From Greenpeace:

• The Obama Administration kept its promise to save whales at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) talks. As a result, the IWC was unable to lift the ban on commercial whaling;
• Nestle, Burger King and HSBC all agreed to drop palm oil products from notorious forest destroyer Sinar Mas;
• Greenpeace spent three months in the Gulf of Mexico uncovering the truth about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill;
• Trader Joe’s agreed to “green-up their stores” by implementing sustainable seafood policies;
• Target announced that all their stores will stop selling farmed salmon products;
• The Vermont Senate voted to retire the old, leaky nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee; and
• Steller sea lions received some protection from overfishing in the western Aleutian Islands.

From Food & Water Watch:

• Over the past two months, with your help we’ve delivered over 70,000 letters to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of GE salmon. We’ve also put pressure on members of Congress, and just last week we held press events across the country to stop GE salmon. Within 24 hours of our California event, Senator Barbara Boxer wrote a strong letter to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of this frankenfish, and a bill was introduced in the US Senate that would ban GE fish.
• This year, with states and cities facing budget deficits, water corporations tried to privatize local water systems. With your help we defeated privatization in Trenton, NJ, Kansas City, MO, Temple, GA, Marion, IN, Citrus County, FL, and Slippery Rock and Hazelton, PA.
• You helped deliver over 15,000 letters to the U.S. Ambassador in support of global water justice, and for the first time, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the “Human Right to Water.”
• You’ve been fighting all year to help break up the monopolies in the food system. Next month, we’ll deliver tens of thousands of postcards and petition signatures from every state to the Department of Justice in D.C., demanding that they take action to make our food system fair and healthy for farmers, farmworkers, and consumers.

These are by no means the only “victories” for the environment, and there’s still plenty of drastic action that must be taken. However, despite the business as usual approach, greenwashing and flat out denial of climate change in some quarters, a greening trend is definitely getting stronger. For example, PETA has ranked the most vegetarian- and green-friendly NFL stadiums. Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that in the new five-year drilling plan, no new offshore drilling will be allowed off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts or in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The L.A. Auto Show earlier in November was very green, offering these new cars to the market.

At the same time, I strongly feel that this epic opportunity for humanity to learn needs to be commemorated with positive images. This is a spill that must be remembered always. Not only in a worldly sense, but in a sacred way. The repercussions are far from over and we must honor every single living thing that’s been damaged, and will continue to suffer.

In January of this year I started a photoblog, where these photos were first posted (scroll down to see other photos). It’s a nature-based endeavor to understand embodiment, a sister path to spirituality, and the spirituality of nature herself, as well as creative pursuits. My relationship with the lens is an old one, now reborn.

I offer the following as ways to ease your mind and heart, motivate your commitment to intelligent future-mapping, and balance the glut of images from the Gulf and BP logo redesigns out there in the collective. Make sure you also absorb the full significance of the quote below as well. (Clicking the images will show them in full size.)

Oil-free -- The Memory © Pamir Kiciman 2010

Oil-free -- The Memory © Pamir Kiciman 2010

When the first chakra is disconnected from the feminine Earth, we can feel orphaned and motherless. The masculine principle predominates, and we look for security from material things. Individuality prevails over relationship, and selfish drives triumph over family, social and global responsibility. The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine. We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality. Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place. I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon, “Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest? Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine.”

– Alberto Villoldo

And I give you the following as a mental focus and Heart intention. Use it daily, share it widely, print it and paste it everywhere. This disaster isn’t limited to location or time. It’s global, ongoing and breaks time.

Mental focus and heart intention for the Gulf of Mexico

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If you look at the archives of this blog, you’ll notice that there is a strong environmental and social responsibility component. We are not islands, and even if we were we are interdependent and interconnected in an ecology of life and being. I feel uneqivocally that while we are here on this beautiful blue planet, our spirituality is inextricably linked with all the elements of life and society as we know it today. This is sometimes known as engaged spirituality. And our engagement is being desparately demanded now. Our attention, our voice, our vote. For if we’re not engaged, the forces that shape life and society dictate and often without truth or even a modicum of superior solution-thinking.

There are many reasons not to drill offshore, which are listed below. Let’s stay topical for a minute and look at the impact of hurricanes.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused “six major, five medium, and over 5,000 minor oil and hazmat” spills, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. An estimated nine million gallons of oil were spilled, and that estimate does not even include the 5,000 minor spills. See this slideshow of the spills. Hurricane Gustav, on the other hand, plowed through more than 4,000 offshore drilling platforms and 33,000 miles of pipeline in the Gulf.

