Playing with Smoke and Fire

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Yesterday evening, when I sat down to check out the news, I immediately came across two articles that almost blew the nonexistent hair off my head. The first, on Common Dreams, announced: “Canada Vows Plunder in the Arctic.” According to the report, Canada has just assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, a consortium of states bordering the Arctic which met in Sweden this past week to discuss the region’s future. One would think the leaders of these nations, alarmed by the melting of the Arctic ice that takes place for ever longer periods each summer, have been anxiously discussing how we can preserve this natural wonderland and prevent its pristine beauty from being further defiled by the greedy hands of man. But let’s not fool ourselves. With global demand for oil and natural gas on the rise, they have other visions swimming around in their heads: of ships plowing the Arctic seas and previously inaccessible reserves of minerals, gas, and oil suddenly coming straight into their pockets.

The ostensible purpose of the Arctic Council is “to promote cooperation on environmental protection,” but it doesn’t take a PhD in economics to detect a wolf in lamb’s clothing. The council’s principal membership—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States—should give the lie to any sweet protests of environmental concern that might be voiced by the group. I can’t speak about the smaller Nordic nations, but are we to trust Canada with the future of the Arctic after it has turned its Alberta forests into a lunar landscape in order to extract tar sands oil? Or can we trust Russia, the world’s largest non-OPEC oil producer, home of the world’s second largest coal reserves, the largest exporter of natural gas? And least of all, can we trust the U.S., whose tentacles reach everywhere for more oil— from the Alaskan wilderness to the Persian Gulf to offshore ocean depths—ever thirsty for more energy to maintain its global dominance?  Greenpeace certainly doesn’t trust these nations but has thrown its weight behind the Indigenous peoples who also sat in the conference hall, vowing to stand “shoulder to shoulder with them on this issue to protect the Arctic from destructive oil exploration.”

The second article to blow my brain across the room appeared on the informative website Climate Progress, written by Deputy Editor Ryan Koronowski. The headline may beg belief, but I’m not playing a practical joke on you: Industry Groups Urge Supreme Court To Ban EPA From Regulating CO2. Really! According to the article, “conservative states, business groups, fossil fuel companies, and global-warming denying politicians are petitioning the Supreme Court to reverse Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on greenhouse gases and to weaken the Clean Air Act.” Nine petitions were submitted to the Court over the past few months seeking review of EPA regulations: “Don’t let that damn agency protect our environment!” Petitioners include such states as Texas, Alaska, and Virginia; industry groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers; and fossil fuel companies like Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company.

Ironically, these events occur right on the heels of another major event that should have been blazed forth by banner headlines on every newspaper on earth, but in most cases probably squeaked by with a back-page article at best. Last week the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, as measured by the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, passed “the climate’s grim milestone,” the mark of 400 parts per million (ppm). Numbers, of course, are mere abstractions along a continuum, but this figure portends serious consequences for our collective future. It is said to be the first time in at least three million years that the CO₂ concentration has reached this level.

Before the Industrial Age, CO₂ concentration was 280 ppm. The figure rose steadily with the onset of industrialization and then escalated sharply over the past half-century. According to leading climate scientist James Hansen, the maximum amount of CO₂ the atmosphere can safely hold is 350 ppm. Beyond 350 ppm, the worst impacts of climate change become unavoidable. And we’re already 50 ppm over the mark and well on our way to 450 ppm. CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Hence more CO₂ in the air means a hotter planet, and a hotter planet means ever more frequent, more destructive weather events.

Do we really think we can play with fire without getting burnt? Do we think we can play in the smoke without choking? Over the past decade we’ve already gotten a foretaste of what’s in store for us: disastrous floods, deadly heat waves, harsher droughts, raging wildfires, more devastating hurricanes, tornadoes, and super-storms. Even if we were to cut our carbon emissions by half overnight, the trajectory of warming we’re already on would still continue for decades before leveling off. But don’t count your luck. Since we’ve been doing little to reduce the extraction and burning of fossil fuels—and since the fuel corporations, politicians, and a supine press are doing their utmost to keep the public happy and oblivious—the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere is likely to continue unchecked for a long, long time to come. As Bill McKibben has pointed out in his book Eaarth, we’re ushering in a radically different planet.

