Earth In Balance

[EnemyCombatant]

Finished War On Iraq
Now I am reading Earth In Balance.

Whoa!
I'm only on the first chapter and I have been touched very deeply.

Made me think a lot.

We are insane. We live for today without toughts or care for future generations.

And how in the hell did the Green party turn against a man who obviously cares very deeply for the environment and was electable. He was their perfect candidate.

I will never understand people.

Can someone explain this insanity? Or maybe it's me?

[Gorezilla]

Good question, Tangy. I actually heard rumors once claiming that Gore isn't the real author of Earth in the balance and that a pseudo author wrote it. Maybe this worked its way through the Greens? Insanity indeed.
Dennis

[EnemyCombatant]

And why did he travel all over the world?
Why did he hold all of those congressional hearings?
Why did he fight for the environment?

He faked that too I guess? And for what ends? It's not like the environment is a strong political card to hold. As a matter of fact, it's more often used against the politician.

I presume these are the same people that give Bush the benefit of the doubt when he lies about the purpose of a war.

The writing is on the wall but no one reads it.

[GSC Admin]

I may have to buy that after I read "Common Sense Gov". Right now I am getting books and using most of them for refrences. I read certain parts and use the otehrs for research and such. I cant wait to read Gore's ideas on how to make government easier. Hopefully he will write a book of memiors while being VP. That for sure would be #1 on the best seller list.

There is just one word to call me; book collector!

[Gorezilla]

Hopefully he will write a book of memiors while being VP. That for sure would be #1 on the best seller list.

Or even better, his memoirs of the 45 days recount battle! I doubt he'd would want to write that unless he hasn't really found closure yet contrary to what he claims. Either way, if he choses to do so it'll be "Hillary who??".
Dennis

[EnemyCombatant]

I'm on part II.

But I have to share this with you from the book.

If we feel no connection to those in our own communities whose lives are being wasted, who are we? Ultimately, as we lose our place in the larger context in which we used to define our purpose, the sense of community disappears, the feeling of belonging dissipates, the meaning of life itself slips from our grasp.
Believing ourselves to be separate from the earth means having no idea how we fit into the natural cycle of life and no understanding of the natural processes of change that affect us and that we in turn are affecting. It means that we attempt to chart the course of our civilization by reference to ourselves alone. No wonder we are lost and confused. No wonder so many people feel their lives are wasted. Our species used to flourish within the intricate and interdependent web of life, but we have chosen to leave the garden. Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilization and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.

[ErinB]

Here's a good article on Climate Change. Mr. Gore should see it. Anyone got a fax machine?
www.commondreams.org/views03/0812-08.htm
With Eyes Wide Shut
Climate Change Threatens the Future of Humanity, but we Refuse to Respond Rationally

by George Monbiot

We live in a dream world. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognize that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness that absorbs the moment in which we live, then generalizes it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that they recognize this and we do not.

Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already, destroy the conditions necessary for human life on Earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs' retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler. Instead, we whine about the heat and thumb through the brochures for holidays in Iceland. The future has been laid out before us, but the deep eye with which we place ourselves on Earth will not see it.

Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of global warming. What we can say is that they correspond to the predictions made by climate scientists. As the met office reported on Sunday, "all our models have suggested that this type of event will happen more frequently." In December it predicted that, as a result of climate change, 2003 would be the warmest year on record. Two weeks ago its research center reported that the temperature rises on every continent matched the predicted effects of climate change caused by human activities, and showed that natural impacts, such as sunspots or volcanic activity, could not account for them. Last month the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years", while "the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period". Climate change, the WMO suggests, provides an explanation not only for record temperatures in Europe and India but also for the frequency of tornadoes in the United States and the severity of the recent floods in Sri Lanka.

There are, of course, still those who deny that any warming is taking place, or who maintain that it can be explained by natural phenomena. But few of them are climatologists, fewer still are climatologists who do not receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Their credibility among professionals is now little higher than that of the people who claim that there is no link between smoking and cancer. Yet the prominence the media give them reflects not only the demands of the car advertisers. We want to believe them, because we wish to reconcile our reason with our dreaming.