Oil is a human-wide addiction. It isn’t any different from any other addiction, except that its damage and devastation is global. When an individual is addicted, he or she causes damage and suffering to themselves, loved ones and sometimes to a wider sphere. It’s still tragic, but contained somewhat. Oil addiction is massive.

Without the type of energy oil provides, life stops. Energy is mission-critical to life. But feeding the addiction is not the solution. We’re dealing with a fossil fuel, i.e., it’s going to eventually dry up, it’s nonrenewable. Here are 10 reasons Greenpeace says offshore drilling is dumb:

10. Offshore oil drilling won’t impact gas prices today, and it won’t have a significant impact on gas prices in the future.

9. This is nothing more than a money grab by the oil companies – who are already making record-breaking profits.

8. We burn 25% of the world’s oil here in the U.S., but we have only 3% of the world’s oil reserves. So even if all offshore oil magically came to market today, the vast majority of our oil would continue to be imported, and we wouldn’t see price relief at the pump.

7. The current moratorium was put in place decades ago to protect us from the danger of oil spills along our coastlines and beaches.

6.  Burning fossil fuels like oil causes global warming, which causes stronger hurricanes, which will threaten the very offshore drilling rigs being proposed, which will contribute to even more global warming.

5. To avoid the worst impacts of global warming, we need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy within the next 10 years. The billions of dollars that would be spent on offshore oil drilling just postpones the inevitable transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

4. Oil exploration requires massive seismic testing – which threatens whales and dolphins.

3. Oil prices are set on the global oil market, so American oil is no cheaper than Saudi oil. We won’t get a discount for oil drilled in the U.S.

2. We can’t solve the world’s energy problems with the same drilling that created them.

1. Renewable energy is available now, so it’s time to walk away from fossil fuels and toward a clean energy future.

Furthermore:

• The United States burns 24 percent of the world’s oil, yet we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. CITATION: Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Natural Gas Liquid Resources, 1999 Annual Report,” DOE/EIA-0216 (99) (December 2000).
• There is no correlation between increased drilling and lower gas prices. The number of drilling permits increased by 361 percent from 1999 to 2007. And yet gas prices more than doubled in that time. CITATION: A new investigative report from the House Committee on Natural Resources studied the current system of drilling permits on federal lands and in federal waters.
• Drilling for more oil in the U.S. won’t result in lower gas prices because oil prices are set on the global oil market. This means that all oil produced around the world is sold all at the same price. As U.S. citizens we wouldn’t get a discount just because we drilled for it on U.S. soil. CITATION: This site explains why crude oil prices are similar all around the world. Prices vary only to reflect the cost of transporting crude oil to that market and the quality differences between the various types of oil.
• By requiring all automobiles in the U.S. to achieve 35 mpg by 2020 we will save 1 million barrels of oil per day. CITATION: New York Times article, citing The Union of Concerned Scientists in their reporting.

An excellent resource on Clean Energy 101 has been put together by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s introduction states:

No single solution can meet our society’s future energy needs. The answer lies instead in a family of diverse energy technologies that share a common thread: they do not deplete our natural resources or destroy our environment.

Renewable energy technologies tap into natural cycles and systems, turning the ever-present energy around us into usable forms. The movement of wind and water, the heat and light of the sun, heat in the ground, the carbohydrates in plants-all are natural energy sources that can supply our needs in a sustainable way. Because they are homegrown, renewables can also increase our energy security and create local jobs.

There’s a lot to take in regarding this matter. Fortunately much of the work has been done for us. All we have to do is absorb some of the information, and then make choices on how we spend our dollar, our voice and our vote. We can no longer abdicate the responsibility of being informed. Political commercials, sound bytes, the ticker tape at the bottom of your TV screen are simply not enough to guide our choices in the face of today’s complexities.

The facts are readily available. It’s a matter of increasing our brain’s processing power by getting involved. This means an end to being spoon-fed regurgitated swill, told what to think, and getting by with low-information slogans. Just as you seek the best information when it comes to your health, diet, kids, and your spirituality, so must it be the same in every matter, for every minute counts and as global citizens our roles and function are so much more significant than even a generation ago.

These clean energy technologies can cure our addiction to oil, stop the devastating effects of global warming, and bolster our economy—but only if America puts a cap on carbon pollution to unleash this future.

Solar:

Biofuels:

Wave:

Geothermal:

We call on our nation’s leaders to swiftly establish and implement policies to bring about deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions. The strength of the science on climate change compels us to warn the nation about the growing risk of irreversible consequences as global average temperatures continue to increase over pre-industrial levels (i.e., prior to 1860). As temperatures rise further, the scope and severity of global warming impacts will continue to accelerate.