Since extreme changes in the weather strongly influence food production and food prices, curbing global warming is intimately connected to the work of BGR. Weather disasters strike and food supplies dwindle. Smaller food reserves mean higher prices, which in turn mean more hunger, illness, death, and despair. If we’re going to reduce global hunger, we’ve got to stop climate change. If we’re going to give people a fresh lease on life, we’ve got to ensure that their environment remains stable. Sadly, the most severe repercussions of global warming hit those in the global South, populations least responsible for it. Yet no one on earth is safe. There’s no place one can hide to escape the shocks to be unleashed when the planet’s mean temperature exceeds the range congenial to human life. We’re all vulnerable to floods and tornadoes; to droughts wilting our essential crops; to strange pests appearing out of the blue and ravaging our food supply. We’ll all have to face a future in which famished children in relief camps look up at us with hollow eyes, desperate populations migrate to our shores, and states descend into conflict, chaos, and perhaps regional wars.

Our moral responsibility extends both horizontally and vertically: horizontally, to our contemporaries throughout the world, who are already suffering under the impact of a warmer, stranger, more violent planet; and vertically, to our descendants, who will have to bear the weight of the legacy we leave to them. As Buddhists, we’re constantly enjoined to cultivate compassion to all sentient beings, above all to our fellow human beings. But compassion is not a luxury we can leave behind when we get up from the cushion. Under our present circumstances, the supreme gesture of compassion is to act—to act courageously, to act decisively, to act unrelentingly to protect the planet, to protect the poor and needy, to protect the voiceless species facing extinction, to keep the earth viable for present and future generations.

We can’t expect politicians to act without a strong push, no matter how bright their smiles and how eloquent their words. Far too many of our elected representatives are pawns of the corporations, whose contributions feed their campaign chests and gratify their ambitions. Even less can we expect the CEOS of the oil, gas, and coal corporations to take our side. Despite their lovely endorsements of environmental ethics, they know what sells, and their eyes are so glazed over by delusion that they can’t even see how their policies have thrown into jeopardy their own future and the future of their children.

It is we ourselves who must act—without procrastination, fear, or the despondent thought that we are powerless. In numbers there is power; in collective action there’s hope for change. Opportunities to act are sprouting up all around us. We need only open our eyes to see them. A search on the internet will turn up plenty of ways to act, many ways to take a stand. Already several campaigns are set to launch this summer, among them the Summer Heat campaign of 350.org and the June Week of Action of Fearless Summer. It’s our collective future that’s at stake, so let’s get to work.

A New Slate of Projects–Part 1

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

This is the first of a four-part series of posts giving brief summaries of the BGR projects approved for fiscal year 2013–14. Thanks are due to Patti Price, chair of the Projects Committee, and Jessie Benjamin, Carla Prater, Jennifer Russ, and Khanh Nguyen who all helped to prepare the material used in this series. Projects are arranged alphabetically by country, with the U.S. projects to follow the international projects.

Over the first weekend of May, months of hard work by BGR team members came to fruition at the annual general meeting and projects selection board meeting, both held in the Woo Ju Memorial Library at Chuang Yen Monastery, Carmel, New York. The general meeting, on Saturday, May 4, was attended by team members from as far away as California, Colorado, Illinois, and Texas. At the board meeting on Sunday, May 5^th, the board considered a slew of applications for partnership grants. Twenty-one projects were approved for the next fiscal year, at a total cost of $285,000. The projects are both international and domestic in scope. They include renewals of existing projects and a substantial number of new undertakings with partners both new and old. Their fields range from Cambodia and Vietnam, through India, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Cote d’Ivoire, to Haiti, New York, and California. Distinctive about this year’s register is the number of multiyear projects that are to be launched. Experience has taught us that projects extending over several years provide a better timeframe for accomplishing more ambitious objectives than is possible with a one-year project, our usual mode of operation. Here are brief summaries of the projects approved for implementation.

