Once-hidden EU report reveals damage from biodiesel | World | Reuters

Once-hidden EU report reveals damage from biodiesel | World | Reuters: "BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Biofuels such as biodiesel from soy beans can create up to four times more climate-warming emissions than standard diesel or petrol, according to an EU document released under freedom of information laws.

The European Union has set itself a goal of obtaining 10 percent of its road fuels from renewable sources, mostly biofuels, by the end of this decade, but it is now worrying about the unintended environmental impacts.

Four major studies are under way."

Antioch Abouna: Global Warning! (mine them, don't fear them)

Antioch Abouna: Global Warning! (mine them, don't fear them): "There is a danger facing us on this planet perhaps even more severe in its implications for humanity than the global warming. It concerns the global depletion of resources and the impact this will have other seemingly ever increasing population.

Sustainable development has been an issue for decades and yet we do not seem to have made much progress in dealing with it. When I was a teen report was published by the Club of Rome called ' The Limits to Growth ' (1972). This has been updated at least twice since other writing is still on the wall. We cannot keep on living as we have without endangering the ecosystem upon which we depend, but if we must as a species continue to grow numerically and economically, then we cannot look to the earth as an infinite resource for us to plunder indefinitely."

Message from Melbourne to Copenhagen

Message from members of the religions of the world gathered at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

We, from the major faith communities of the world, meeting at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Melbourne, Australia, from 3rd to 9th December 2009, send warm greetings to all who are gathering at Copenhagen for your crucially important Conference. We wish to assure you that prayers are being lifted up around the world for this meeting as we recognize that climate change is the single most important issue presently confronting us and the entire Earth community.

Climate change and other critical environmental crises are intricately linked with the financial crisis. We call on all nations of the world, particularly the rich, to recognize humanity’s dependency on the natural environment and therefore on the health and well-being of the planet and seek solutions with the utmost urgency for the global environmental and economic systems.

We therefore call for a meaningful agreement that places the well-being of people and planet before profit.

We believe a dramatic reduction of carbon emissions is possible using the natural energy of the planet, which comes from renewable resources such as the sun, wind, waves, biogas. Therefore we call for a commitment to an immediate turning from reliance on fossil fuel energy and a planned and phased decline in its use in order to bring CO₂ emissions down to 350 ppm.

We believe there is a moral imperative for rich countries to reduce carbon emissions and share wealth and skills with developing countries to adapt to climate change and build their economies sustainably

Climate justice is essential for a sustainable future. Either we follow the moral principles of justice, upheld by all faith communities, and share equitably the resources of the world, or we continue to consume excessively, resulting in ever more conflict and environmental destruction.

We, religious leaders of the world, therefore call on the governments of the world to implement the following resolution:

CLIMATE CHANGE RESOLUTION:

• As people of faith, we believe we have a responsibility to the source of life and to future generations to care for this planet – our home. We therefore call on the governments of the world when they meet at the UNFCCC at Copenhagen to take urgent and meaningful action to stem climate change.

• Following the latest scientific evidence we believe we cannot allow temperatures to rise by 2 degrees. We therefore call for a reduction of CO₂ emissions to a target of 350 ppm, ensuring that emissions will have peaked by 2015 in all countries, to then decline to at least 85% below 1990 levels by 2050.

We pray wisdom and courage to do what is right.

Issued by Bishop Geoff Davies on behalf of all who endorsed it at the Parliament of the World’s Religions meeting in Melbourne, 3 – 9 December 2009

Contact: geoff.davies@safcei.org.za (Mobile:++27 83 754 5275)

SAFCEI AGM

The Third Annual General Meeting of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI) will be held at Temple David, 369 Ridge Road, Overport, Durban, on Tuesday 2nd June 2009 commencing at 18:30.

Programme

• 6.30 pm Finger Supper
• 7.00 to 8.00 pm Talk and discussion led by Rehana Dada
• 8.00 pm SAFCEI AGM

What's in your rice?

Message from Greenpeace

The world's most important staple food is under threat and we need your help urgently.

Sign the petition

Rice is daily food for half of the global population. It has been grown around the world for over 10,000 years and is cultivated in 113 countries. For millions of people rice is not just a food - it's a way of life.

Bayer, the German chemical giant, has created a genetically engineered (GE) variety of rice that will put our health, our agriculture and our biodiversity at risk.

