Buddhism and Climate Change: Political Fads vs. Pursuit of Truth
As the second wave of Climategate emails gums-up the Durban Climate Change Conference, it’s instructive to revisit the Buddhist position on climate change. In May of 2009 just before the first batch of Climategate emails hit, a group of 20 Buddhist teachers from all traditions released The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change.
The authors urged members of the international Buddhist community to sign the document in the run-up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The Dalai Lama was the first to sign, endorsing a “sustainable” atmospheric carbon dioxide limit of no more than 350 parts per million.
The declaration is a peculiar document. At its core, Buddhism is the practice of cultivating compassion to dissipate preoccupation with one’s self — to experience the truth of impermanence by surrendering attachment to things, feelings, and perceptions.
Does the declaration mesh with Buddhism?
The declaration makes note of the “overwhelming” scientific consensus that human activity is triggering environmental breakdown on a global scale. It states with assurance that if humans continue on their current energy-consuming ways, half the species on the planet will be extinct by the end of this century.
To avert catastrophe, the declaration urges fundamental changes in Western civilization. It insists we “de-carbonize” energy systems “by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources that are limitless, benign, and harmonious with nature.” It calls for an end to all coal plant construction.
The document stresses that wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power are sufficient to meet all of the world’s energy needs. If political leaders refuse to make these changes, putting the long-term good of humankind above the short-term benefits of fossil-fuel corporations, the declaration calls for “sustained campaigns of citizen action.”
The crisis is so pressing that the Dalai Lama indicated he would shelve the issue of Tibetan independence and Chinese oppression, and instead focus on the threats climate change poses to the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. This is according to leaked diplomatic cables between “His Holiness” and Timothy Roemer, U.S. ambassador to India.
The most disturbing aspect of this unwavering Buddhist stance is not so much the blindness it exhibits to the corruption, data manipulation and suppression, willful deception, intolerance, and even violent sadism infecting the climate change movement. It’s not even the scientific and evidentiary fallacies embedded in the declaration itself. (Example: The Himalayan glacier “crisis” the Dalai Lama notes was based largely on an environmental activist group’s press report and a typo. While some Himalayan glaciers appear to be in retreat, others are expanding, and there is no evidence to suggest that they will disappear by the end of this century as some climate alarmists argue.)
Also contrary to the declaration, science is never certain and isn’t the result of “consensus.” The latest findings from CERN indicating that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light potentially upend the “consensus” of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
The declaration insists that alternative energy sources are “benign.” Far from being “limitless” and “sustainable,” wind, geothermal, and solar power systems consume vast amounts of very limited land and groundwater resources. Windmill and solar panel manufacturing and maintenance are energy-intensive, generate toxic chemicals, and require mining processes that are often environmentally destructive. Windmills also kill thousands of birds annually.
While the declaration’s suggested abolition of carbon-based fuels might thrill most Buddhists, in reality it would likely unleash a plague of famine and disease to rival the darkest scenarios posited by the climate change alarmists. Fertilizers and pesticides that maintain global food supplies are almost exclusively derived from petroleum. As are virtually all of the life-saving drugs and many of the medical supplies used to treat injury and disease.
Also: fossil fuels are crucial to providing reliable base load power, or the minimum amount of energy required to power essential services such as hospitals, water treatment plants, communications, and traffic signals and airports. Would the Buddhist community accept mass starvation, chaos, injury, infection, and disease as the price of assuaging its offense over widespread fossil fuel use?
The most disturbing element of the declaration: it is in direct conflict with Buddhism itself.
Among the central tenets of Buddhism is the reality of impermanence and the ignorance generated by ego-consciousness. The ego not only attempts to cement experience into permanence, it strives for control over its surroundings, struggling to conform reality to its personal perceptions. This leads to suffering.
But while the term “climate change” acknowledges impermanence — the climate after all is constantly in flux — the movement itself obsesses over maintaining ill-defined or arbitrary points of stability. The core implication of the climate change movement is that there exists some ideal average global temperature that we must strive at all costs to maintain. What is this temperature? No one ever says. Most likely it’s the average global temperature measured in 1967 — the Summer of Love — since the climate change priesthood consists mostly of Baby Boomers who seem reflexively nostalgic for their “Youthquake” years.
The declaration also implies that humans have the capability via massive citizen action to dramatically alter the Earth’s climate — to stop planetary change through the sheer force of human effort. What is this if not the height of conceit — ego on steroids?
It’s a conceit that assumes we know far more about the ebbs and flows of the planet than we actually do; one that presumes the narrow parameters that describe the Earth at this moment are the benchmark of how the Earth must always be — “sustainability.”
