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.

Buddhist Global Relief Makes Emergency Donation To Feed Syrian Refugees

Moved by the plight of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled the ongoing conflict in Syria, Buddhist Global Relief has made an emergency donation of $10,000 to the World Food Programme (“WFP”) to help feed families forced from their homes.

According to the WFP, over 1.2 million people are displaced inside Syria and some 250,000 people have fled the country and become refugees in neighboring countries. Many fled the conflict zones with their families under shelling and gunfire from both government and rebel forces, often able to bring along only the clothes that they were wearing. Harsh conditions in refugee camps—including plummeting temperatures and flooding—are making for a life of intense suffering. Many families living in tents lack heaters and winter clothing.

Food for these families is the most critical need. It takes only $72 to provide a month’s worth of food for a Syrian refugee family. BGR’s donation will feed 138 families for an entire month during the difficult winter season.

The WFP is the food assistance branch of the United Nations, and it is the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing global hunger. It is funded entirely by voluntary donations.  To read more about the humanitarian crisis in Syria, and to make a personal  donation, go here.

We are thankful to BGR’s generous donors who are making this emergency food donation possible.

Ending the Wasting of Food, Energy, Our Environment: Triple Net Benefits

A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council takes a close look at one significant – and eminently solveable – world hunger problem: the wasting of food at every step of our food supply. The report,  “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill” (PDF file), also illustrates the interdependence of our food supply, our use of energy, and our impact on the environment.

Dana Gunders, report author and an NRDC food and agriculture project scientist, treats the reader to a detailed description of America’s food waste problem and practical solutions.  The report traces our systems of food production, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal, identifying inefficiencies and losses at each step of these interlinked systems. (The report is worth reading even if only for its patient walk-through of the realities of the food system in the United States.)

Hunger in America: Rescuing Food, Rescuing People

More than 1 billion people suffer from hunger. Yet, a federal study found nearly 100 billion pounds of edible food was wasted by U.S. retailers, food service businesses, and consumers in a single year. For a family of four, that amounted to 122 pounds of food thrown out each month in grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias, and homes.

All of the food we receive comes, at least in part, from the effort and generosity of others.  We have every reason to receive it with a sense of gratitude and thankfulness.  To cherish one’s blessings, no food should be wasted.

To remedy the shameful waste of food, Buddhist Global Relief supports the practice of “food rescue“: safely retrieving edible food from grocery stores, vendors, farmers’ markets, and restaurants that would otherwise go to waste, and distributing it to those in need.  For example, one of BGR’s newest partners, City Harvest, Inc. of New York City, responds to the urgent needs of thousands of hungry NYC residents, rescuing 29 million pounds of food this past year and delivering it free of charge to food pantries and soup kitchens.

For information on food recovery organizations in your area, contact Feeding America at 1-800-771-2303.  You can learn more about hunger in America and what you can do to help at www.Feeding America.org.  For information on “gleaning” (collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable), contact The Society of St. Andrew‘s national office at 1-800-333-4597.

Restaurants and grocery stores interested in donating food can contact Food Donation Connection at 1-800-831-8161. They link donors with food recovery organizations. Businesses can also make donations of food by becoming a Feeding America “product partner“.

We are grateful that there are so many ways to help.

Stealing Bread from a Poor Man’s Lunchbox

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

A week ago, the House Agricultural Committee drafted a version of a farm bill that’s tantamount to stealing bread from a poor man’s lunchbox. Largely the work of Tea Party conservatives, the bill is framed on the premise that the most urgent task facing this nation is to reduce the budget deficit. To accomplish this, the bill would lower farm expenditures by $35 billion over the next decade, slashing $16 billion off the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as food stamps. In effect this means that the bill gains 46% of its savings—almost half—by depriving the poor of the federal help they need to ensure their lunchboxes aren’t empty.

If the House Committee’s version of the bill prevails, up to three million people would lose their SNAP benefits. Nearly 300,000 children would also be ineligible for the free lunch program, which in many cases provides their only substantial meal of the day. These cuts would have a painful impact on working class families, an impact that hits especially hard when  jobs are scarce, wages are low, and the long drought is driving up food prices.