1. Bangladesh: Making Markets Work for Women           NEW

Helen Keller International, established in 1915, works in 22 countries to save the sight and lives of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged through programs in vision, health, and nutrition. BGR will be partnering with HKI on a three-year program in Bangladesh called “Making Markets Work for Women.” The program aims to uplift 75 extremely poor indigenous households in five villages in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), one of the poorest regions in the country. The project will train women in agricultural skills such as pest management, organic fertilizer use, and intercropping, as well as food processing techniques. It will also establish community marketing groups for women so participants can work together to process and sell their products, thus helping to combat discrimination at local markets. Courtyard sessions will focus on gender and nutrition issues relevant to both men and women, including optimal feeding practices for children from birth to two years of age. Year one of a three-year project.

2. Bangladesh: Educating Children in
the Chittagong Hill Tracts          NEW

Moanoghar was founded in 1974 by a group of Buddhist monks to provide shelter to children of the Chittagong Hill Tracts affected by conflict or living in remote areas. There are currently more than 1,250 children sheltered at Moanoghar, approximately 40% of them girls. Many of the children were left homeless or orphaned as the result of a decades-long ethnic conflict. All children at Moanoghar receive free or highly subsidized education. BGR will be sponsoring a three-year project to establish a sustainable educational system that can generate income to support the institution and support the children being schooled there. The program has three components: (1) to build a computer lab to teach the children IT; (2) to provide stipends for the children for general and technical education; and (3) to plant trees and bamboo orchards that will provide economic returns to Moanoghar. Year one of a three-year project.

3. Cambodia: System of Rice Intensification

Rachana is a Cambodian organization dedicated to improving the socio-economic well-being of poor and vulnerable communities in Cambodia. Rachana has been promoting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), an ecologically sensitive agricultural methodology that increases yields of rice from an average of 2 tons per hectare to 4.75 tons per hectare. BGR has already partnered with Rachana over the past two years in spreading the use of SRI, with highly favorable results. The program has enabled farmers to feed their own families better and obtain a surplus to sell on the market. As a result, SRI has substantially boosted family incomes. The annually renewable program will promote SRI in eight villages, five old ones and three new ones, up to December 2013. 

4. Cambodia: Giving Girls Access to Education

Since 2009, BGR has been partnering with U.S.-based Lotus Outreach International in support of its life-transforming Girls Access To Education (GATE) program, intended to ensure that girls remain in school. In Cambodia the education of girls is considered unnecessary, but LOI and BGR are trying to promote a new perspective. To encourage families to keep their girls in school, Lotus Outreach provides 50 kg of rice monthly during the school year to the families of 50 poor girls in Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey. Without such assistance these highly vulnerable girls would almost surely be forced to leave school for work; many would wind up in brothels. With support from BGR, Lotus Outreach has recently been extending rice support to GATE graduates who enroll in university programs. These graduates, who have risen up from poverty to enter university, are called GATEways scholars. The grant from BGR will enable 33 additional GATEways scholars to receive 15 kilograms of rice for each month they attend classes during the year or live away from home due to their individual circumstances. With continued scholarship support, we hope to see these young women rank among the exclusive 1% of Cambodia’s female population to receive post-secondary education. An annually renewable program.

5. Cambodia: Helping Women Escape the Sex Trade

Driven by desperate poverty, with no other opportunities in sight, many girls in Cambodia find themselves compelled to turn to the sex trade to support themselves and their families. Lotus Outreach’s Non-Formal Education program offers these women and their children a light in the dark. By teaching them basic literacy, health education, life skills, and vocational training, the program helps young women escape exploitation while discovering their own strength, self-worth, and competency. The renewed grant from BGR will provide non-formal education, vocational training, and life skills to approximately 30 sex workers and their children. Daughters of sex workers receive scholarship packages so they can return to school. Many of these women and children will learn to read and write for the first time in their lives. An annually renewable program.