The extreme events to which climate change appears to have contributed reflect an average rise in global temperatures of 0.6C over the past century. The consensus among climatologists is that temperatures will rise in the 21st century by between 1.4 and 5.8C: by up to 10 times, in other words, the increase we have suffered so far. Some climate scientists, recognizing that global warming has been retarded by industrial soot, whose levels are now declining, suggest that the maximum should instead be placed between 7 and 10C. We are not contemplating the end of holidays in Seville. We are contemplating the end of the circumstances which permit most human beings to remain on Earth.

Climate change of this magnitude will devastate the Earth's productivity. New research in Australia suggests that the amount of water reaching the rivers will decline up to four times as fast as the percentage reduction of rainfall in dry areas. This, alongside the disappearance of the glaciers, spells the end of irrigated agriculture. Winter flooding and the evaporation of soil moisture in the summer will exert similar effects on rain fed farming. Like crops, humans will simply wilt in some of the hotter parts of the world: the 1,500 deaths in India through heat exhaustion this summer may prefigure the necessary evacuation, as temperatures rise, of many of the places currently considered habitable. There is no chance of continuity here; somehow we must persuade our dreamselves to confront the end of life as we know it.

Paradoxically, the approach of this crisis corresponds with the approach of another. The global demand for oil is likely to outstrip supply within the next 10 or 20 years. Some geologists believe it may have started already. It is tempting to knock the two impending crises together, and to conclude that the second will solve the first. But this is wishful thinking. There is enough oil under the surface of the Earth to cook the planet and, as the price rises, the incentive to extract it will increase. Business will turn to even more polluting means of obtaining energy, such as the use of tar sand and oil shale, or "underground coal gasification" (setting fire to coal seams). But because oil in the early stages of extraction is the cheapest and most efficient fuel, the costs of energy will soar, ensuring that we can no longer buy our way out of trouble with air conditioning, water pumping and fuel-intensive farming.

So instead we place our faith in technology. In an age in which science is as authoritative but, to most, as inscrutable as God once was, we look to its products much as the people of the middle ages looked to divine providence. Somehow "they" will produce and install the devices - the wind turbines or solar panels or tidal barrages - that will solve both problems while ensuring that we need make no change to the way we live.

But the widespread deployment of these technologies will not happen until rising prices ensure that it becomes a commercial imperative, and by then it is too late. Even so, we could not meet our current levels of consumption without covering almost every yard of land and shallow sea with generating devices. In other words, if we leave the market to govern our politics, we are finished. Only if we take control of our economic lives, and demand and create the means by which we may cut our energy use to 10% or 20% of current levels will we prevent the catastrophe that our rational selves can comprehend. This requires draconian regulation, rationing and prohibition: all the measures which our existing politics, informed by our dreaming, forbid.

So we slumber through the crisis. Waking up demands that we upset the seat of our consciousness, that we dethrone our deep unreason and usurp it with our rational and predictive minds. Are we capable of this, or are we destined to sleepwalk to extinction?

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[EnemyCombatant]

Check this out.

I am debating a freeper over at my message board.
They actually think this post below shows Gore as a bad person. Now notice, this is what the Freeper posted as an argument AGAINST Gore.
========================
Oh, there's plenty to see from Earth in the Balance..
Gore’s "faith-friendly" campaign hides beliefs that oppose Christianity and his Baptist roots on every point. The evidence is in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance - Ecology and the Human Spirit. It calls for a "panreligious perspective" that would conform Christianity to the UN vision of social and religious solidarity. The old biblical absolutes simply don’t fit the new global spirituality needed as a foundation for a new earth-centered ethic. Whether Buddhist, Baha’i, Native American, or "Christian" (the words sound Biblical but the cross is missing), each model for this blended spirituality must be:

