tenv Avoiding Slack Destruction

Responding to the NSA

By John Taylor; 2008 March 26, 06 Baha, 165 BE

"One who is slack in his work is brother to him who is a master of destruction." (Prov 18:9, WEB)

In a recent communication the Canadian Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly asked Baha'is to reflect upon the environment, and consult on what to do in our communities to contribute to the call of the hour, reversing global warming and climate change. In their letter they emphasize that our goals of teaching and expansion need not be divorced from such initiatives. They point out that if we ourselves contribute to the solution, it would be a strong argument for others to join us. The question is, though, how to do it, small in number and scanty in resources as we are?

The first thing that springs to mind is to take advantage of our unique position as facilitators of consultation, what with the Ruhi study circles going on. Some believers from Quebec recently attended our feast and told how this program has revitalized their ageing Baha'i community while offering a chance for local people to talk about more than the usual superficialities that dominate the media and other public fora. Book One is especially useful for raising our sights and expectations about the loftiness of what we can aspire to and share with others.

One of the main causes of climate destruction is disunity; the fact that wealthy elites are successful at dividing and conquering is a testament not to their cleverness -- it is the oldest ploy in the book -- but to the failure of the majority to stand up for the rights of the whole human race. Baha'is can contribute, for we have a special mission to root out the sources of contention that are hindering our response to climate change. Baha'u'llah wrote,

"O Contending peoples and kindreds of the earth! Set your faces towards unity, and let the radiance of its light shine upon you. Gather ye together, and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is the source of contention amongst you. ... Arise and, armed with the power of faith, shatter to pieces the gods of your vain imaginings, the sowers of dissension amongst you. Cleave unto that which draweth you together and uniteth you." (Proclamation, 115)

In our Ruhi study circles we can bear this in mind, for surely the reason that we as a society are not responding to the climate crisis as we should is that we are too wrapped up in contention and disputes instead of focusing our minds on what Baha'u'llah suggests, that which "draweth you together."

Baha'is, although our scope is global, are one of the most locally oriented groups around. It was therefore inspiring for me to read in the last pages of Naomi Klien's Shock Doctrine about the aftermath of the SE Asian tsunami a few years ago. She tells how certain native peoples of Thailand avoided the fate of less determined beach dwellers, for example in Sri Lanka. The poor in Sri Lanka were forced into concentration camps "for their own safety" while the land on which their homes had been on for generations was auctioned off to wealthy beach front hotel owners. The Thai natives were not so passive, they staged "re-invasions" of their beach front areas, protected by the publicity and media attention. They cleverly negotiated shared, egalitarian property arrangements that served as a model of local, consultative response to the shock of a disaster. So exemplary were they that they got tourist dollars from large delegations of Katrina victims, who came through regularly to learn how to avoid having their public resources privatized out of existence.

Clearly, local consultation and resolve is a powerful protection to the poor and disadvantaged.

I have also found it useful to take advantage of the Socrates Cafe movement, another locally oriented movement. It is one of the few interactive, face-to-face public fora where people can discuss non-superficialities, local problems and local solutions.

One area that was drawn to my attention at our last Wainfleet Philosopher's Cafe meeting was the problem of sewage disposal. Homeowners on the beach front there are being asked to chip in twenty thousand dollars each toward new sewers, which they are told will increase property values and allow more growth. One local from nearby Port Colbourne pointed out that these sewers would only add more of a burden to their overtaxed sewage disposal plant. Their beaches have been closed for years due to high bacterial counts, and dumping sewage, raw or not, into Lake Erie is not an answer.

I pointed out the obvious technological solution I read about in New Scientist a couple of years ago, the discovery in England that two-holed toilets (one for solids and one for liquids) would allow for quicker and better disposal of effluent. The idea of a two holed toilet is shocking, but there is no way around it. I realized from wider reading later on (see the discussions on this blog of the problem of "biosolids" ending up on food crops) that this same discussion of a disgusting but necessary sewage disposal problem is being faced by localities everywhere.

Who can blame farmers for broadening out and becoming toxic waste disposal experts by fertilizing their crops with biosolids? Who can blame anybody? We all have get beyond blaming and act for real solutions. Surely the most important answer is a marriage of world government with strong local consultation. The world government needs to set up standards to solve pollution and climate change problems definitively, and we locals need to act on that.

One major answer Baha'is can help with is to consciously reduce the visceral distrust we have for government solutions, a distrust that plays into the hands of the divide and conquer strategy of the elites. It is axiomatic: the smaller the earth gets, the more rules we will have to invent, promulgate and obey. We cannot fight pollution and climate change without strong regulation.

The Baha'i principles of obedience to government and non-involvement in political disputation shed a lot of light on this problem of needing increased regulation while the masses are less inclined to trust, cooperate and obey their governments.

Naomi Klein makes a similar point in one of her newspaper columns,

"The idea that capitalism can save us from climate catastrophe has powerful appeal. It gives politicians an excuse to subsidize corporations rather than regulate them, and it neatly avoids a discussion about how the core market logic of endless growth landed us here in the first place." ("Guns Beat Green: The Market Has Spoken," by Naomi Klein, November 29th, 2007 <http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2007/11/guns-beat-green-market-has-spoken>)

This paragraph should be tacked onto the back of Al Gore's film and book, "An Inconvenient Truth," for it is a flaw of Gore's proposed solution of making climate change into an investment opportunity. It may be a growth opportunity, but only if we change the ground rules about ground rules, and especially the ground rules of the heart.