 6. Côte d’Ivoire: Enhanced Homestead Food Production       NEW

BGR will be partnering with Helen Keller International on a three-year expansion of its innovative Enhanced Homestead Food Production program in Côte d’Ivoire’s Bouaké District (Gbèkè Region), an especially poor district where families struggle with food security and lack access to food markets. The project is designed to improve the food security and nutritional status of vulnerable households, with special emphasis on women and young children. A model of enhanced food production through the establishment of year-round gardens and farms will be taught to community gardening groups comprised mostly of women. A key component of the program is growing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, a food rich in micronutrients especially good for children and pregnant women. The project will improve gardening practices, irrigation systems, and income generation, while empowering women. Farmers will also learn marketing strategies for selling their crops. Successful small-scale irrigation systems will be of use not only to programs in Côte d’Ivoire but throughout the region, especially to areas vulnerable to climate change. Year one of a three-year program.

To be continued

Time to Draw a Line in the Tar Sands

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

The impact of climate change on global food security is sure to be one of the most critical issues we’ll be facing in the years ahead. Since agricultural productivity depends on a stable and congenial climate, we cannot tamper with the climate without jeopardizing the world’s food supply. Over the past decade we’ve seen how a warming climate has triggered long droughts, violent hurricanes, torrential storms, and searing heat waves, reducing yields of essential food commodities. Policy expert Lester Brown writes ominously: “Extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system.”[1]

As an organization dedicated to the battle against hunger and malnutrition, Buddhist Global Relief is deeply concerned with how we’re altering the climate. In our view alleviating hunger calls not merely for acts of philanthropy but also for a vigorous effort to counteract the forces responsible for hunger, among which global warming is now the most formidable. Tackling climate change requires in the first place a commitment to honesty and truth. We can’t hide behind the mask of denial and we can’t afford the luxury of delay. We have to recognize that the primary cause of global warming is human behavior: our carbon-driven economy, our frenzied consumerist culture, and the hunger of fossil fuel corporations for ever greater profits.

Actions have consequences, and so too does the failure to act. Practices born of narrow self-interest will inevitably rebound, harming ourselves as well as others. Since an altered climate affects us and our communities, tackling it is partly a matter of enlightened self-interest. But only partly, for it is also a matter of justice. The freakish weather patterns whipped up by an altered climate bear down hardest on poor populations in the global South, those least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and least equipped to deal with the  devastation. This fact gives climate change an inescapably ethical dimension. It makes our impact on the climate a moral issue—the burning moral challenge of our time, perhaps even the gravest moral challenge in human history. From this perspective considerations based on expediency and pragmatic efficiency fade into the background. The primary demand placed on us is to act as the situation demands–under the guidance of compassion, humane responsibility, and a commitment to social justice.

It was thus to answer the call of conscience that two weeks ago I traveled to Washington to participate in the demonstration against the Keystone XL pipeline. KXL, as it’s often called, has emerged as the symbolic rallying point in the battle to stop climate change. Over the past two years a vigorous campaign against it has been waged across the country and the D.C. demonstration was to mark its culmination. Just a month earlier I joined fellow clergy in Washington for a “pray in” against the pipeline. On February 17th, I returned to the capital to attend a demonstration promoted as “the largest climate rally in history.”

The weather in Washington that day was bitterly cold, but joining the rally nurtured my body and soul with the warm joy of knowing I was part of a movement dedicated to a crucial mission. Ayya Santussika, another BGR board member, had flown all the way from San Francisco to join the rally, and a contingent from the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate gave the gathering a broad effusion of spirit. Sixty environmental organizations endorsed the rally, including the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the National Resources Defense Council.

