Editor’s note: This commentary is by George Plumb, who is a member of the Vermont Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the former executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population.
[T]he Vermont Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship is proud to join Vermont Interfaith Power and Light and over 400 other businesses and organizations in Vermont in support of addressing climate change by passing a carbon pollution tax. Those organizations even include low-income support groups such as Central Vermont’s Capstone and Southeast Vermont Community Action.
As beings connected with all life on Earth, driven by our compassion for others, we must do what we can to address climate change and do it now while we can still prevent the worst effects from impacting our children and grandchildren. Climate change is already having an adverse impact on all living beings on this Earth whether physically, psychologically and/or spiritually.
The pope has spoken out very strongly on climate change, urging people of good will to reduce their carbon emissions, but not everyone may be aware that the Dalai Lama, probably the world’s second most prominent spiritual leader, has also stressed the importance of addressing climate change. In 2012 he went so far as to say, “This is a question of our life, our survival.”
We are not trying simply to solve a big engineering problem. We are trying to sustain a viable planet.
While we all have a spiritual responsibility to reduce our carbon emissions in every way possible and as soon as possible, this isn’t currently happening. The reasons are partially psychological as pointed out in the article, “Climate Change: A Faceless Villain” published in the Mindful magazine. In the article there is a statement that, “In terms of getting people to care about global warming enough to demand a government response or to take personal action,” Andrew Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change replies, “… you couldn’t design a problem that’s a worse fit for our psychology.” The article goes on to describe the many psychological reasons including that, unlike the ISIS problem, global warming doesn’t have a face. We need to acknowledge our individual psychological resistance to dealing with climate change and work to overcome it.
The other major reason we are not addressing climate change is that the fossil fuel companies are pouring billions of dollars into deceiving the public into denying climate change and paying off our politicians to continue to give them subsidies while the costs of dealing with the pollution they end up generating is paid for by the public. We also need to acknowledge the corruption of our corporate empire and work to dis-empower it.
A carbon pollution tax will provide both the incentive to reduce our carbon footprints and the funds to move to more renewable and sustainable energy sources. We are not trying simply to solve a big engineering problem. We are trying to sustain a viable planet. We are trying to stave off a near-term future where the Middle East can expect temperature levels that are intolerable to humans. We are trying to prevent devastation and disruption that will lead to hundreds of millions of climate refugees.
The Vermont Chapter of Buddhist Peace Fellowship encourages all churches, synagogues, sanghas and other religious/spiritual organizations in Vermont to have a meaningful discussion on the urgency of dealing with climate change and then to take a vote to support a Vermont carbon pollution tax. I am pleased to say that the vote of the Vermont Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship was unanimous although in some religious organization it may not be. Democracy should prevail and then we can move on while we respect each other. Vermont has been a leader on several other important issues such as the right to marry. As our moral responsibility let’s be a leader on seriously addressing climate change by initiating a carbon pollution tax and do it soon.