Pantheistic: god is all, god is in everything.
Monistic: all are one, all are spiritually interconnected.
Evolving: always ready to adapt to the changing requirements of our globalist leaders and of the Total Quality Management process used to "re-invent government."
Hard to believe? Then ponder the quotations below. In his book, Vice President Gore --

[EnemyCombatant]

1. Attempts to diagnose the root problem of our Western culture:

"...we feel increasingly distant from our roots in the earth... we lost our feeling of connectedness to the rest of nature." (page 1)

2. Finds answers in pantheistic connectedness:

"A modern prayer of the Onondaga tribe in upstate New York offers another beautiful expression of our essential connection to the earth: 'O Great Spirit, whose breath gives life to the world and whose voice is heard in the soft breeze... make us wise so that we may understand what you have taught us...'" (page 259)

3. Seeks wisdom from the world’s earth-centered religions:

"The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own system of belief. But the emergence of a civilization in which knowledge moves freely and almost instantaneously throughout the world has. . . spurred a renewed investigation of the wisdom distilled by all faiths. This panreligious perspective may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned." (pages 258-259)

4. Points to Native Americans as spiritual models:

"Native American religions, for instance, offer a rich tapestry of ideas about our relationship to the earth. One of the most moving and frequently quoted explanations was attributed to Chief Seattle in 1855. . . . [Chief Seattle's words were actually written by Ted Perry for a 1971 environmental movie]: ‘Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? . . . This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.'" (page 259)

5. Validates ancient goddess worship – which, according to Al Gore, preceded our biblical heritage:

"The spiritual sense of our place in nature . . . can be traced to the origins of human civilization. A growing number of anthropologists and archeo-mythologists. . . argue that the prevailing ideology of belief in prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess, who was assumed to be the fount of all life and who radiated harmony among all living things. . . . [Ceremonial sites] seem to confirm the notion that a goddess religion was ubiquitous throughout much of the world until the antecedents of today's religions--most of which still have a distinctly masculine orientation--swept out of India and the Near East, almost obliterating belief in the goddess. The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity . . . .

t seems obvious that a better understanding of a religious heritage preceding our own by so many thousands of years could offer us new insights . . . ." (page 260)

6. Endorses feminist substitutes for God:

"One modern Hindu environmentalist, Dr. Karan Singh, regularly cites the ancient Hindu dictum: "The Earth is our mother, and we are all her children. . . . Guru Nanak [founder of Sikhism] said, ‘Air is the Vital Force, Water the Progenitor, the Vast Earth the Mother of All.’" (page 261)

[EnemyCombatant]

7. Shows his "panreligious perspective" with a suggested link between Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.

"A common thread in many religions is the sacred quality of water. Christians are baptized in water, as a sign of purification. The Qu'ran declares that 'we have created everything from water.' In the Lotus 'Sutra,' Buddha is presented metaphorically as a 'rain cloud,' covering, permeating, fertilizing and enriching 'all parched living beings, to free them from their misery to attain the joy of peace, joy of the present world and joy of Nirvana...." (page 261)

According to the article, Hsia helped Gore write 'Earth' book: Al's ties to crooked fund-raiser much deeper than he lets on," this paragraph was contributed by Maria Hsia, who was convicted of laundering illegal temple money for the '96 election:

Al Gore acts as if he barely knows convicted fund-raiser Maria Hsia. He can't recall talking to her at a Buddhist temple fund-raiser. He says he was blind to her illegal fund-raising scheme.... But Gore's ties to Hsia run deep.

No fly-by-night fund-raiser, Hsia coordinated campaign events for Gore for eight years. More than that, she was a "great friend," as he once told her.... Hsia also advised Gore on immigration and environmental policy when he was a U.S. senator. In 1989, the suspected Beijing agent escorted him on a trip to Asia.