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally concluded that our climate is warming, stating with at least 90 percent certainty that the warming of the last several decades is primarily due to human activities. Global average temperatures have already risen ~ 0.7°C (1.3°F) over the last 100 years, and impacts are now being observed worldwide. Human-caused emissions to date have locked in further changes including sea-level rise that will intensify coastal flooding, and dramatic reductions in snowpack that will disrupt water supplies in the western United States. If emissions continue unabated, our nation and the world will face more sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, snowmelt, flood risk, and public health threats, as well as increased rates of plant and animal species extinctions.

The longer we wait, the harder and more costly it will be to limit climate change and to adapt to those impacts that will not be avoided. Many emissions reduction strategies can be adopted today that would save consumers and industry money while providing benefits for air quality, energy security, public health, balance of trade, and employment.

All nations must commit to a goal designed to limit further harm. The European Union and a number of other countries have adopted a goal for limiting global warming to no more than 2ºC (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels. Emerging science must be regularly evaluated to assess whether this goal is sufficient.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change recognizes that all nations have a responsibility to curb global warming, consistent with their respective contribution to emissions and capacity to act. Recent analyses indicate the United States—even with aggressive action by other nations—would need to reduce its emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 2ºC.

A strong U.S. commitment to reduce emissions is essential to drive international climate progress. Voluntary initiatives to date have proven insufficient. We urge U.S. policy makers to put our nation onto a path today to reduce emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The first step on this path should be reductions on the order of 15-20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, which is achievable and consistent with sound economic policy.

There is no time to waste. The most risky thing we can do is nothing.

Learn more…

Today I purchased gas at $3.79 & 9/10ths (what’s that all about?!) using a website that helps you locate the best prices in your area.

More to the point, I’ve increased my gas mileage from 23 mpg to 24.2 mpg using Reiki. OK now I’ll be harassed by big oil & Detroit (NOT! Only a joke, that’s not my reality.)

Here’s how:

• When pumping keep your Reiki hand on the pump & intend better gas economy.
• Use Jakikiri Joka-ho (method for cleansing objects) on your car, intending that it burns fuel efficiently, that all car parts related to fuel are clean, work well & efficiently.
• When driving direct Reiki ahead of you so traffic flows, you get all green lights and there’s no stop & start.

It also helps to practice these commonsense steps:

• Consolidate your trips.
• Make sure your tires are inflated to the right pressure.
• Don’t carry excess & unneeded weight in your car.
• Drive below the speed limit.
• Accelerate slowly & evenly.
• Accelerate going downhill.
• Don’t weave in & out.

Also check out the informational & inspirational video below…

“Texas emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other state. And if Texas were a country, it would be the seventh-largest carbon dioxide polluter in the world. Texas’s high carbon dioxide output and large energy consumption is primarily a result of large coal-burning power plants and gas-guzzling vehicles, both of which contribute to the pollution problem. But while many Texans think bigger is better, there are signs of an attitude change on energy consumption.”

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: November 18, 2007

In releasing a report on climate change, the U.N. secretary general called on the U.S. and China to play “a more constructive role.”

Everything Around Us

Environment. What does it mean? The word itself is derived from Middle English ‘envirounen,’ from Old French ‘environner,’ from ‘environ,’ around, with further connotations of ‘see’ and ‘circle’ (Dictionary.com). Everything we see around us. Furniture (often made from trees), appliances, sky, fields, cars, ocean, mountains, buildings. Environment can be indoors or outdoors. As Gary Synder says, however: “Cities and agricultural lands…are not ‘wild.’ Wild is a valuable word. It is a term for the free and independent process of nature. A wilderness is a place where wild process dominates and human impact is minimal. Wilderness need not be a place that was never touched by humans, but simply a place where wild process has ruled for some decades.”

Why is it so important? Because we live in it. We breathe it, touch and eat it, smell and admire it. We also hugely impact it in every way, in all its aspects. And it gets even more complex: “The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.” (Standing Bear). We hurt the environment. This ends up hurting us. Does it also foster a wider disrespect? We live here, it’s unavoidable that we have an impact. That’s why it’s called a footprint. Can we make ours smaller and keep it out of each others’ face too?

The environmental concern is multi-faceted and every facet demands attention. To build on the momentum of a major environmental validation, let’s zero in on climate change. On October 12, 2007 Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Waathai, a former awardee said this: “When it was first announced that I would be receiving the Peace Prize in 2004, many people asked what does the environment have to do with peace? By choosing Al Gore and the IPCC for the award in 2007, the Nobel Committee have rightly brought to our attention that climate change is the single biggest threat to world peace we have ever faced.”

There’s that wider disrespect once more. Standing Bear again: “For him (Lakota), to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him….” Something is definitely going on here. Could it be that we’re in symbiosis, human to human, human to Earth, Earth to human?