The European Union (EU) will soon decide whether or not Bayer's GE rice can end up on European dinner plates. But this will not only affect Europeans. If the EU approves the import of Bayer's GE rice, farmers in the US and elsewhere may soon start planting the manipulated crop.

Stopping GE rice is not just about consumer choice or the environment - it's a lot bigger than that. It's a matter of global food security, human rights and survival.

You can tell the EU to keep Bayer's hands off your rice - sign the petition.

Thanks for your help saving the world's most important food. Please send this onto your friends today - we don't have much time before the decision is made.

With best wishes
Jan, Natalia, Lisa and everyone on the rice team at Greenpeace

P.S Ecological farming is the safest solution to the food crisis and looming climate change disasters. By signing the petition you're adding your voice in support of global sustainability in the face of climate change.

Double standard in Wild Coast toll road

With the deadline for public comments for the Wild Coast Toll road looming on 22 January, Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC), has condemned the new EIA as ‘still saddled with dealing with the problems of an extensive infrastructure proposal that was developed and promulgated in a manner that was anything but objective and independent’.

In its comment on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), SWC argues that the foundations of the proposal are fundamentally flawed because the SANRAL preferred route was developed as an isolated and unsolicited bid by a consortium of private bidding companies whose primary motivation was profit, rather than arising out of an integrated and comprehensive regional development plan. As the basic premises of the proposal remain unchanged, many of the fundamental concerns that were raised by the public in 2003 have still not been addressed.

SWC lists numerous public and legal concerns that were raised in the 2004 Appeal Review which the new EIA has failed to address. These include unrealistic mitigation measures given the current capacity of local government structures in the Eastern Cape Province; that by excluding the tolling process from the EIA a bias is created in socio-economic impact assessments and that it is still not certain that tolls will be affordable for poor communities, that the need for a Toll road and for a route through the Pondoland Centre of Plant Endemism (an internationally recognized ‘hotspot’ of plant endemism) are still not adequately justified, that the precautionary principle has not been applied, and that public participation processes are still not in compliance of NEMA.
The Appeal Review was commissioned in 2004 by the new Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Minister van Schalkwyk, in response to the large number of public appeals petitioning against the Record of Decision (ROD) made in December 2003 which had approved the N2 Wild Coast Toll Road Environmental Impact Assessment of 2003.
The SWC EIA commentary states that the EIA is ‘rank with double standards’.

Posted on January 14th, 2009 (www.swc.org.za)

Conference: Religious Leaders for a Sustainable Future

A special conference of “Religious Leaders for a Sustainable Future”, is to be held from 10th to 12th February, 2009 at Eskom Centre.

This is a critically important conference being jointly organised by SAFCEI and Indalo Yethu. At this conference we want to agree on resolutions that we will address both to government and to faith communities about the challenges lying ahead regarding justice and peace in the world.

The Archbishop of Sweden, Anders Wejryd, has issued a multi-faith manifesto regarding Climate Change. It calls for extensive and speedy reduction of carbon dioxide emission in the wealthy parts of the world and formed the basis of a WCC statement presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan calling for “effective and equitable global climate policy regime built on the ethical imperatives of justice, equity and solidarity.”

It would seem that political leaders still have a long way to go to implement the steps needed to counteract the effects of Climate Change. We need to take decisive action within the next 10 years.

At our forthcoming Summit we wish to consider which steps our government should take to meet the environmental crisis and what steps the faith communities should take.

From a letter from
Bishop Geoff Davies
Executive Director: SAFCEI
Office Tel: (+27) (0)21 7018145 Fax: 086 6969666
PO Box 106, Kalk Bay, 7990
Email: coordinator@safcei.org.za

Please pass this on to religious leaders in Southern Africa who may be interested in attending, or draw their attention to this post.

The bottled water scam

CounterPunch -November 18, 2008

The Bottled Water Con
Buying the Message on the Bottle

By Wendy Williams

I remember when the name of the game at my gym was pump 'n' swig. Weight
lifters and treadmill sloggers routinely carried with their sweat towels
expensive water in plastic bottles.

Drinking commercial water was the cool thing. In 2006, Americans bought 32.6
billion single-serving bottles of water, and another 34.6 billion larger
bottles.

With a slew of brands for basically the same product, image marketers have
pushed the envelope - the bottle itself. My favorite absurdity: "Bling H2O,"
with the motto "More than a Pretty Taste." You can buy this water in a
"Limited Edition" frosted-glass bottle encrusted with crystals for $40.

