Wanted!
A Different View
In our culture, most of us tend to feel an ongoing deep connection only to those nearest to us — our immediate circle of family and friends. We find it harder to sustain a sense of a wider human family and a connection to the other species with whom we share the earth.
Could it be that this narrower view of who and what we are really connected to is partly responsible for our current environmental crises?
Seeing ourselves as separate rather than as connected parts of a larger whole isn't a fixed feature of human nature, although we may have come to regard it as our natural state. Perhaps we can start instead to see ourselves in a different way — intimately woven in to a miraculous and interdependent web of life.
Viewing ourselves this way can change the very way we feel about existence. It may empower us to find and play our unique role within the wider community of Life, to serve something greater. In the coming years and decades, this may be sorely needed.
Dare to see things differently!
for different opportunities to express your care
Wanted!
Compassion
Compassion is a beautiful quality of the human heart. At times it might not be obvious, but we are all, by our very nature, deeply sensitive human beings. We care about ourselves and given the right conditions we all care deeply about others. We all know in ourselves this spontaneous compassionate response to suffering and pain.
The ways we humans are changing the earth’s climate will likely, in the coming years, involve us in unprecedented amounts of suffering. All too easily and understandably we may close our hearts and minds, turn away, go numb, deny, blame and judge.
Could it be that the challenges we are facing are a wake-up call for us to develop, nourish and support our capacity for compassion ― a love that is grounded in our conscious interconnectedness with all life? Could we start to see every act, however big or small, as an expression of courageous compassion, for the sake of Life on Earth?
“Love and compassion are necessities not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive” (The Dalai Lama)
Will you dare to care?
for different opportunities to express your care
WE WANT YOU
Reveal your strength, bring out your skills, show your powers, unleash your creativity, imagine the impossible, live a life of adventure and exciting challenges.
… these are times we need heroes and heroines like you.
Missing!
Canadian Boreal Forest
Beneath a huge expanse of northern Alberta’s forests lie the Canadian tar sands - the second largest oil deposit in the world. But this whole area – the Canadian boreal region – is also the largest wetlands ecosystem in the world, serving as a breeding ground for tens of millions of water birds and land birds, and supporting a considerable diversity of plant species. Much of the region is being targeted by oil companies, and if currently approved projects go ahead vast areas will be strip-mined, and destroyed, replaced by a landscape of toxic lakes, open pit mines, refineries, and pipe lines.
Both mining and processing of tar sands have devastating environmental impacts, including massive emissions of global warming gases, destruction of wildlife habitat, and impacts to air and water quality. In addition to producing fossil fuels - which emit greenhouse gases - tar sands development is significantly more energy intensive than conventional oil and gas development. Greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times those of regular oil and gas production, and producing synthetic crude oil this way emits up to 20% more greenhouse gas emissions than low-sulfur, light crude oils.( Not only this region, but the whole earth’s climate will suffer as a consequence.
What shall we do about it?
for different opportunities to express your care
LOST?
Summer
In the last 20 years, a trend towards more extreme rainfall events has been observed around the world, particularly in countries such as India, Thailand and Pakistan, and now in the UK.
2012 was the wettest year recorded in England and analysis by the Met Office suggests that the UK may be getting increasingly wetter as climate change causes warmer air to carry more water. Four of the five wettest years on record have occurred in the last 12 years.
Government scientists have concluded that global warming is increasing the risk of flooding in the UK, and that the trend to wetter weather may be influenced by the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap.
We are changing the earth's climate. What shall we do about it?
for different opportunities to express your care
LOST?
Food Security for Billions
Unless we take drastic action now to mitigate climate change the kinds of severe heatwaves seen in America and Australia in 2012 and in Russia in 2011 will become more frequent in coming years. Extreme heat is not good for crops and current advances in agriculture are too slow to offset the expected damage to crops from heat stress in the future.
Less abundant harvests will bring with them a sharp rise in food prices jeopardizing the lives and futures of many of the most vulnerable people around the world. Food price spikes are a matter of life and death to many people in developing countries, who spend as much as 75 per cent of their income on food.
