Some good news for the planet at the end of 2018

Fr Dan Horan, OFM, describes three subheadings of Chapter One of the 2015 encyclical of Pope Francis,

Laudato Si, (A) Pollution and Climate Change; (B) The Issue of Water; and (C) Loss of Biodiversity. This article shares some good news in the these themes at the end of 2018.

Sarah Rieger writes that five new green energy collaborations between private companies and Alberta First Nations are expected to create 1,000 jobs and enough renewable electricity to power nearly 300,000 homes.

Source: https://i.cbc.ca/1.4950250.1545108463!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/chief-roy-fox-of-kainai-first-nation.jpg

The partnerships are the latest phase of the provincial government's renewable energy program. She quotes Chief Roy Fox of Kainai First Nation.

 "We're very fortunate that the Alberta government has understood us. They appreciate the need for us to become involved on the business side of alternative energy. It's a milestone," "We've been in the oil and gas sector for about seven decades … so this is another opportunity we feel the creator has given us."

 Elijah Wolfson writes in 2016, for the first time, the share of global energy that came from renewables passed 10%. According to the International Energy Agency, the world got nearly 25% of its electricity from renewables in 2017, and that number should jump to 30% within the next few years.

Ted Turner looks back on the past 20 years since he started the United Nations Foundation, he still considers the philanthropy to support the UN to be the best investment he ever made.

 The biggest threats to humanity today — aforementioned climate change, nuclear proliferation, gender inequality, and poverty, among others — don’t have simple solutions or they would already be fixed. We have to try to figure them out, though, not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because history tells us that progress is possible when we act. We live in an era of astounding technologies, resources, and knowledge; now we need the will.
We don’t have the luxury of time to waste on despair, doubt, and division. We need to act now. And we need to act together. As my good friend, the late, great Kofi Annan, said, "More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together."2

Elijah Wolfson observes that we are beginning to save more previously endangered species.

 It’s a bit hard to contextualize how many endangered or threatened species we’ve been able to save, since their ranks grow as as humans explore more of the world and find new species we must assess. But the fact that we’ve been able to take an increasing number off these lists is encouraging. In 2018, the lesser long-nosed bat was delisted thanks largely to the efforts of tequila producers, whose agave plants the bats feed on3

Caritas is participating in the World Water Forum in a bid to ensure water security, the equitable sharing and responsible use of water resources and measures to prevent drought and other disasters.

 An estimated one-third of the world’s population lives under water stress today and by 2025 two-thirds are expected to suffer from growing water scarcity as demand for water increases.
Man-made climate change, ineffective resource management, unsustainable farming practices and contamination from mining all contribute to water scarcity.
In its work around the world Caritas witnesses the detrimental effects of water scarcity on families and communities, especially the poor.4

The call for people to take action in care of our common home, the earth, is receiving positive response. This is encouraging as we begin another year to improve life on our planet.

References

1	(2018, December 17). 1,000 jobs will be created by $1.2B green energy partnerships ... - CBC. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/green-energy-announcement-1.4950236
2	(2018, October 30). Ted Turner on What Philanthropy Can Do Next After His $1 Billion Gift .... Retrieved December 31, 2018, from https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Ted-Turner-on-What/244915
3	(2018, December 24). How the world got better in 2018, in 15 charts - Quartz. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from https://qz.com/1506764/ways-the-world-improved-in-2018-in-charts/
4	(2018, March 21). Water – for all and everyone - Caritas Internationalis. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from https://www.caritas.org/2018/03/sharing-water/

Fossil fuel corporations as obstacles

Robert A. Hackett, professor emeritus of communication at Simon Fraser University, and Philippa R. Adams, PhD student in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, report that much of the argument advanced in support of expanding Canada’s fossil fuel production centres on job creation and economic benefits.

Jobs and Environment

Politicians, pundits and corporate spokespeople who support fossil fuel infrastructure projects—such as new oil and gas pipelines—often evoke this rhetoric when they appear in the media.

Concerns by Author

This study examines how the press—including corporate and alternative outlets—treats the relationship between jobs and the environment. Focusing on pipeline projects that connect Alberta’s oil sands to export markets, it also asks which voices are treated as authoritative and used as sources, whose views are sidelined, which arguments for and against pipelines are highlighted, and what similarities and differences exist between mainstream and alternative media coverage of pipeline controversies.1

More concerns and authors

1 (2018, December 19). Where is labour's voice in coverage of pipeline controversies .... Retrieved December 20, 2018, from https://www.corporatemapping.ca/where-is-labours-voice-in-coverage-of-pipeline-controversies/

Migration worked for most Canadians… make it work for everyone

Let’s consider Four Items For The International Migrants Day and see how these factors may have been important in the migration story of our own ancestors to Canada.

Displaced Person's Story

The reason for James Macpherson to establish his family in Pictou County Nova Scotia in the 18th Century is probably described in the video at the end of this piece. Ewelina U. Ochab contributes an article to Forbes urging Understanding Not Fear.