The surprising truth is that an estimated 25 to 40 percent of bottled water
comes from public drinking reservoirs. Pepsico's Aquafina label shows
high-peaked mountains, but the water is from municipal systems, including
that of Ayer, Mass., a town next to a military base and a short drive from
Boston. Coca-Cola's brand, Dasani, also uses municipal systems.

I remember a Dennis the Menace cartoon showing Dad, dazed and bleary-eyed at
3 a.m., holding out a glass of water. Dennis says, "That's bathroom water! I
wanted kitchen water!"

It's all in the marketing.

At some restaurants, "water sommeliers" have pushed $75-a-bottle water for
each course. I once took my husband for his birthday to a restaurant where
the waiter asked if we would like our water bottled or - with curled lip -
"native." That convinced us. We absolutely had to go local.

We still laugh about that.

For years, the joke's been on consumers. We spend all that money on water
and plastic, and toss the plastic. It litters America from sea to
bottle-bobbing sea.

"We estimate that fewer than 20 percent of those get recycled," says Betty
McLaughlin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute.

Elizabeth Royte, author of the highly readable "Bottlemania: How Water Went
on Sale and Why We Bought It," says America uses about 17 million barrels of
oil each year to make plastic water bottles.

"If you have good tap water, if bottled water is redundant, why wouldn't you
go for the low-impact option?" she asks. "Bring your water over to the
Stairmaster in a reusable bottle."

That message finally seems to be getting through. Today I see the beginnings
of a bottled-water backlash. At my gym, almost no one wants to be seen
swigging from throw-away plastic anymore.

Some restaurants have abandoned bottled water. New York City's Italian
restaurant Del Posto, where it's easy to drop hundreds of dollars on dinner
for two, has a 61-page wine list with many bottles priced over $1,000, but
you can't buy bottled water at any price. Says one of the restaurant's
owners: "To spend fossil fuel trucking water around the world is absurd."

At colleges nationwide, students take the "no bottled water" pledge.
Realizing that spending taxpayer funds on bottled water is careless
environmental stewardship, Illinois has canceled contracts for bottled
water. The city governments of Fayetteville, Ark., and Albuquerque, N.M.,
won't buy the stuff. Chicago has a tax of 5 cents per bottle to cover
disposal costs. Michigan may extend its 10-cent deposit on soft-drink
bottles to bottled water.

For a while, bottled water had a good thing going. In 2006, the industry
worldwide grew 7 percent in dollar sales. Some forecasters suggested 40
percent growth over the next five years.

But recently, those phenomenal growth rates have slowed worldwide.

"Bottled water sales have gone flat for the first time in 30 years, at both
Coke and Pepsi," says ad executive Erik Yaverbaum, founder of Tappening,
which encourages people to drink tap water. "I think people are realizing
they are wasting money buying water that's the same as what comes from their
tap."

If I'm going to the gym now, I drink a glass of water before I go. If I'm
going on a long car trip, I fill up a clean glass jug. My mom did that. And
we never went thirsty.

***********

Wendy Williams, who lives in Massachusetts, is co-author of "Cape Wind:
Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future." She
wrote this commentary for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle,
Salina, Kan.

http://www.counterpunch.com/williams11182008.html

***********

And in South Africa it is no different.

Some brands of bottled water are simply tap water, so you might as well refill them at the tap and recycle the bottles instead of adding them to the landfill.

The tyranny of oil

From a book review:

Antonia Juhasz - The Bush Agenda:Index: "Juhasz investigates the true state of the U.S. oil industry—uncovering its virtually unparalleled global power, influence over our elected officials, its lack of regulatory oversight, the truth behind $150-a-barrel oil, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline, and the highest profit in corporate history. Exposing an industry that thrives on secrecy, Juhasz shows how Big Oil manages to hide its business dealings from policy makers, legislators, and most of all, consumers. She reveals exactly how Big Oil gets what it wants—through money, influence, and lies.

The Tyranny of Oil offers both a new take on problems and a new set of solutions as Juhasz puts forward an immediate call to action—a formula for reining in the industry, its governmental lobbying power, environmental destruction, and violence while reducing global dependence on oil. Her thought-provoking answers to the most pressing energy questions speak directly to readers concerned about oil and gas prices, global warming, wars for oil, and America’s place in the world. With the major players in the world’s most powerful industry charged with collusion, price-gouging, anti-competitive behavior, and unabashed greed, Juhasz calls boldly for the breakup of Big Oil."

