Still, because I intuit a good in the universe, because I am bound to this good in love, and because I intuit the promise of indestructible good in my fellow human beings—undesirable parasites though we have become—I am called to hope and do the good if only as an act of fidelity to the love that calls us to be. And so we must hope by being steadfast in our goodness and in our desire to do good by the world that is still so good to us despite our ingratitude. Remaining steadfast in the face of the darkness, despite the fact that the world as we know it is ending while others dance mindlessly into the night, is important for it keeps the presence of good and love in a world dying from mindlessness and greed. Love being realized is love presencing. Ahimsa being lived by its adherents is ahimsa presencing in the world. In its presencing, love is able to touch the broken heart that knows only to take and consume and destroy. The presence of love could build hearts capable to opening to the love that presences and the value of the world that is seen as commodity and resource could shine forth as a truth and beauty other than just that for the eyes of the awakened.
How then do we save the world? With little acts of love. Think of conservation through the prism of love and you will figure it out. Because little people committing little acts of love can channel the transforming powers of love, the very power that runs through countless stars, to the transformation of parasites into creative persons. What is needed is fidelity among those who love the world, that is fidelity to the source of love and faith in its power to restore by staying true to one’s goodness and creativity. This could mean doing the simplest things that almost seem like nothing:
• Cut down on consumption of everything from electricity to meat. Consumption is the number one problem of the earth. Because there are so many of us consuming so much, we have strained the earth's carrying capacity. Reducing one's consumption no matter by how much is an act of cleansing one's self of one's excessive and unnecessary violence. Everyone has to commit some act of violence to survive. Eating of anything is a reduction of an other being to your self. By reducing consumption, we reduce our acts of violence to the necessary ones and thereby reduce our acts of violence to the minimum necessary amount. But also, by doing that, one learns the joy of living lightly without too much baggage. The less one needs, the more one has opportunities for happiness unsupported by artificial supports, and the more one is free to be generous to others.
• Eat less meat mainly because it takes so much petroleum, land, water, and basic cereals to raise them. Cows also contribute much to global warming because their farts are methane and because we kill so much rain forest to raise them. On top of that, raising more meat deprives more poor people of food. Meat is only accessible to the well off. The more land is used for meat, the less land is there to use for the food accessible to the poor. The more meat is grown, the more grain is used by meat growers and the more expensive grain becomes for those who rely on grain for their energy. In effect, the more meat we produce, the more the poor are deprived of affordable foods. Consider your reduction of meat consumption an act of generosity and solidarity.
• Buy more from the market and less from the grocery. By doing that, you lessen polluting packaging. If there is a small market of informal sellers near your neighborhood, try to buy from there. This way you will save on carbon emissions and you will support small entrepreneurs who need your support. Of course, this may cost you more but if you can afford it you should because you're paying to support entrepreneurs from the marginalized groups.
• Look for products that are organic (because they are less polluting). Better yet, buy local organic products because they are more simply packaged without too many frills (thus without too much cost on the environment), they don't release all that much carbon to transport, and they support local labor. Even more importantly, buy organic products that are local and are committed to supporting marginalized communities.
• Buy simple products that require less packaging or processing. It may be prettier but the more packaging something comes in, the more materials it uses up, the more natural resources it consumes, the more it pollutes, and the more energy it takes to make. The prettier it is, there is also a greater possibility that it came from some first world country which means that it was made in a fellow developing country where workers are exploited before it was shipped to us.
• Try to be less fancy about your tastes. When you have highly developed palates that demand the best from the world like coffee from Africa, cheese from Switzerland, and beef from Japan or Australia, it costs more carbon points to get it the way it is and to get it here from there. I know that it makes a world of difference to acquire and consume these highly developed meats, that its worth dying for and killing for those spices, but your highly developed tastes could be forcing African farmers to enter into a trade economy that forces them deeper into debt or for cows to live in ways that are violative of their good or for vast tracks of badly needed rain forests to be destroyed.
• Try to ask for simpler things: less packaged, less processed, less fancy, less expensive. Try to not live expensively because the higher your lifestyle the more people, animals, plants, and minerals you have to exploit to generate a sufficient income.
• Avoid eating in big fastfoods chains. They grow their animals cruelly. Chickens are packed in cages without light and without enough space to move. All livestock are fed antibiotics to stay alive because they can't move. They also use a lot of Styrofoam to pack food which is very bad by way of solid waste because it takes forever to degrade and it releases toxins into our food and water when used.
• Avoid wasting food. Too much food ends up in the trash. If you don't eat and waste too much, you don't demand too much food and more of it will be available to the poor. Less demand, lower prices. Lower prices, more affordable food available to the starving millions.
• Try not to travel too much. I know we all need a break from our surroundings-especially when we live in the city which is really not built for creative human habitation. However, our getaways have an environmental cost—especially air travel. On top of that, we create an artificial strain on the local population and natural environment as tourists. Notice how in tourist spots life changes for the people and animals around these places.
• Don’t waste. Only use as much as can be justified. Everything, even water, is scarce thus every time we use something we end up depriving others of a resource that could have been put to better or more essential use. So before you spend on something expensive, or rare, or fancy, or high tech ask yourself will this excessive expenditure allow me to function better? Will it allow me to serve others more effectively? Will it make me more able to bring about a better life or a better world for humanity even if I accomplish this in a small way? Will consuming or owning things make me a better person such that despite everyone else’s sacrifice (the farmers in Agusan, the laborers all over the world who are not paid just wages and are victims of contractualization, the animals who had to die for this, the children who may not have clean drinking water for this) is worth it?
• Quit the upgrading habit for electronics. Try to use your old applicances as much as it is efficient and still working. E-waste is very destructive. Try to buy things that last.
• Better yet, stop accumulating stuff and stop needing to have new things.
• Find your peace as much as you can. The deeper you are at peace with yourself, the less you will have to shop, to eat, to travel, to golf, to entertain yourself at such a high cost to everyone and everything. It’s hard but let’s try for all our sakes.
These are the simple and not so simple acts of love we can do to generate hope or to invigorate the forces of love that can transform this fevered world and this sick species that is spoiling its own nest. But let’s all start small with the love we can do. The capacity for love and generosity is one that needs to be exercised. One should not aim too high too quickly but build on what is possible and fruitful. But we must also never be content with staying where we are.
Soon, more will be asked of us. Greater acts of love will be called for as the greater effects of our self-involved lifestyles will threaten our species and every other form of life on earth. If we exercise our capacity to open to all that is now, perhaps then we can respond according to the measure we are called to. And maybe we can rise to the occasion of the catastrophe we have created.
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