December 18 marks the International Migrants Day. The 2018's International Migrants Day titled “Migration with Dignity” recognizes that “treating every migrant with dignity is one of the fundamental requirements we face before anything else we attempt on migration.”1

Msgr. Luc Van Looy, President of Caritas Europa advocates the the Global Compact between countries that are attempting to make migration work for everyone.

While respecting each state’s national sovereignty, the Global Compact is a non-binding instrument that fosters cooperation between countries of origin, transit and destination of migrants. It is based on the existing international human rights framework and the Sustainable Development Goals. Knowing that no state can act alone in the field of migration, we believe it strikes a good balance between the respect of migrants’ rights and the interests of receiving communities 2.

How can we work for people so they don’t have to leave? Is the question asked on THE CURRENT, hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti, to the MSF International President Dr Joanne Liu.3

Dr. Liu responds that personalized violence against your family forces people to become displaced.

The refugee crisis is global and each of us has a role to play.

Four Items to Consider

With your support, Development and Peace reaches communities affected by forced migration.





What is the story of migration in your family history?

References

1 (2018, December 17). For The International Migrants Day - Understanding Not Fear - Forbes. Retrieved December 18, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2018/12/17/for-the-international-migrants-day-understanding-not-fear/

2 (2018, December 17). Caritas Europa: Let's make migration work for everyone. Retrieved December 18, 2018, from https://www.europeaninterest.eu/article/caritas-europa-lets-make-migration-work-everyone/

3 Let’s make migration work for everyone https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent

A learned and renewed spiritual view of traditional religion

Elaine Pagels knows from personal experience that spirituality defies logic.

Some spiritual patterns

She spoke to Mary Hynes on CBC Tapestry about her recent book “Why Religion?”

Elaine Pagels, an esteemed scholar of early Christianity and professor of religion at Princeton University, knew writing about her own spiritual experiences, particularly regarding the death of her young son and husband, might make her look like she was going "over the deep end."1

One of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement, Thomas Keating offers a reflection on contemplative prayer, the human search for happiness and our need to explore the inner world. Elaine Pagels writes in the forward of Keating’s book, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation.

Without discriminating in the ways that most Christians do between those we call Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, agnostic, Jew, Buddhist, or by other designations, Father Keating attempts to reintroduce into the lives of those he teaches insights and practices that Christian tradition sometimes has suppressed and often has left in obscurity. These two talks begin with a question of self-knowledge and end by recalling the unconditional love of God. In my own life, I cannot imagine having endured certain difficult times without his generous presence and without thepractice he teaches. Thomas Keating is both a “discerner of spirits,” gifted with a charism known from the early days of the Christian movement, and a “psychiatrist” in the original sense of the term—”physician of the soul.” Those of us who learn from him are grateful for—and blessed by—his gifts.2

Kathleen Hirsch of the Boston Globe adds some background on Elaine Pagels journey through suffering to spiritual insight.

https://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_835w/Boston/2011-2020/2018/10/31/BostonGlobe.com/ReceivedContent/Images/Ch003_003_9780062368539.jpg

‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you,” wrote Rumi.
For religious scholar Elaine Pagels, arriving at something close to the equanimity of this insight has been the struggle of a lifetime, one marked by extraordinary intellectual achievement and extraordinary loss, movingly chronicled in “Why Religion,’’ her searing and wise new memoir.
While a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School in the late ’60s, Pagels stumbled onto the recently discovered early Christian gnostic texts, and it was life changing. Raised in a privileged secular-atheist family in Palo Alto, Calif., she flirted briefly with evangelical religion, but soon left all but an affection for the rituals of religious life behind. The manuscripts she began to read at Harvard offered a spiritual framework that transcended the dogmatic proscriptions of mainstream

Christianity, a path of liberation and self-knowledge that was deeply personal and, as she read these forgotten “gospels,’’ seemed to her to be worthy of a lifetime of study — in her word, “true.”3

The experience of Elaine Pagels that might be categorized as "over the deep end" actually resonates with the mystical experience of poets like Rumi and Trappist monks like Father Thomas Keating. Too often, we let negative experiences in religion or with “religious people” blind us to universal eternal spiritual truths that have been revealed in religious practice.

References

1 (2018, December 14). Scholar Elaine Pagels says spirituality defies logic. She knows from .... Retrieved December 17, 2018, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/why-religion-1.4934033/scholar-elaine-pagels-says-spirituality-defies-logic-she-knows-from-personal-experience-1.4940931


2 (n.d.). The Human Condition: Contemplation and ... - In Via Lumen, LLC. Retrieved December 17, 2018, from https://www.invialumen.org/uploads/3/7/5/4/37541063/the_human_condition_contemplation_and_transformation_by_father_thomas_keating.pdf


3 (2018, November 2). The suffering of Elaine Pagels - The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 17, 2018, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2018/11/01/the-suffering-elaine-pagels/izJwYDGewJqlfPmseynFML/story.html

Common Ground on Carbon

The political turmoil in North America around climate change and measures to attempt to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere may lead you to the mistaken conclusion that there is no common ground on carbon.