Help on the Way: New Buddhist Global Relief Programs (Part II)

As a followup to our June 21 post on Buddhist Global Relief’s new programs, we are pleased to announce new support to communities in Sri Lanka and Vietnam:

Tam Binh Red Cross (hospital feeding)

For the fourth consecutive year, BGR continues to support Vietnam’s Tam Binh Red Cross’ program to help the poor feed family members who are hospitalized. Located in the Tam Binh district in the Mekong Delta region, a single hospital exists to serve more than half a million people. The price of a hospital stay does not include food, and poverty-stricken families who must carry the heavy weight of medical and hospital costs are further burdened by the need to buy food for their ill family members. BGR’s funding will allow the Red Cross to purchase in-season vegetables, tofu and charcoal for cooking for these patients. These funds are leveraged with the volunteer labor of more than 80 volunteers, who prepare the meals and serve lunch and dinner to the most vulnerable ill and poor people.

Tam Binh Red Cross (Scholarships)

BGR continues to support the scholarship program of the Tam Binh Red Cross with a third year of funding. Entrenched rural poverty in Vietnam has forced many families to make the difficult decision to keep their children at home to work in the fields rather than send them to schools where they cannot afford the basic fees. BGR funds will provide the annual enrollment fee, educational materials and basic health care for 150 students, enabling them to overcome the barriers of poverty and to continue their studies. 100% of BGR’s funds will be used for these scholarships, without any deduction for administrative costs. To qualify for these scholarships, each student must meet criteria for low income, high teacher recommendations, and good conduct. By providing educational opportunities to these promising students, BGR hopes to break the cycle of poverty in their families.

Sarvodaya (Kelwatte water supply)

This year, BGR is supporting its long-time partner, Sarvodaya (“Welfare of All”) USA with a life-saving project to provide reliable clean water supplies in the Kelwatte district of Sri Lanka. Currently, these residents obtain untreated water from an open and polluted stream. An assessment of the needs of these villagers showed a high rate of childhood disease from drinking unsafe water. Dry seasons threaten water shortages every year, putting crops, livelihoods and health at risk. BGR funds will help provide safe and clean water to hundreds of residents with a new gravity water supply system. The local community participates in the construction by providing direct labor through shramadana: “sharing work, knowledge, talents and time.” This project will empower the community, raise individual and self-esteem and be a model project for neighboring communities. Thus, the project will provide a foundation for personal and social awakening and offer the gifts of water and health.

In making these grants, BGR addresses the twin problem of pollution and poverty,  helps ill and vulnerable members of poor families, and acknowledges the critical role of education in escaping intergenerational poverty and hunger.

Help on the Way: New Buddhist Global Relief Programs in the U.S. and Africa (Part I)

Buddhist Global Relief is pleased to announce new support for a number of programs to help combat the chronic problem of hunger in urban communities in the United States and childhood hunger in West Africa.

City Harvest Healthy Neighborhoods Program, New York City, NY

One of BGR’s newest partners, City Harvest, Inc. of New York City, responds to the urgent needs of thousands of hungry NYC residents. It meets the challenges of urban poverty with a remarkably creative range of services, such as the rescuing of 29 million pounds of food this past year that would otherwise have been discarded at restaurants and grocery stores, and delivering it free of charge to food pantries and soup kitchens. This year, BGR funds will support City Harvest’s Healthy Neighborhoods, an integrated series of interventions in some of the most food-insecure areas in the United States, including neighborhoods in the South Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant. We’ll support mobile “farmer’s markets” that will provide some 800,000 pounds of fresh, free produce directly to neighborhoods with more than 2,000 low-income households. Addressing the links between poor health and poor nutrition, these “mobile markets” are also used as hubs to provide additional services such as food stamp screenings and health education.

Glide Sustainable Nutrition Program, San Francisco, California

Located in the heart of San Francisco’s poverty-stricken Tenderloin district, the community group Glide has provided help to the homeless and hungry since 1969, when a dedicated group of community members gathered to offer a free potluck dinner to anyone in need of a meal. Since then, Glide has skillfully developed its Sustainable Nutrition Program that provides food and nutrition and wellness education. BGR is partnering with Glide this year to support this multi-pronged program. Our program funds will help provide three healthy meals each day to anyone in need, healthy meals and snacks for children in the local childcare center, workshops on family nutrition cooking, information on healthy food sources, youth classes in gardening, ecology and health, and visits to local farmers’ markets.