Orthodox primates speak on human divisions and the environment

The primates of the Orthodox Churches, meeting from 10-12 October at the Phanar, Istanbul, have issued a message to all Orthodox Christians throughout the world, urging them, among other things, to play a part in healing human divisions and caring for creation.

Russian Orthodox Church (Brussels Representation) - Eglise Orthodoxe Russe (Repr�sentation �Bruxelles):

The various nationalistic, ethnic, ideological and religious contrasts continuously nurture dangerous confusion, not only in regard to the unquestionable ontological unity of the human race, but also in regard to man’s relationship to sacred creation. The sacredness of the human person is constrained to partial claims for the “individual”, whereas his relationship toward the rest of sacred creation is subjected to his arbitrary use or abuse of it.

These divisions of the world introduce an unjust inequality in the participation of individuals, or even peoples in the goods of Creation; they deprive billions of people of basic goods and lead to the misery for the human person; they cause mass population migration, kindle nationalistic, religious and social discrimination and conflict, threatening traditional internal societal coherence. These consequences are still more abhorrent because they are inextricably linked with the destruction of the natural environment and the entire ecosystem.

Spirituality and Conservation IUCN Forum 9th October 2008

Spirituality and Conservation IUCN Forum 9^th October 2008

I want to say that I believe it essential that Faith Communities and environmental organizations partner and work together.

I know that in the past there has been a lack of contact, and even suspicion: Environmentalists believing that Faith Communities were only interested in heavenly matters and so were no earthly good, and some religions thinking that environmentalists were leading us down the path of pantheism and new age philosophies.

There are a number of reasons why it is so important that environmentalists partner with us:

1. The environmental crisis is a moral and spiritual matter. We know values have to change if we are to achieve a sustainable world. Religious and spiritual traditions are fundamental drivers of human behaviour. Religions can change people’s behaviour and offer hope, inspiration and action.

2. Religion is a pervasive force in society. Let’s work with religions. Some say that it is only going to be the religions that will turn us from our present disastrous direction.

3. Religions have a huge network base grounded in local communities – I want you, the IUCN partners, to link in with that.

IUCN in turn need to encourage religions to recognise that the environment is part of their responsibility. This is happening. We are here at this Forum, and increasingly religions are putting the environment onto their agenda.

For example, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has said: “For the Church of the 21^st Century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is central to what it means to be a Christian”. It is core gospel business.

Following the call from the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and the World Council of Churches, we have set aside a period in the church’s calendar: a Season of Creation – a time to raise the profile of creation and to celebrate it.

We are rediscovering that there are two books of God – the Bible and nature.

Just as I believe it essential that conservation and religion work together, so must science and religion. I am married to a scientist, so I know how advantageous that is!

So you can help us to develop ecologically premised thinking, bringing environmental and scientific reality to Faith Communities.

Let me give some examples: In the Judeo-Christian world one of the most misused passages is Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful…fill the earth…rule over every living creature”. Well, we have filled the earth and we have abused the command to ‘rule’ or ‘have dominion over’. The Biblical understanding is to care for, look after, protect. We need to put Genesis 2:15 alongside where we are told to till and “keep” the earth. We are to be “earthkeepers”.

South Africa under apartheid is an example of where we abused the mandate ‘to rule’ – we failed to rule with justice for all the people of the country.

Judaeo-Christian traditions recognise and worship a creator God. The creation story in Genesis is a profound theological story. It should not be seen as a scientific explanation.

I used to say that I did not mind if a person was a creationist or an evolutionist – my concern was that we are destroying life on this planet, whatever our beliefs.

I think it is imperative to recognise evolution so that we see that we are integrally part of creation – we are not ‘set apart’ from it.

The danger of creationism is that we think that somebody up there, out of nothing, brought Man into being, with a superior purpose and meaning in life, and that we are special and can consider ourselves superior and therefore treat the rest of creation with disdain and contempt.

All of us, people of faith or not, must overcome our anthropocentric assumptions that we humans are the centre of everything.

We have to recognise that we are part of life – we are part of all of creation and must treat it all with justice and respect. We must become eco-centric.