Currently 1 billion people in the world are going hungry. Without appropriate action 2 billion people will not have enough to eat by 2050, as increasing heatwaves reverse the rising crop yields seen over the last 50 years. Widespread food shortages will also likely fuel more regional conflicts, further compounding the suffering.
What would it mean for us to prioritise preventing this and creating a better future instead?
Dare to care!
for different opportunities to express your care
Missing!
Arctic Ice
2012 was a year of record-breaking and extreme weather events in the Arctic - a record loss of summer sea ice, a decline in spring snow, rising temperatures in the permafrost in northern Alaska, and dramatic melting of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet.
Some scientists have warned that such changes, particularly the signs of thawing permafrost, could bring the planet much closer to a climate tipping point than previously anticipated. Large-scale thawing of the permafrost - the frozen soil that traps vast amounts of carbon - may already be underway, releasing more of the gases that cause climate change.
The melting ice in Greenland has also added to global sea-level rise over the last two decades. And over a four-day period in July 2012 the entire ice sheet experienced melting so rapid it stunned and alarmed scientists.
Future melting is expected to add further to rising sea levels, significantly increasing the risks of severe flooding and storm damage in densely populated coastal regions, and inflicting suffering on millions of people.
We are not completely powerless.
What shall we do about it?
for different opportunities to express your care
LOST?
Dormouse
Native British species such as dormice are under pressure from warmer weather. The UK's wildlife – from oak trees to newts – is already feeling the effects of climate change. And the Environment Agency has warned that in coming years rising temperatures and sea levels brought on by global warming could have devastating effects on British wildlife from salmon to wildfowl.
"There is a danger that we think of climate change as something that is happening in other countries. But it's not just polar bears and rainforests that are at risk. What we see in our rivers, gardens, seas and skies here in the UK is already changing and delays in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more severe impacts." (Chairman, Environment Agency)
Maybe we are more connected than we think. If we lose such wildlife forever, we forever lose parts of ourselves. Let's act so that our children can have a deep sense of home and delight in the wonders that surround us.
Dare to make a difference!
for different opportunities to express your care
Missing!
Rainforests
Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second.
Although the speed of forest clearance has recently slowed, data from NASA suggests that the Amazon Rainforest may be showing the first signs of large- scale degradation due to climate change.
Rainforests are the lungs of the planet. They act as significant absorbers of carbon dioxide; and more than 20 percent of the earth's oxygen is produced by the Amazon Rainforest alone. Massive deforestation releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It brings with it air and water pollution, soil erosion and malaria epidemics, as well as the tragic eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes. Fewer rainforests also mean a huge loss of biodiversity through extinction of plant and animal species, and a greatly increased threat from global warming.
What shall we do about it?
for different opportunities to express your care
Lost?
House-Sparrow
Not so many years ago, House-sparrows used to be a common sight in our streets and gardens. But sparrow populations have declined over the last 25 years by more than fifty percent, and they now have been listed as one of Britain’s endangered bird species.
The reason for the sparrow's decline remains a mystery. Although no direct link with climate change has been proven yet, it seems to be connected with a shortage of insects in summer, which may in turn be climate-related.
Other wonderful and once-common birds on the official list of dwindling and threatened species include the starling and the cuckoo.
Maybe we lose more than we think when we lose these familiar birds and animals. Maybe an increasingly impoverished natural environment will leave humanity profoundly impoverished too. Maybe it is time to act.
What shall we do about it?
for different opportunities to express your care
Lost?
Cuckoo
For many of us the call of a cuckoo is synonymous with the arrival of spring. But when did you last hear that wondrous and evocative call?
Since the mid-1990s a shocking 37% decline in cuckoos has been observed in the UK, and the cuckoo's distinctive call is becoming an increasingly rare springtime sound. Now the Cuckoo joins the official list of Britain's most endangered species - a list that includes an increasing number of familiar and once widespread birds, such as the house-sparrow and the starling.
While no direct link to climate change as a cause for the decline has yet been proven, there are concerns that warming temperatures in Europe mean migratory birds are losing their ecological advantage over birds that spend the winters here.