Example: the declaration assigns a “sustainable” atmospheric CO2 limit of 350 parts per million. Yet over the course of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have varied widely, reaching as high as 2,000 parts per million during the Jurassic Period, for example. The declaration’s 350 ppm limit is actually a low-end outlier in the context of geological history.
In fact for much of the 19th century CO2 concentrations were higher — at times more than 400 ppm — than they are today. Yet the Earth and life survived, even thrived, during these episodes. Far from an awareness of impermanence, the declaration seems to reflect a fetish for contrived stasis.
Our “ecological emergency” stems from a sense of disconnection from the Earth itself, the declaration states — from the illusion of separateness. But doesn’t the declaration reinforce that sense of separateness by emphasizing the illusion that humans can control the climate? Doesn’t it “disconnect” humans from the Earth by suggesting they are a disturbance in the natural order rather than a part of it? If the Earth is indeed becoming “sick” (whatever that means) as a result of human activity, isn’t that simply another manifestation of the planet’s dynamism and impermanence?
After all, the Earth has “sickened” itself many times over the course of geological history. Massive toxic gas releases from its bowels via supervolcanoes have resulted in catastrophic destruction and mass extinctions. “Ecological emergencies” far more severe than anything envisioned by the climate change movement are a regular feature of the global lifecycle. Far from extraordinary, species extinction is a constant: 99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct. Virtually all became extinct without the disturbances of human activity.
To reach the conclusions posited in the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change, you must discard the Buddhist principles of the truth of impermanence and the illusions of ego. The alleged climate change crisis stems from the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion, notes the declaration. It is disheartening that the Buddhist community seems unaware of these festering poisons in the climate change movement.
And then there’s the ecological harm from mining and processing all the rare earth metals needed for the batteries to be powered by solar & wind sources.
The Dalai Llama, like the Pope, is as much a politician as a religious leader. He will jump on any band wagon that keeps Tibet relevant to the MSM.
Wrong Dalai Lama, if you think the left will help you just made one big mistake. They help themselves, you are just a sideshow, I guess it still all boils down to the almighty dollar.
The Dalai Lama hasn’t surrendered his principles as this article implies, he has admittedly been a supporter and admirer of Karl Marx. When asked about the irony of his statement against his stance on China, his reply was China’s not communist enough. Global Warming is just a hoax/ploy, by Euro bureaucRATS and infiltrated US Pseudo scientists, leftists, academia, and plutocRATS, used to redistribute wealth. Taken that into account, the Dalai Lama is in fact true to his form. It is the people who can not go beyond oratory and soft speaking in discerning the real substance of a person. It is for this reason that a personality like Obama and his likes will keep being elected in office. It is the voter’s mentality which needs to change, if there is any hope at all for the USA to elect people with real good substance in political offices.
Why wouldn’t he be a Marxist? Besides old buildings and joss sticks, what does Tibet have to offer in real world currency but putting forward its social status rather than productivity?
You can only sell so many CDs of people humming in deep voices since one sounds much like the other.
Let’s make one thing clear: His Holiness doesn’t represent all Buddhists and so his is not “the Buddhist position on climate change.”
Something strange happens to Buddhists who try bringing the Dharma to Western countries. Real Buddhism is HARD WORK. Most Asian schools of Buddhism are ancient and deeply conservative. When they come to America, however, they inevitably get co-opted by the political left and turned into “activist Buddhism.” People approach the Dharma with leftist beliefs and conveniently “discover” that the Dharma completely reinforces those beliefs. It’s all about Compassion – and we know leftists have more of that than anybody. That’s why they’re constantly trying to Save the World. All that meditation and stuff? Just mental therapy to help you selflessly Save the World. Just keep doing what you’re doing. No real changes to your belief system required.
To put it crudely, Buddhism attracts hippies.
I think the DL has been dealing with these people for a long time. He knows he can get them to fork up money and political clout if he flatters their desire to Save the World. Of course he jumps on the AGW bandwagon – most of his followers and financiers are already on board. He’s willing to concede the “Free Tibet” game to the Chinese? Why not? They’re becoming capitalists. They might start investing in Tibet rather than merely brutalizing it. And the Tibetans themselves – the ones left behind after he scampered – are becoming less and less likely to look to the DL as their one and only leader. More and more he has to rely on Western hippies for sustenance. What’s he going to tell them? “Never mind about the climate, that’s impermanent, just shut up and meditate?” His funds would dry up before he got the sentence out.
Mark, I think we just found the fourth conservative Buddhist.
I agree with you, Buddhism is HARD WORK. I have been studying Buddhism for 10 years and the more I learn the more questions I have
Also I have to agree that Buddhidm attracts hippies, and not just hippies but eccentrics of all sorts. I think the general idea of freedom can be very seductive to people like that. What they don’t realise is that this freedom comes with a great amount of responsibilty.