Faith Communities have a good record of seeking justice, leading the campaign for the abolition of slavery and standing against apartheid.

Religions also call for equity.

Because of our use of the stored fossil fuel capital of previous millennia, coal and oil, we have more wealth in the world than ever before –– yet we have greater poverty and economic injustice. We have a global apartheid situation with inequalities world wide that are far wider than they were in South Africa’s apartheid days.

We Christians say that God provides for our needs, but not our greed. It is an affront to God that a CEO can earn in a few days what someone else may earn in a lifetime, or even, dare I say, that we can stay in the wonderful luxury of these hotels, while there are children dying because they have no clean water. From here in Barcelona, that poverty may be on another continent. In Cape Town, it is alongside.

Most religions, I think, proclaim that we should live more simply so that others may live. Sacrificial love is at the heart of the Christian message. When confronted with the challenge of climate change and biodiversity loss I would hope that Christians would say ‘I am prepared to pull in my belt and forgo the luxury I now enjoy for the sake of my children and future generations.’ That means, for example, that if we have to pay more for renewable energy, we do so, rather than leaving an uninhabitable planet to future generations.

Religions call for peace, but we won’t find peace without justice and equity, and that now extends to all of creation.

We are calling for new economic principles that bring justice and equity to both the poor and the natural environment – as Achim Steiner suggested, ‘we must build environmental and social capital’.

We also hope we religions can help communicate the challenge. When people ask why biodiversity loss is so important, we can say in strong and emotive language that we are causing the extinction of God’s creation. And we need to be blunt, and say that is a sin! I can think of no greater sin than wiping out something that we believe God brought into being. .

We know the position is so serious that we hope we can promote unity against this common threat.

Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI)

I want to tell you what we are doing in South Africa: We have established a multi faith Environment Institute. We have members of all major religions represented on our management board, including African traditional religions. None of us feel threatened or our faith compromised – our own faith can be deepened in learning from others. Our purpose is to find common concerns and actions regarding the environment from our respective faith positions. We get on so well in SAFCEI we believe we are an example to the world!

We are committed to cherishing living earth, united in our diversity through our common commitment to earthkeeping.

Finally, we uphold as core values the principles of the Earth Charter.

1. Respect and care for the community of life

II. Ecological integrity

III. Social and economic justice

IV. Democracy, non-violence and peace

This is a global ethic that supports local practices and action.

The Earth Charter is a document all faiths could endorse and embrace and we ask that all faiths disseminate and promote it. It upholds principles for nature and for people and we believe could be a unifying document which could underpin a mass movement for the greatest cause, that of life itself, as Julia Marton LeFeuvre said at our grand opening. So let’s work together. There is lots to be done.

Bishop Geoffrey F Davies 8^th October 2008

SAFCEI

P O Box 106,

KALK BAY 7990,

South Arica

Email: geoff.davies@safcei.org.za

Failure on climate change will 'haunt humanity': Australian expert

AFP: Failure on climate change will 'haunt humanity': Australian expert: "Failure to curb global warming would 'haunt humanity' forever, Australia's top climate adviser said Tuesday as he urged the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050.

Ross Garnaut, presenting his long-awaited report on climate change, said Australia was more vulnerable to rising temperatures than any other developed country because of its hot, dry climate and faced environmental destruction and a major decline in farming in nothing was done.

'If we fail, on a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time,' Garnaut told reporters in Canberra."

Stop mining of the Xolobeni beaches in the Transkei Petition

Please go to this site and sign the Xolobeni mining petition:

Stop mining of the Xolobeni beaches in the Transkei Petition: "The Department of Minerals and Energy has announced that it intends awarding a mining licence to Australian mining company MRC on 31 October 2008 to mine the Kwanyana Block of the Amadiba Tribal Administrative Area, on the Pondoland Wild Coast. This announcement has been made before the SA Human Rights Commission has completed its investigation into human rights violations lodged by local residents allegedly perpetrated by agents of MRC."

Ecosocialist Manifesto

www.EcosocialistNetwork.org: "Discussion begins on
Second Ecosocialist Manifesto

At the founding Ecosocialist International Network meeting in Paris last October Ian Angus, Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy were delegated to draft a Second Ecosocialist Manifesto.