Wouldn't it be terribly sad if the cuckoo became yet another species kept alive only in our old tales and songs?
Concerted and dedicated responses to the climate crisis now can avert a great deal of loss and tragedy.
Dare to care! Dare to act…
for different opportunities to express your care
Lost?
Mountain Gorilla
Aren't Gorillas some of the most powerful and striking animals?
They capture the human imagination not only with their size and force but also with their gentle human-like behaviour. Gorillas have a well-developed social structure and live in stable family groups. They play a crucial role in local biodiversity too by spreading the seeds of the fruits they consume while roaming through large territories
In addition to being hunted and killed for meat, Mountain Gorillas are also illegally hunted for trophies and live infants.
One other major cause for their tragic decline is habitat loss. Forests are rapidly being destroyed by commercial logging interests, road building and agriculture.
Will wild Mountain Gorillas - like so many other iconic species – become a legend of the past?
Mountain Gorillas are listed as Critically Endangered
along with thousands of other species of animals and plants
What are we going do to about it?
for different opportunities to make a difference
Lost?
Tigers
Featuring significantly and so often in the myths, stories, songs and poems of human kind, tigers are of great cultural importance to many peoples across the globe. As a top predator, they are also essential to the proper functioning of their entire ecosystem.
Apart from when a mother brings up her cubs, tigers live a mostly solitary life, predominantly active during the night. And to be able to survive, individual tigers need a large territory with dense vegetation and access to water, where prey is in abundance.
The world’s tiger population, though, is at its lowest level ever, with possibly as few as 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild.
We have lost 97% of our wild tigers in just over a century.
If the wild tiger population continues to decline at the current rate, recovery may not be possible.
Perhaps we lose much more than we think when we lose these iconic and magnificent creatures? Perhaps an earth utterly emptied of free-roaming wild animals like the tiger will leave us all feeling somehow empty too — profoundly impoverished, displaced. Perhaps it is time to act.
Endangered!
as well as thousands of other animal and plant species —
Want to do something about it?
for opportunities to express your care
Job Vacancy
Job title :
Currently accepting applications for Climate Heroes and Heroines in your local area, nationally and also internationally to combat climate change and hopefully avert its worst effects.
No experience needed as you will learn on the job. Superhuman powers helpful, but not necessary. Superhero outfits welcome...but not supplied.
Strong applicants will possess some perhaps extraordinary source of inspiration, optimism, stamina and creativity. (Kryptonite or something similar would be great, if you have it. If not, maybe just your Big Love and your sense of deep connection.)
Successful candidates will also possess: an unflinching gaze — capable of holding steady and open hearts in the face of vast and unprecedented destruction, suffering, sometimes wilful blindness, and much that is not known;
an avid interest in questioning the prevailing views;
a courageous willingness to speak up, even when it may not be popular;
a futuristic and wider sense of ethics, embracing a care for those far away, those not yet born, and non-human life;
a patient openness to engage others whose opinions differ;
a readiness, at least sometimes, to put the expressions of far-reaching care before personal comfort, convenience and profit;
Hours: flexible
Salary: …Just the beauty of it all…
Your planet needs YOU!
Apply now!
Wanted
Courage
Because it affects almost everything else, the looming global environmental crisis is probably the biggest issue presently facing humanity. Unless we change our ways, individually and collectively, global warming is set to bring unimaginable suffering to human beings all over the globe and mass extinction of animal and plant species. Change is needed. But to bring about this change we need courage:
to face the reality of our predicament and to take responsibility;
to consider the bigger picture, and how our personal choices and life-styles may be causing harm to people living far away and to future generations;
to overcome any sense of powerlessness and futility, to hope, and to get active, in big or small ways;
to swim against the stream;
to take a stand and to speak one's truth;
to base our actions on the simple understanding that what we do to the planet we do to ourselves;
to see this crisis as an invitation to bring out the very best in us;
to unashamedly declare our deep care for Life.
Maybe the world needs your courage
for different opportunities to express your care