By Joe Mancini
Published in December 2015
It seems as if the world is calling, in clearer and clearer language, on the need to build peaceful neighbourhoods, to welcome the stranger and to reduce the intensity of our carbon economy.
It doesn’t take much to read the signs of the times these days as they intensely flash on every media outlet.
“No more delays, no more denials. We need to act,” stated Catherine McKenna, the new Environment and Climate Change Minister for the federal Liberal government, emphatically calling for cooperative action to reduce greenhouse gases that result in global warming.
In the early 1980’s, scientists had clear evidence that the growing accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere was causing a cycle of warming that if not curtailed would lead to a significantly warmer planet. People talked about changes, but our carbon economy kept growing.
Stéphane Dion, Canada’s new Foreign minister is clear about the importance of the Paris climate talks.
“We know already what the large emitters have committed to do and the assessment of the United Nations is 2.7 [degrees] of warming, instead of two,” he said, “But if we have no agreement, we may go to three or four.”
It is well documented that 4°- 6°C of a warming planet will create deathly tropical temperatures, substantially reduced food production and sea-level rise devastation.
Paul Hawken once called the unsustainable use of fossil fuels a “once in a billion year carbon blow out sale.” But now there looks to be some hope on several fronts that some of this carbon will stay in the ground.
This September it was announced that a remarkable $2.6 Trillion dollars in investments in fossil fuels are in the process of being pulled from fossil fuel companies. The Divest Waterloo group has been educating locally on this issue.
Tom Rand, speaking at St. Jerome’s University in early November, described the hundreds of billions of dollars that are pouring into clean energy projects around the world. Some of his examples included Toronto based Morgan Solar gearing up to produce solar energy for less than 5c/kwh, how energy storage and battery technology will change how we use electricity and the slow, but inevitable phasing out of the gasoline engine.
Progress at this high level needs to be complimented by grassroots action. A starting point is to consciously commit to look after the place we call home. Common work, the effort we make each day to contribute to the common good can teach us a new appreciation of interconnectedness. The virtue ethics of ecological thinking provide sthe opportunity to direct one’s actions towards helping the natural world flourish. How can we ensure that our daily actions contribute positively to sustaining the web of life around us?
There is a realization that our present ways are harming the home where we live. The problem will not be solved with more growth in consumption. We need to continually rethink how we produce, how we consume, how we trade, how we grow food. Simply put, the way we have been acting has contributed to a warming planet and we have to find simple ways, around our house, around our neighbourhoods to find meaningful pathways of change.
Happiness is not a factor of how much our economy grows. Happiness is more likely the outcome of recognizing how we can join together with others to contribute to the greater good. Happiness comes from how we treat each other and how we treat our home.
This is why it is so important to welcome refugees to our neighbourhoods. There is always room at the table. Every week at Worth A Second Look thrift store, over 3,000 items are taken in, sorted, and sold at affordable prices. Our abundance can easily be shared if we put our minds and hearts to it. When we welcome the stranger we start a chain reaction of relationships that put in motion new ways of intentionally building our community.
We can nurture the interconnection between society and economics by asking deeper questions. How can we reduce wastefulness and find better ways of providing necessities? Can we devise sustainable ways of getting around? Can our neighbourhoods become places of community building?
All around us the signs of the times are leading to new answers. This thinking is being stimulated by Francis’s Laudato Si, the Climate Change Conference in Paris or the world wide refugee crisis. These realities are a question of ethics, of how we treat each other and how we look after our common home. It is about how we live together and what kind of a world will we bequeath to those who come after us.