From the place where I stood on the National Mall I could not judge the size of the crowd, which extended as far as my eyes could see, but reports the next day estimated the number to be between 35,000 and 50,000. Speakers included Bill McKibben, who has led the anti-KXL campaign from the start, green-tech advocate Van Jones, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The most moving speakers, however, were three Native American women who rocked the audience with their vision of a different kind of relationship between human beings and the natural world—a relationship of love and kinship rather than extraction and commodification.[2]

take action to reject the keystone pipeline
Sign the Petition to the white house

For those who haven’t been following environmental news, the Keystone XL pipeline is proposed as a means of transporting tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. If completed, it will allow delivery of 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Alberta to the Gulf. Tar sands is a mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumin, a form of petroleum said to be 17% more carbon intensive than ordinary oil. In terms of proven crude oil reserves Alberta ranks third in the world, just behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but ahead of Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. In 2011, Alberta’s total proven oil reserves were 170.2 billion barrels, of which 168.7 billion (99%) come from the tar sands.[3]

Exploiting this much oil promises big returns to the petroleum corporations, but to proceed with this project is truly to enter into a bargain with the devil. Why so? Extracting and processing tar-sands oil is an energy-intensive operation that produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil. It also leaves behind gigantic lakes of toxic waste. Already tar-sands oil extraction has turned huge tracts of Canadian forest into a barren moonscape visible even from outer space.[4]

Bill McKibben describes KXL as “the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” NASA climate scientist James Hansen has said that “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix [of existing carbon fuels] it is essentially game over” for the climate. Apart from the sharp increase in atmospheric carbon such a pipeline would enable, the project poses other environmental dangers. There’s the real risk the pipeline might leak, spilling millions of barrels of oil into precious waterways and aquifers, polluting fertile farm land, discharging toxins into the air, and destroying the habitats of wild birds and animals.[5]

The Canadian corporation scheduled to construct the pipeline, TransCanada, has powerful representatives in D.C. Its chief lobbyist for this project had been the deputy campaign manager for Hillary Clinton during her run for the presidency, which virtually gave TransCanada a backdoor key to the State Department. Letting vested interests dominate climate policy is terribly shortsighted. Global warming has already unleashed a chain of disasters around the world, from long droughts and heat waves to monster storms and hurricanes. The last thing we should be doing now is seeking new sources of fossil fuels to feed our appetite for energy. Not only does the burning of such fuels directly pump more carbon into the atmosphere, but a hotter climate would likely set off unpredictable feedback loops escalating global warming to greater heights.

Instead of seeking new sources of  fossil fuels, we should be converting at breakneck speed to clean and renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and geothermal power. Such a transition won’t be easy, for the oil, coal, and gas corporations will fight back, using their grip on Congress to resist any changes that cut into their profits. To turn the tide would require a no-holds-barred grassroots campaign, one that should be guided by intelligent planning and inspired by a conscientious concern for all the world’s people, present and future.

Because the pipeline will cross the border between Canada and the U.S., a presidential permit is needed for construction to go ahead. Before the permit is granted, the President directs the Secretary of State to determine whether the project is in the “national interest.” The Department of State then commissions an environmental impact study on the basis of which the President makes his decision. While final authority to approve or reject the pipeline rests with the President, after the impact assessment is issued, the Department solicits comments from public citizens, government agencies, tribal governments, and interested non-governmental organizations. This should give us hope that our collective voices can make a difference.

A little over a year ago President Obama was on the verge of approving the Keystone pipeline, but passionate protests by environmentalists, climate scientists, clergy, and ordinary citizens—staged just as the election season began—convinced him it would be more prudent to delay a decision until after the election. Since then the decision has been postponed several times, pending a new State Department assessment of the pipeline’s likely environmental impact.

This past Friday, March 1st, at 4 pm, just as the work week was winding down, the draft of the new assessment was released.[6] The report has sparked outrage throughout the climate movement. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, issued a press release stating that if President Obama is really committed to fighting the climate crisis, “he should throw the State Department’s report away and reject the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL pipeline.” Bill McKibben announced his intention in the weeks ahead to mount as many public protests as possible. Jane Kleeb of the group Bold Nebraska wrote that “with a stroke of a pen he [Obama] can protect property rights, water, and make a dent in climate change.” Bill Snape of the Center for Biological Diversity said Obama “needs to take Keystone XL off the table. There’s simply no way to be in favor of this dirty, dangerous project and still think we’re going to avert climate catastrophe.”[7]