We actually need greenhouse gases. A natural blanket of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeps the planet warm enough for life as we know it at a comfortable 15°C today. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases have made the blanket thicker, trapping heat and leading to a global warming. Fossil fuels are the single biggest source of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPCC is the top authority on global warming, comprising more than 2,000 leading climate change scientists and experts. It agrees that human activity causes global warming. Here’s some data:

• If no action is taken on greenhouse gases, the Earth’s temperature could rise by 4.50°C (8.1°F) or more.
• The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average.
• Changing weather patterns threaten to exacerbate desertification, drought and food insecurity.
• Floods, sea level rise and extreme weather events.
• Climate change will hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, but it will affect everyone.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth website has this science (see sources there)

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
• Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
• At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

• Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.
• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
• Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
• The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

Many greenhouse gas-emitting activities are now essential to the global economy and form a fundamental part of modern life. There too many underlying factors behind these findings, a confounding web of driving forces to list here. The one area where we have immediate influence is our own lifestyle, knowledge, willingness and worldview. “It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.” (Joanna Macy.) Self-reflexive consciousness doesn’t leave us any wiggle room. Since we are a species that possesses such a consciousness, one that can think for and about itself, reflect, assess and learn, we have to use it and use it keenly.

Our actions and what we invest in must be informed by the highest functions of this self-reflexive thinking. We actually have to use our noggin! Having this capacity puts the burden of responsibility on humans. It’s probably unrealistic to think that everyone in the ‘burbs is going to commute via carpool, public transit, bicycle or walking. Those choices are realistic for many people, and we do have the choice about what we drive and how we drive it. Do you drive an urban assault vehicle or what used to be known as a car? Do you drive at the speed limit, or weave in and out of traffic, speed, and end up at a red light with all the vehicles you just overtook, heart beating, shoulders tense, a scowl on your face, right foot ready to do it all over again?

Proper tire inflation can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We’re not going to ask our kids to do homework by candlelight. But, we can replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch saves about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. There are lists of painless, practical actions we can take in the resources listed below. The point here is that it starts with one household using its noggin. Let’s not be naive either to think that individual action will be enough to stem current trends of more, bigger, faster, but we can start at home, in our own environment.

The Earth didn’t ask us for compensation as it went through it’s cosmic birthing pains, cooled and life began growing in its perfect environment. It doesn’t ask us today for anything when it generously produces wheat and apples, lets us build on its surface and displays the most incredible colors for our enjoyment. The Earth is still free. Humanity has a cost.

To offset this cost, we are being asked to first admit responsibility, then think responsibly, and finally go out and act in ways that reflect our understanding of the integrity that must be honored between Earth and human. Joanna Macy again: “…graced with self-reflexive consciousness, we are endowed with the capacity for choice–to take stock of what we are doing and change directions…Weaving our ever more complex neural circuits into the miracle of self-awareness, life yearned through us for the ability to know and act and speak on behalf of the larger whole. Now the time has come when by our own choice we can consciously enter the dance.”

The larger whole. Wider respect. Climate change to the degree implicit in irrefutable data now available, or even to a lesser degree simply means that society as we know it may breakdown. The already tapped irreplaceable resources of the Earth will probably be further monopolized by the few for the few, aggressively protected and distributed militarily, to which resistance will arise. Since this has happened throughout human history, even at times when resources were plentiful, it’s not a big jump that it can happen in a global crisis. This is not a doomsayer’s pessimism. Instead, it’s one way to connect the dots between global warming and global peace. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to what temperature we allow global warming to rise. We are already consuming nonrenewable resources at an alarming rate, climate patterns are affecting sustainability and species are disappearing. We need to cool it now, not wait and debate the possible end of civilization.

Traditionally peace is cultivated from the healing of hearts and minds, through forgiveness, understanding, compassion, education and active dialog. The playing field has changed. It’s no longer only the home, neighborhood, a border or region. Of the many things humans share, the planet is our most common ground literally. In bettering it, we better each other. In caring for it we care for each other. In mobilizing on its behalf we mobilize on each others’ behalf. In acting to reduce the causes of climate change we tend our own backyard, and those of total strangers in far off lands. Strangers or kin? Will my backyard stay green if yours is parched? What do we owe the Earth and ourselves, more importantly our children?

This writing ends here, but Standing Bear gives us a worthy model with which to begin: “Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle…This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all…Everything was possessed of personality, only differing with us in form…We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty…and the fact was appreciated that life was more then mere human manifestation; that it was expressed in a multitude of forms.”

___________________________________________________________

Resources:
The Alliance for Climate Protection
Sierra Club: Global Warming & Energy
World Wildlife Fund: Climate Change
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

© Pamir Kiciman 2007