To get anything “out of” Buddhism, you have to put in lots fo hard work, and then again, you may not see the results at all, or for a very long time. It all depends on the individual circumstances.
I must say I am also dissapointed in this stance of the Dalai Lama, even though I know he claims to be interested in socialism. I am hoping though that HH has some greater goal in mind, somehow in all of this.
Come’on. This article is p.c. eco nonsense. The Buddhist monks, bless their souls, are well meaning clergy. They have no science background or even modern world background. They’re happy to live the sparse and simple life of clergy. Even though I wonder if the Dali Lama would give up his jet plane trips around the world every day. The Buddist also are naive clergy that believe lying scientists when they are told “the science is settled” and “sky is falling”.
Ask the Buddist monks a separate question, “Would you rather raise CO2 levels above 350 ppm when no long term harm can be proven or leave 1 billion people in poverty and without medical care?”
I find the Buddhist statement to be utterly disappointing. As a Buddhist, I have never developed the understanding we ought to not think for ourselves, or that science is based on consensus.
Moreover, I cannot tell you how shocked I was to read the Dalai Lama had announced he is a Marxist. If anything is contrary to the teachings of Buddha, it would be any form of socialism.
Am I the only conservative Buddhist left? The only one who truly seeks enlightenment and personal freedom?
Make that five! Roger, Bugs, you can contact Mark and/or me via the Contact Us page. Get in touch.
Anyone on the path is a Buddhist but where you are on the path is another thing entirely. Holding any “views” is counterproductive as you must pick conditioned things out of the mix as important which means you must reify something from nothing. Even attachment to ideas of good, bad or indifference is reification. So no, Buddhists “for” or “against” anything are novices.
The Perfect Way is without difficulty
except in avoiding picking and choosing;
when like and dislike are absent
everything is pure and undisguised.
Make the slightest distinction
and Heaven and Earth are infinitely separate.
A perfect description of what it’s like to be comatose.
Personal experience?
Good article. Your points about the Dalai Lama seeming to embrace stasis get right to the heart of the problem with his stance on climate change. Yes, his stance is diametrically opposite to a fundamental principal of Buddhism–the acceptance of impermanence.
The Buddhist principles I understand are from Chan Buddhism–a school that is widely accepted in China and that spread to Japan in the 10th century. The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Buddhism is quite different in many respects and Chan Buddhists find it somewhat unacceptable because of its lack of interest in intellectual rigor. I believe the lack of intellectual rigor stems from the fact that its practitioners lived primarily rural lives, and existence in Tibet was pretty much cut off from intellectual centers in other parts of Asia.
Chan Buddhists find it somewhat unacceptable because of its lack of interest in intellectual rigor.
And I’m sure the Himalayan Vajrayana tradition would find Chan just as “unacceptable”, but what specifically makes East Asian Chan/Zen itself inherently more “intellectually rigorous” (and does this extend to your neighborhood “Zen Center”)?
I believe the lack of intellectual rigor stems from the fact that its practitioners lived primarily rural lives,
I’d thought that this was an ideal of Zen itself (what with it’s “tending your own garden”, etc.).
and existence in Tibet was pretty much cut off from intellectual centers in other parts of Asia.
You mean like… India?
I have a couple of Buddhist friends who support the Occupy movement. When I point out the conflicts between Buddhism and leftist ideology they just don’t answer. When I suggest that ‘destroying capitalism’ or ‘ending the system’ would harm countless beings they have no argument. When I point out the ‘Che’ flags at the demos and ask if they would like to live in a police state like Cuba, they just don’t answer. Buddhism is contrary to Marxism, I mean, look what the Chinese Communists did to Tibet! But these Buddhists are committed liberals. For them Buddhism is just a higher form of liberalism. As others here have pointed out, Buddhism is about acceptance, peacefulness, wisdom and kindness. It is not about imposing your will on the world which is the fundamental principle of leftism. I can only conclude that their true religion is liberalism (or Marxism because there are few true liberals any more).
You might also want to point out that Che Guevara was astoundingly cruel, and delighted in killing puppies. If this is what so called humanitarians of the world hold up as an icon, something is seriously wrong.
The Buddhists should meditate on two simple truths that clearly show AGW to be false. It’s almost too obvious, “hidden in plain sight,” so many people apparently don’t see it.
1. Temps now are not unusual (hockey stick fully debunked), and 2. CO2 has been shown to be only a result (NOT a cause) of warming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
– he was a Communist, which given Communist China’s oppression of Tibet seemed strange.
No, a Marxist, not a Communist. As I’ve said before, fourteen incarnations as head monk in Tibet may not be the perfect background in economics.
nice cover
…the declaration seems to reflect a fetish for contrived stasis
While the UN crowd in Durban seems to have a fetish for contrived money and world domination.