Helen Keller International Child Feeding Program, Côte d’Ivoire

Building on its past partnerships with Helen Keller International, one of the oldest international relief organizations devoted to reducing malnutrition, this year BGR is funding a program to support improved infant and young child feeding practices in Côte d’Ivoire. This country is one of the poorest in the world, ranking 149 out of 169 countries on the U.N. Human Development Index. Over 40% of the population lives in poverty, and more than a quarter of its population are children under the age of five. Poor infant and young child feeding practices is one of the leading causes of chronic malnutrition among children under two, and malnutrition during this critical developmental window can condemn these children to a lifetime of poor health. BGR’s program funds will be used to educate and train women-led community based volunteer care groups about optimal feeding practices, including the importance of breastfeeding of children under 6 months and providing micronutrient-rich complimentary foods to children under 2 years old. Education and training will be provided to more than 100 volunteers, who will then help hundreds of households with young children.

These programs will make a difference in the lives of so many poverty-stricken families, extending a compassionate helping hand to reach those both close at home in the United States and children in the poorest continent in the world.  You can extend your helping hand, too, at www.buddhistglobalrelief.org.

Budget Slashing and Food Aid: Taking the Long View to Help the Hungry

Charles W. Elliott

The United States federal budget is in the news, and once again partisan U.S. political battles over the role of government, budget priorities, and fiscal policy place the world’s poor in the crosshairs. Often, behind the dry budgetary text are the cries of hungry children and the desperation of the poor.

How the richest nation in the world addresses the problem of hunger is not merely an obvious moral issue. Food security plays an important role in global stability and, therefore, our own national security. As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently said: “Our national security depends on feeding a growing world.” So does our domestic security. President John F. Kennedy wisely said: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” In the practice of giving, we serve even our own enlightened self-interest.

A Planet Under Pressure

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

From March 25th to March 29th, a “Planet Under Pressure” conference was convened in London as a prelude to the Rio+20 convocation due to take place in June this year. The conference brought together scientists, economists, and policy experts to explore the formidable challenges we face as a global community. These challenges span multiple dimensions—scientific, social, economic, environmental, and educational—but they are intimately interconnected and the hub on which they all converge is the task that engages Buddhist Global Relief. This is the need to produce sufficient food to feed a global population that by mid-century is likely to hit nine billion people, and to do so on a planet going through cataclysmic changes.

Although at present the world produces a surplus of food, close to a billion people, mainly in the global South, struggle daily with the ordeal of chronic hunger and malnutrition. The industrialized North, in contrast, faces a problem of a different sort. Here, millions consume to excess foods loaded with fats, sugars, and salt. The result is high rates of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. These conditions prevail most among the poor, for it is those who cannot afford nutritious food that are compelled to resort to cheap, calorie-laden substitutes detrimental to their health.

The problem we must solve, and solve with utmost urgency, is increasing agricultural productivity while at the same time ensuring greater equity in the distribution of food, especially for those at risk. If, despite a surplus of food production, a billion people still go hungry today, our task will be so much more difficult in 2050, when there are two billion more bellies to feed. Not only will the numbers of people rise, but the planet will also continue to heat up, resulting in diminished agricultural yields. To shift the arc away from crushing malnutrition will require drastic changes in the prevailing food system, which is currently geared more toward profits than toward health and food justice.

Hunger in America—And What Can Be Done About It

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

During the years I lived in Sri Lanka, when local people would strike up a conversation with me, they would usually begin by asking what country I’m from. When I told them “America,” almost invariably they would exclaim, with a sigh of admiration, “America—that’s a rich country!” Judging from the impressions conveyed by our forms of popular entertainment, their assessment of our standard of living might have seemed reasonable; but such judgments would have been flawed, based on a narrow reading of appearances. When we dig beneath the surface, we find that there is a dark underbelly to American life that rarely appears in our TV programs or movies, and remains hidden even in the mainstream media. This is the magnitude of poverty in our land. It’s a fact we don’t like to admit, for it amounts to a betrayal of our country’s promise and a negation of the dream that inspires people around the world. Yet to get back on track we have to face the truth and bring the full weight of our moral consciousness to the task of correcting our deviation from our professed ideals.