They have now finished the draft and have submitted it for open international discussion. It can be downloaded in PDF form from the Ecosocialist International Network website:

* English: 2nd-Ecosocialist-Manifesto-DRAFT-en.pdf"

Stacked Tall � The First Fossil Fuel Free Community

Stacked Tall � The First Fossil Fuel Free Community: "Plans are in the works for a community called Geos to operate completely without fossil fuel. The plan is to build a community of affordable housing (not just for the rich elite) that run on solar power on sunny days and geo power on cloudy days."

Government's CO2 mitigation strategy

MITIGATION STRATEGY

With reference specifically to our mitigation strategy, Cabinet adopted the following approach:

1. The Start Now strategic option as outlined in the LTMS will be further implemented. This is based, amongst others, on accelerated energy efficiency and conservation across all sectors, including industry, commerce, transport and residential, inter alia through more stringent building standards.
2. We will invest in the Reach for the Goal strategic option by setting ambitious research and development targets focussing on carbon-friendly technologies, identifying new resources and affecting behavioral change.
3. Furthermore, regulatory mechanisms as set out in the Scale Up strategic option will be combined with economic instruments such as taxes and incentives under the Use the Market strategic option, with a view to:
• Setting ambitious and mandatory (as distinct from voluntary) targets for energy efficiency and in other sub-national sectors. In the next few months each sector will be required to do work to enable it to decide on actions and targets in relation to this overall framework.
• Based on the electricity-crisis response, government’s energy efficiency policies and strategies will be continuously reviewed and amended to reflect more ambitious national targets aligned with the LTMS.
• Increasing the price on carbon through an escalating CO2 tax, or an alternative market mechanism.
• Diversifying the energy mix away from coal whilst shifting to cleaner coal, by for example introducing more stringent thermal efficiency and emissions standards for coal fired power stations.
• Setting similar targets for electricity generated from both renewable and nuclear energy sources by the end of the next two decades.
• Laying the basis for a net zero-carbon electricity sector in the long term.
• Incentivising renewable energy through feed-in tariffs.
• Exploring and developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) for coal fired power stations and all coal-to-liquid (CTL) plants, and not approving new coal fired power stations without carbon capture readiness.
• Introducing industrial policy that favours sectors using less energy per unit of economic output and building domestic industries in these emerging sectors.
• Setting ambitious and where appropriate mandatory national targets for the reduction of transport emissions, including through stringent and escalating fuel efficiency standards, facilitating passenger modal shifts towards public transport and the aggressive promotion of hybrids and electric vehicles.

PROCESS GOING FORWARD: 2009 to 2012

Cabinet has mandated a clear path for the future. Milestones will include a national summit in February next year, the conclusion of international negotiations at the end of 2009 and a final domestic policy to be adopted by the end of 2010 after international negotiations have been completed.

The process will culminate in the introduction of a legislative, regulatory and fiscal package to give effect to the strategic direction and policy from now up to 2012.

Click here for the PowerPoint presentation of the Media Statement.

Enquiries to:
Ronel Bester Mobile: 083-242-7763 E-mail: rbester@deat.gov.za

Ecology - the moment of truth

Ecology: The moment of truth--an introduction

By John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York

The July-August 2008 (Volume 60, Number 3) edition of the influential US
socialist journal Monthly Review is a special issue on ``Ecology: The
Moment of Truth", edited by Brett Clark, John Bellamy Foster and Richard
York. The issue is devoted to the planetary environmental emergency. It
is essential reading for all socialists and environmentalists. With
permission from Monthly Review, Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal here posts the introduction by the editors, and urges Links'
readers to purchase the issue and/or subscribe to Monthly Review

Conflicts fuelled by climate change causing new refugee crisis, warns UN | Environment | The Guardian

Conflicts fuelled by climate change causing new refugee crisis, warns UN | Environment | The Guardian: "Climate change is fuelling conflicts around the world and helping to drive the number of people forced out of their homes to new highs, the head of the UN's refugee agency said yesterday. After a few years of improvement, thanks mainly to large-scale resettlement in Afghanistan, the numbers of civilians uprooted by conflict is again rising. During 2007 the total jumped to 37.4 million, an increase of more than 3 million, according to statistics published today.

The figures, described as 'unprecedented' by the UN, do not include people escaping natural disasters or poverty - only those fleeing conflict and persecution. But Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said that climate change could also uproot people by provoking conflicts over increasingly scarce resources, such as water."

Canadian obsession with fossil fuels

What is it with Canadians?