Among other links, the investigators found a letter from Gore's former chief of staff thanking Hsia for contributing to his book. "The materials you got for Al's book on the environment were perfect. Thanks so much for taking the time to do it," Peter Knight wrote to Hsia in a March 6, 1991, letter. "He would have been lost without your efforts, because the chapter on religion and the environment is integral to his work." (WND, 6-27-00)

8. Promotes a "new faith in the future" as essential to humanity, religion, and the sanctity of the planet:

"The religious ethic of stewardship is indeed harder to accept if one believes the world is in danger of being destroyed -- by either God or humankind. This point was made by the Catholic theologian, Teilard de Chardin when he said, ‘The fate of mankind , as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future.’ Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth." (page 263)


9. Blends Christianity with pantheism:

"My own faith is rooted in the unshakable belief in God as creator and sustainer, a deeply personal interpretation of and relationship with Christ, and an awareness of a constant and holy spiritual presence in all people, all life, and all things." (page 265)

[EnemyCombatant]

10. Demands total commitment to do whatever it takes to involve everyone in the earth-centered vision:

Would "every tactic and strategy" include compromise, lies, deception, and propaganda? Would "every law and institution" include unconstitutional laws and regulations? His quote below, together with his words and actions during the last few years, seem to indicate that any questionable means would be justified by the alarming end: to establish a global management system that would execute the UN plan for sustainable development 2 and build "consensus for this new organizing principle:"

"Adopting a central organizing principle – one agreed to voluntarily – means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action – to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment . . . . Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change—these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary." (page 274, Emphasis added)

11. Views the elimination of the combustion engine (in cars) as solution to a greater threat to our security than terrorism or war. Meanwhile, short distance battery operated cars will depend on the availability of other forms of energy -- which must also be curtailed and controlled by the state:

"We now know that their cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy are ever again likely to confront. ... I support new laws to mandate improvement in automobile fleet mileage, but much more is needed. ... it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period.... (page 325-326)

12. Suggests that the consensus process might help break down Christian opposition to government control over beliefs and values.

Politically conservative theologians and clergy have inherited a different agenda... The 'atheistic communism' against which they have properly inveighed for decades is, for them, only the most extreme manifestation of a statist impulse to divert precious resources... away form the mission of spiritual redemption and toward an idolatrous alternative: the search for salvation through a grand reordering of the material world. As a result, they are deeply suspicious of any effort to focus the moral attention on a crisis in the material word that might require as part of its remedy a new exercise of something resembling moral authority by the state. And the prospect of coordinated action by governments all over the world understandably heightens their fears and suspicions.

"Thus, with activists of both he left and the right resisting the inclusion of the environment on their list of concerns, the issue has not received the attention from religious leaders one might have expected. This is unfortunate, because the underlying concern is theologically consistent with the perspectives of both sides; equally important, the issue provides a rare opportunity for them to meet on common ground.

"As it happens, the idea of social justice is inextricably linked in the Scriptures with ecology." (page 246-247)

That's just for starters..

[GoreSupporterNJ]

Tangy,
You know these freepers cannot see any issue on different levels. Everything is black and white with nothing in between to them. To even attempt to discuss an issue such as this, that requires an understanding of the relationships between the balance of spirituality and political policy in relationship to our earth, is WAY over their heads. It is simply a level of consciousness they cannot achieve, and therefore they then attack those who can.
Jan

[EnemyCombatant]

Actually I am making headway.

The Freepers and the Liberals are now talking spirituality.

There is more agreement than disagreement too.

There is hope.

[ErinB]

There may be hope for some but a lot of the conservatives are from the mindset that just doesn't allow for deviation fromt the belief that the Earth is theirs to plunder. To them, man is above all else in nature and if he destroys the earth, it is God's will. They don't seem to believe man had any control over his own destiny. Viewing the earth as a complex, living organism that strives for balance is viewed by them as unchristian. Their minds are closed. Keep trying to open them EC!

Love your new blue stars. Hey, you are our veep now!

[EnemyCombatant]

Actually, I would prefer to be Gore's VP.

But I'll take what I can get.

You made an excellent point, and Gore covers that in the book.

The Christian peeps do think the world is theirs for to ruin and it will all be good.

That's why I hate religion. I hope not to offend anyone. But I believe we would be better off without it.

I am really pusing EITB out there on the net. A lot of people said they are going to read it now.