These critics are likely to be right. In any case, with global warming on the rise through a multitude of causes, we’ve got to call a halt somewhere to the quest for ever-new sources of fossil fuels, and KXL has just happened to emerge as the major battleground in the contest. This is the symbolic line in the sand that we can’t cross; this is the test that will determine how earnest we are about protecting our own future and preserving a viable planet for posterity. Tar-sands oil is one of the dirtiest fuels imaginable. To add its emissions to our atmosphere, already overburdened with carbon, is to play with fire and fury. A post on the RealClimate website succinctly explains the significance of KXL: “If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it surely smooths the way for further expansions of the market for oil sands crude. Turning down XL, in contrast, draws a line in the oil sands, and affirms the principle that this carbon shall not pass into the atmosphere.”

If KXL becomes operational, the greenhouse gases released into our skies may push the climate beyond the point of reversibility, leaving us a barren, desecrated, desolate world. Rejecting the pipeline could propel us onto an alternative course, a new pathway leading away from fossil fuels to a rapid expansion of clean renewable energy. We now stand at a critical crossroads, and the President’s decision may well depend on whether we let him know our minds. In this momentous contest, we can’t sit by as passive observers but must step forward as warriors for the climate, as defendants of the culture of life against the profit-driven culture of death.

The Sierra Club has given us the opportunity to communicate directly with the White House. On their website you will find an appeal that you can send to President Obama, urging him to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Only weeks remain until he makes his decision, so don’t postpone writing to a rainy day. Take action now right here.

---

[1] See too Brown’s remarks at the Earth Policy Institute’s 2012 Teleconference: http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/transcripts/Transcript-CORN_HARVEST_TELECONFERENCE_7-19-2012.pdf.

[2] For excerpts from the talks see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZbsMea6A0E. For a video of the full program see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDtksA9vmiE.

[3] These figures are taken from Alberta Energy, http://www.energy.alberta.ca/oilsands/791.asp.

[4] These facts are taken from Desmogblog’s “Top 10 Facts About the Alberta Oil Sands,” updated February 2013, at http://www.desmogblog.com/top-10-facts-canada-alberta-oil-sands-information.

[5]  For more on the dangers posed by the pipeline, see Key Facts on Keystone XL | Rainforest Action Network http://ran.org/key-facts-keystone-xl#ixzz2Mg7226kT. The Desmogblog fact sheet on the tar sands reports that in April, 2008, a flock of migrating ducks landed on a tar sands toxic lake and died.

[6] For the Executive Summary of the Environmental Impact Statement, see http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205719.pdf.

[7] All citations are taken from the Common Dreams article “State Dept. Releases Keystone XL Environmental Impact Statement,” available at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/01-7. For a detailed critical analysis of the Statement, see Danielle Droitsch, “Another Flawed Environmental Review on the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline,” at http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ddroitsch/another_flawed_environmental_r.html.

BGR Wins Prestigious Award

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

We are pleased to inform our readers that Buddhist Global Relief was selected by the Foundation Beyond Belief as an encore beneficiary of its “Challenge the Gap” program  for the first quarter of 2013. In the email telling us about this award, A.J. Chalom, the Foundation’s Humanist Giving Program Coordinator, writes:

Your commitment to adding programs for people in need and our positive response from our members when you were last featured helped with our selection.  It’s often assumed that an unbridgeable gap exists between the religious and non-religious. Challenge the Gap—Different Beliefs, Common Goals is an innovative humanist program that challenges this idea by finding and working the common ground between theists and non-theists. In April of this year, 100% of the funds collected in the Challenge the Gap beneficiary category will be distributed to BGR. Though we cannot guarantee any specific amount, the average raised for our recent beneficiaries has been approximately $7,000. We hope this contribution will assist you in the success of your programs.

Foundation Beyond Belief is a charitable foundation created to focus, encourage, and demonstrate generosity in the secular humanist community. The Foundation highlights five charitable organizations per quarter. Its members (over 1,100) join by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, and then set up personal profiles to indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among the featured causes. At the end of each quarter, 100% of the donations are forwarded to the beneficiaries and a new slate is selected. More information about the Challenge the Gap program can be found on their website here.