Carbon based energy

The book Carbon by Kate Ervine declares that carbon is the political challenge of our time.

Carbon by Kate Ervine

While critical to supporting life on Earth, too much carbon threatens to destroy life as we know it, with rising sea levels, crippling droughts, and catastrophic floods sounding the alarm on a future now upon us.

This article outlines four areas of common ground in concern over carbon

1. Capitalism and Entrepreneurs in Alternative Energy
2. Support for re-election of politicians
3. Recognition of  the aversion of some to government intervention in their lives
4. The Insurance Industry is making ‘Significant Contributions’ in climate change

Some entrepreneurs are turning carbon dioxide into fuels.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5893d36bcd3c9b8178e76611f8706508fd091973/0_0_4921_2953/master/4921.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5ea5478563fbf41e58d67a43f5970ff8

Mark Harris of The Guardian writes:

“Technologies to capture CO2 from the air, like Climeworks’ units, have the potential for the sort of steep price declines that we’ve seen from solar, wind, and batteries, which are also factory manufactured products,” says Matt Lucas of the Center for Carbon Removal, a non-profit dedicated to curtailing climate change

Getting people to the polls will help make politicians care about climate change.

https://11bup83sxdss1xze1i3lpol4-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Voting.jpg

D.R. Tucker writes about the strategy of veteran political consultant, Nathaniel Stinnett to identify, register and motivate climate-concerned citizens to make their voices heard every Election Day.

“Then, in early 2014, my research revealed some really surprising data: namely, that there are actually tens of millions of Americans who deeply care about the environment as one of their top political priorities…but these people are awful voters, so they never show up in likely voter polls and they’re never targeted by political campaigns. This made me realize that the environmental movement may not have a ‘persuasion’ problem; instead, we may just have a ‘turnout’ problem. And that’s good news because getting an already-persuaded environmentalist to vote is far easier (and cheaper) than persuading a non-environmentalist to begin caring about the environment.”

Faculty at Harris School of Public Policy in Chicago have asked “What Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Portrait_of_Milton_Friedman.jpg/220px-Portrait_of_Milton_Friedman.jpg

Jeff McMahon writes for Forbes Magazine that Steve Cicala, an assistant professor in the Harris School, argued that the market for energy operates without accounting for its full costs — without compensating people throughout the world who experience damages caused by the emission of greenhouse gases during the production of energy. But when a third party not participating in that exchange suffers costs without compensation, the market has produced a negative externality. (This situation for a market has not been supported by Friedman)

"It is theft," Cicala said. "That's a loaded term, but if anyone can come up with a better term for taking something from people without their consent and without compensating them, I'm happy to use that term."

The free market solution to this problem would be the creation of another market, Cicala and Greenstone said—a market in carbon.

Don Jergler writes in the Insurance Journal that the Industry is making 'Significant Contributions' to battle climate change.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/app/uploads/2018/01/Geneva-Association-Survey-Graphic.png

The Geneva Association is putting forward three recommendations to accelerate the contributions of the industry to address climate change:

1. Third-party stakeholders such as governments, policymakers, standard-setting bodies and regulators across sectors should work in a more coordinated fashion to address barriers that hinder insurers from scaling up their contribution to climate adaptation and mitigation.
2. The insurance industry should continue to institutionalize climate change as a core business issue, expand its contributions towards building financial resilience to climate risks and support the transition to a low-carbon economy by collaborating with governments and other stakeholders.
3. Governments and the industry should explore ways to support climate resilient and decarbonized critical infrastructure through the industry’s risk management, underwriting and investment functions.

Kate Ervine, at the end of her launch of her book "Carbon" commented on finding common ground in the struggle against increasing CO2 levels.

Entrepreneurs who are going to be successful in alternative energy, politicians who benefit from the support of concerned citizens who are urged to “turnout” at the polls, “Chicago school” economists of capitalism who want a carbon market to correct a negative externality in the energy market, and insurance companies who need to reduce the payout for catastrophic hurricanes, fires, coastal erosion, drought, and floods have common ground from which to work to reduce our addiction to a carbon based economy.

References

(n.d.). Kate Ervine (Author of Carbon) - Goodreads. Retrieved December 5, 2018, from https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9842182.Kate_Ervine

(2017, September 14). The entrepreneurs turning carbon dioxide into fuels | Guardian .... Retrieved December 5, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/14/entrepreneurs-turn-carbon-dioxide-into-fuels-artificial-photosynthesis

(2016, April 8). Step one to make politicians care about climate change: VOTE .... Retrieved December 5, 2018, from https://citizensclimatelobby.org/step-one-to-make-politicians-care-about-climate-change-vote/

(2014, October 12). What Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change? Tax Carbon. Retrieved December 5, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-would-milton-friedman-do-about-climate-change-tax-carbon/

(2018, January 25). Insurance Industry Making 'Significant Contributions' in Climate .... Retrieved December 5, 2018, from https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/01/25/478540.htm