Western Canada has one of the most abundant sources of hydro-electricity in the world, but first they want to move their aluminium smelting operations to South Africa (a plan that seems to have been aborted by Eskom's failure to plan for more generating capacity) and now their municipalities are wanting to replace clean trolley buses with fossil-fuel guzzling diesels.

Real Estate Weekly:

After years of neglect and operational sabotage, city bean counters and Edmonton Transit administrators have finally succeeded in their obsessive quest to pull the plug on the city’s 70-year-old trolleybus system. Last month, they finally got a majority on council that was gullible enough to swallow the misinformation that trolleybuses are a technology of the past, not a way to a cleaner and greener future.

While municipalities around the world are expanding their electrically-powered public transit fleets, Edmonton city council voted seven-to-six to begin the process of dismantling the city’s trolleybus network by 2010. Instead, they’ll abandon proven trolley technology and buy 47 diesel hybrid buses that have an uncertain lifespan, burn more fossil fuels and spew more emissions at street level.

South African bus operators are not much better -- cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town lost their trolley buses about 30 years ago. Of course they relied on coal-fired power stations, so they still used fossil fuels, though indirectly. But at least the coal was mined locally, and not imported. Cities in western Canada have no such excuse.

Saints and animals

One of the things that one often comes across in hagiographies (writings about saints) is that the saints often had a special relationship with animals, especially wild animals. The Christian monastic holy men of all ages not only mediated between man and man, and between man and God, but also between human beings and wild animals. They were believed to be able to protect people from harmful animals, and yet also to have a special relationship with animals.

In some ways, this is related to the idea of the demonic forces, which were believed to be able to control wild animals. Poisonous snakes and large carnivores such as lions and leopards were particularly dangerous in Africa before the nineteenth century, and there are many stories of Egyptian and Ethiopian saints preventing dangerous animals from harming people or their homes or crops or cattle. These accounts are very similar to many biblical ones -- Daniel being unharmed in the lion's den, and St Paul being unharmed when bitten by a poisonous snake, for example.

But the relation between the holy men and wild animals was not seen only as one of conflict, but also one of friendliness. There are stories of lions, rhinoceroses and leopards allowing holy men to mount and ride them and even to talk to them. This is not peculiar to Ethiopian monastics. St Seraphim of Sarov made friends with a bear and several other animals (Stefanatos 1992:281), as did St Columbanus in Gaul (Mayr-Harting 1991:92). Theologically, this indicates an understanding that the enmity between human beings and animals brought about through the fall has been done away with. Salvation is not simply an individual affair, between the individual and God, but rather God reconciles the world to himself, and redeems it from bondage to corruption and conflict. The monastic holy man is in a sense the image of the reconciling ministry of Christ on earth, and by growing in holiness monastics seek to live transfigured lives and so transfigure the world (Stefanatos 1992:75).

Christians, as a new creation in Christ, should be able to live in harmony with other human beings, with God, and with nature and their natural environment, and the monastic holy men are examples and models of this (Kaplan 1984:89). Similar stories are told of the monastic holy men who evangelised Ethiopia, England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Lappland, Georgia, Armenia and Siberia. Whether Eastern or Western, African, European or Asian, the stories are remarkably similar.

St Mark's account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is the shortest in the synoptic gospels, but it contains one detail that is lacking in both Matthew and Luke: "he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts" .And so many of the followers of Jesus throughout the ages, the desert-dwelling monastic holy men, have been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, and were with the wild beasts.

Bibliography

• Kaplan, Steven. 1984. The monastic holy man and the Christianization of early Solomonic Ethiopia. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

• Mayr-Harting, Henry. 1991. The coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. London: Batsford.
• Stefanatos, Joanne. 1992. Animals and man: a state of blessedness. Minneapolis: Light & Life.

Synchroblog

This post is part of a synchroblog on Christianity and the environment. A number of bloggers synchronise their blogs by writing on the same basic theme on the same day. Here are links to the other posts:

• Is it All About the Green? by Phil Wyman
• Rediscovering Humanity's Primal Commission by Adam Gonnerman
• Turn or Burn? A New Liberal Hell? by Cobus van Wyngaard
• Little Green Man by Sonja Andrews
• Bashing SUV's for Jesus by David Fisher
• When Christians Weasel Out of Their Environmental Responsibilities by KW Leslie
• Green Christian Manifesto by Matt Stone
• God So Loved by Sally Coleman