In its recent blogpost (01/28/13) about BGR, the full text of which can be found here, the Foundation writes:

Buddhist Global Relief’s mission is simple to put into words—to combat chronic hunger and malnutrition—but the work they do is anything but simple. Their vision is a complex image of a future without poverty, with equal access to education, where we live in harmony with our natural world, and where all people have the shelter, clothing, and health care they need. To work toward their vision of an improved world, Buddhist Global Relief works to sponsor programs around the globe run by local organizations with track records of success in those communities. These programs support the BGR mission by providing direct food aid, developing sustainable approaches to food production, educating young women and girls, and giving girls opportunities to start projects to support their families.

Naturally, we are deeply grateful to the Foundation Beyond Belief for their cordial words and for selecting BGR as their beneficiary. We are also grateful to all our donors, supporters, and volunteers, whose contributions of whatever sort  have enabled BGR to win the respect of the wider humanitarian community.

Ending Poverty in America

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Americans routinely hail their country as the greatest nation on earth, a land of boundless opportunity providing everyone the chance to fulfill their dreams of freedom, prosperity, and success. Reality, however, does not quite live up to this rhetoric. Over the past three decades, U.S. poverty rates have actually increased and by 2010 over 46 million people in this country, approximately 1 person in 7, could be considered poor. In flat contradiction to its self-image, the U.S. now ranks lowest among industrialized nations on many critical indicators of economic and social well-being.

According to a briefing from the Institute of Policy Studies, among all economically advanced countries, the U.S. has the highest rates of relative poverty and child poverty. It also has one of the largest margins of income inequality and the smallest number of social services provided to its citizens. Contrary to the creed of neoliberal economic theory, those countries in which the government devotes more funds to social services are consistently more successful in reducing poverty and inequality than those that adopt a “Wild West” version of corporate capitalism.

Politicians have treated poverty as if it were a taboo topic not to be spoken about in polite company. While long hours in Congress are devoted to debating how to avoid a fiscal cliff, barely a glance is given to those who have fallen off the poverty cliff and face a daily struggle just to survive. Talk about reducing the economic burden on the middle class and protecting small businesses is considered respectable, but acknowledging the existence of an underclass can raise shrieks about “class warfare,” as if it were the poor that are attacking the rich.

A Pray-In for the Climate

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

This past Tuesday, January 15th, I was privileged to participate in a “Pray-In for the Climate” held in Washington D.C. The gathering was organized by the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate (IMAC), a coalition of people from different faiths united in the recognition that we need to act—and act promptly—to stop the warming of our planet. The pray-in was deliberately scheduled for the actual birthday—rather than the official birth celebration—of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. During his life Rev. King had been an outspoken critic of the “triple scourge” of racism, poverty , and militarism, and we all concurred that if he were alive today, he would have added climate change to this set.

The slow heating of the earth’s ecosystem not only threatens to unleash planetary disasters of unprecedented scale but also presents us with the most weighty ethical challenge we face today. The moral dimension of climate change emerges from the unbalanced distribution of its consequences between agents and victims. While the advanced industrial nations of the north, most notably the U.S. (and now China), bear primary responsibility for overloading the air and oceans with carbon emissions, the poor countries of the south pay the heaviest price. It’s East Africa and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean islands and Central America, that bear the brunt of the floods and droughts, the failed harvests and water shortages, that are driving their populations over the cliff of poverty and hunger. It’s the small island-nations of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific that must face rising seas, which are likely to swallow them whole and leave them no place to go. Though our sense of human solidarity should compel us to share their plight and take effective action, we normally just go about in the dull daze of complacency, absorbed in our personal affairs and pursuing “business as usual.”

Extreme Weather and the Rising Cost of Food

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

 Last month, the international relief agency Oxfam issued a briefing entitled Extreme Weather, Extreme Prices, which deals with the impact of extreme weather events on global food prices. The briefing, a summary of a longer research report,[1] makes an important distinction between two kinds of effects that climate change will have on food production as our planet grows ever warmer. The first, the one with which agronomists and climate scientists have primarily been concerned, is the incremental decline in average crop yields caused by gradual increases in global temperature and changes in precipitation patterns.

