Climate crisis; defining a new paradigm
“Lowada Sangarawa” is an instructive poetic work done in the 15th
Century authored by the Ven. Vidagama Maithriya Thera. Like its title
says, it is about “What’s good for the world” and is inspired by the
Buddha’s word. A work I read as a child, among the several poems I
vividly remember, is one about the crabs in the pot on the fire. The
imagery it creates and the substance it presents in Sinhala is amazing
and its relevance to what is happening around us in today’s world is
profound. The portrayal is of a pot with live crabs in it, placed on a
fire yet to be lit. The crabs enjoy the cool comfort of the pot,
imagining that it is a state of bliss, until the pot begins to heat-up
slowly killing the crabs ending the short-lived state of that enjoyment
and happiness.
Still greed driven
We as the human-race have for some time now, lived in a state of
enjoyment with the false belief that the pot will not heat on us,
consuming our very own existence. What climate scientists tell us is
that the ‘developed’ countries need to reduce their carbon emission
levels by at least 40 percent and that the whole world needs to get back
to emission levels of the 1990’s, if we are to contain an impending
climate catastrophe that can otherwise happen, closer to the middle of
this century. Hope is placed on energy efficient technologies, carbon
off-setting mechanisms and creating clich‚s such as ‘eco-civilisations’.
New techniques are proposed to replace the old ways of exploiting
resources, with some savings in the process through efficiency gains.
New greed driven stock-markets for carbon trading are created to
continue the exploitation, with crumb-like payoffs held as carrots. The
very nations that presented growth models that led and made all of us on
earth believe that ‘greed is good’ and having as wide a choice for
consumption of goods and services was the ideal way to create successful
lifestyles, are today attempting to provide us, the developing nations,
funding and assistance to “go green”.
Solid penalties
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Climate change may have an adverse
impact on agriculture. AFP |
At the recently concluded, G-20 Summit, Sri Lanka proposed that the
developed nations that created the climate crisis, must compensate those
who are affected by it by offsetting the debt-burden of those countries,
enabling them to make new beginnings. The point made is that handouts
such as assistance to set up ‘do good’ initiatives must be replaced with
solid penalties for the ‘sins’ committed in the past.
Defining our own model
I am at a loss as to why we as Sri Lankans, leading an alliance of
like-minded nations, can not go further and propose a whole new model of
creating a ‘new civilization’ based on the “sufficiency economy”
principles, where shunning greed and not feeding on it will form its
core thinking. We do not have to look too far beyond, but at the
principles of Buddhist Economics enumerated in Schumacher’s 1970’s work
of “Small is Beautiful - Economics as if people mattered”.
We of course need to have for ourselves as a nation, the moral
authority to present such a model by truly practising those ways. We
need to widely celebrate the greenness we already have and put an end to
all deforestation. We need to expand on our national programs for
reforestation with the widest possible participation of the people, with
our media making it almost a mantra. We need to take on bold efforts to
wipe-out corruption, establish the rule of law, meritocracy, human
dignity and respect for individual rights to establish a Sri Lanka that
we can all be proud of. We need to shun the decadent ways of the
dominant culture, but create our own sustainable ways of using modern
communication, production, construction and service-based technology
tools that are available. Our sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyles
must be moulded to be an example to others. Clean methods of governance
our leadership must practise, needs to form the basis for us to achieve
that state.
Strong call for action
Many organizations around the world are also calling out for justice
and for real change on the Climate Change domain, as the world’s
governments approach the Copenhagen negotiations in December this year.
Among them some I would recommend are, Sri Lanka’s own Centre for
Environmental Justice, the Global Humanitarian Forum, the TckTckTck
Campaign, and the World in Action Campaign. President of the Global
Humanitarian Forum, a TckTckTck founding partner, and former UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan in a recent media release said, “We must
end the deathly silence around this crisis.” He might just as well have
said “deadly silence”, because the voices that have been most
effectively silenced in the climate change debate are those of its first
and worst victims. “Although developing countries did not cause the
climate crisis,” Annan says, “poor nations are suffering the most, as
unpredictable weather patterns and the increase in natural disasters
affects access to food, water and shelter.”
The ‘Pin- Paw’ Fund
With the impending climate crisis, the world is at cross-roads. What
is significant about this situation is that there is not much time left
for human-kind to experiment on models. Creating Carbon-offset funds
also to promote greed driven agenda will only make the situation worse
and not any better.
I have long called the carbon-offset fund mechanism the “Pin-Paw
Fund” or the “Merit and Sin Fund”. This is for it facilitates enabling
the buying of carbon credit from those who practice good sustainable
ways, by those who seek to pollute or sin with the credit they have
purchased. This mechanism may seem innovative to those who do not
realise that it will only leave a negative impact on carbon emissions on
planet Earth. The scheme demonstrates the ingenuity of those who
innovate within the greed-driven model.
A whole new civilisation
They do not seem to realize that laws of nature have now held us
captive, giving us no more room to experiment. Perhaps the only option
before us is to take on models that will lead us to a whole new paradigm
in defining a whole new civilization, where our new ways of life will be
very different to that we knew before. The option may be to create a
civilisation where austerity, sustainability and living in harmony with
nature define all else we do. Given the challenges before us and its
insurmountable nature, this may be the only way forward we shall have
for our future survival.
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