As temperature rises to a certain optimal range, crop yields rise proportionally until a peak is reached, at which point, with further increases in temperature, they start to decline. Studies of rice harvests in the Philippines, for example, show that for each degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, yields of rice decrease by 10%. A similar pattern has been noted for other staples. Drops in production inevitably cause food prices to escalate. Research suggests that the average price of staples such as corn could more than double over the next twenty years, with up to half the increase due to changes in average temperatures and rainfall patterns.

Bussing for a More Just Budget

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

On his PBS program Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers recently featured a segment about the “Nuns on the Bus” tour that took place this summer when a group of Catholic nuns boarded a brightly lettered bus and zigzagged their way across nine states, from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The nuns had set out on a two-week journey of faith and compassion, seeking to draw national attention to the plight of the poor. Their purpose was not so much to inspire people to acts of private charity as to ring the bell for social justice. Their specific target was the federal budget passed this spring by the House of Representatives, crafted by Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, a Tea Party hero now the Republican candidate for vice-president.

The ostensible objective of the House budget is to forge “a path to prosperity” by cutting government spending and thereby getting the federal deficit under control. But was this the real aim the budget’s proponents had in their hearts? Budgets are usually written in an arcane jargon that only trained economists can understand, but the nuns had evidently done their homework and had realized what the budget would do. They could see that behind its claim to serious fiscal responsibility, the budget would actually bolster the wealth of the ultra-rich while passing on the bill to just about everyone else.

Drought, Corn, and the Specter of Global Hunger

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

The drought currently besetting the U.S. is said to be the worst in fifty years.  Engulfing some 60% of the country, it has struck deep in the midwest and plains states, a region known as the nation’s grain basket, the heart of the global food supply. The harshest blow has fallen on the corn crop, which is pivotal to the task of feeding the world. According to the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin, as of July 31st, 48% of the corn crop was rated poor and only 24% good or excellent. This is extremely disheartening when compared with last year’s rating of 14% poor and 62% good or excellent. Moreover, at this late point in the summer there is no chance left for a change of fortune, and farmers’ hopes and worries have now moved on to next year’s crop.

To grasp the full significance of the drought, it’s necessary to note that the U.S. corn harvest is the most abundant source of grain in the world. According to global systems expert Lester Brown, corn accounts for four-fifths of U.S. grain production. The U.S. leads the world as an exporter of corn, and many countries depend for sustenance on a healthy American corn harvest. A disruption in our corn stocks thus sends shock waves far and wide, portending increased hunger not only this year but in years to come.

An Oasis of Safety for Kids in Port-au-Prince

Jennifer Russ

The cameras and reporters may have moved on to other stories, but the people of Haiti affected by the 2010 earthquake have not been forgotten. A report from the What If? Foundation details the support that BGR’s grant has provided for the children of the Ti Plas Kazo neighborhood in Port-au-Prince: 17,000 meals over the course of six months, or over 2,800 meals per month, cooked by volunteers in a calm, safe environment that children enjoy.

The food program, known as Lamanjay in Haitian Creole, has not been without its challenges. In the first part of 2012, the program’s vehicle was inoperative. Luckily, the food program team found a man with a “tap tap” (a brightly painted independent taxi) who helped them transport the food. Another challenge has arrived along with the Haitian rainy season, which forces the cooking team to operate in a leaky temporary structure with a tarp-covered tin roof. The What If? Foundation hopes 2012 will see the construction of a new permanent kitchen and cafeteria.

Despite these challenges, the success of the program is evident in the calm order of the daily routine. Children arrive an hour before food is served to clean tables and sweep the floor with child-sized brooms. They then wait patiently for their food.  When they are finished they give up their seats to other children and take their plates to be washed. Although these children face poverty and hardships every day, Lamanjay allows them a couple of hours of safety and peace and a place where they can fill their bellies, forget their worries, and be children, if only for a little while.