Speaking of greed, ill will, and delusion
“The burden of “historical responsibility” has been applied to industrialized nations, implying they are guilty for whatever the weather decides to do and must be punished for it…“As a senior UN diplomat told me last year, “The UN exists for only one purpose: to get more money. That, and that alone, is the reason why it takes such an interest in climate change,” writes Monckton.”
“[we] are guilty… and must be punished”
Right! It’s like a Mayan sacrifice which must be painful, not to be effective, just because it’s what their [liberal] guilt calls for. They have duped us. The public must know that it is the liberals (and their MSM + liberal academia + liberal “science press” [ScienceDaily PhysOrg etc; + Discovery NatGeo etc]) that are behind this science scam.
Cool. Which of those does the Lama raise?
Guy must be real busy, juggling politics with rapeseed-growing… I’d miss feudalism too, were I an emperor.
Rapeseed is the source of canola oil in your pantry.
I understand the birds won’t eat it.
Tibetans have been absolutely crushed by China, Tibetan culture as well as religion.
It hasn’t been pleasant to hear rumblings of the Dalai Lama cozying up to the Chicoms, to the crowd that has destroyed his country.
Cool. Which of those [crops] does the Lama raise?
There are PLENTY of things wrong with theocracies, but “Tibetan monks refraining from the Norwegian bachelor farmer lifestyle” doesn’t spring to mind…
I’d miss feudalism too, were I an emperor.
Hell, I’d miss it too if I’d experienced a Great Leap Forward or Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, but I suspect the Tibetans probably have just as much yearning for the exact same conditions of feudal Tibet as the Native Americans do for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto . . .
One simple statement, based in Buddhist teachings, has been very useful in my life.
“Attachment is suffering.”
When I feel myself aggrieved or “suffering”, I can almost always trace it to some form of attachment.
It would seem the Dalai Lama and some of his adherents have become attached to the truth of AGW.
Yes, there is the respect for all living creatures, but to attach to a manmade idea seems to go past that into an area where he compromises the purity of his mission.
I think similarly when I hear the Pope pronouncing on some world ill or other and declaring his version of what needs to happen on the secular plane.
When I feel myself aggrieved or “suffering”, I can almost always trace it to some form of attachment.
BINGO!!
(Psst! “Duhkha” isn’t just “suffering”, it’s also “frustration.” Extend that examination to when you merely feel frustrated.)
There is no Earth. It is an illusion. Therefore, how can it be warming?
For that matter, there is no Dalai Lama.
This is the same Dalai who, apparently never having actually read the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the Sira—the three fundamental texts of Islam, and ignoring the reality of the rising tide of world-wide terrorist attacks by Islam and Muslims against all “unbelievers”—including Buddhists— (see, for instance, the tally of such attacks at http://thereligionofpeace.com/)—has, nonetheless, characterized Islam as having the same fundamental attitude of “compassion“ for the individual that Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism have at their cores, who has said that Islam and Muslims have gotten a bum rap for violence due to the actions of a few “mischievous” men, and who has also said that he is a “defender” of Islam.
Used to have lots of admiration and respect for the Dalai, or at least for what I now believe to have been the very cleverly crafted “image” of him—for his reported “principles,” his religious beliefs, his intelligence, his fabled wisdom and compassion but—after reading the above and other things he has actually said–I don’t any more.
#18 Seth
I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph. Having met and talked with him in Victoria B.C. 15 years ago or more I was struck by his latest comments, struck.
So, we would rather believe a longtime American ally is a sellout rather than confused? HHTDL is an old man, cut him some slack.
Word. HHDL is a sweet old man and it’s not like he has some mystical power of being always correct.
Energy is freedom. The more efficient the energy, the more freedom it provides. Fossil fuels provide the most efficient energy available. Therefore, fossil fuels provide the most freedom available. Those who want to limit the use of fossil fuels also want to limit its users’ freedom. Consider the vast quantum of freedom the global warmists would circumscribe compared to the marginal quantum of freedom the Christian religion would circumscribe. Amazing comparison, not so? Maybe Christianity is not so bad after all.
The West, Russia and China have officially rejected religion, allowing it no legitimate public roll. Doing so deprived people of a conventional source of moral principles and norms that marginally circumscribed their freedom, creating an abysmal gap between what one has a right to do and say and what is right to do and say. Recognizing this gap, officials and organizations have attempted to fill it with new conventional sources of moral principles and norms not based in religion.
The first time I noticed this happening was when FIFA launched its Fair Play and No Racism campaigns. Football (soccer) is the world’s most popular sport, linking billions of fans together with their love of the sport. FIFA recognized that football fans comprise a vast population whose love for football provides a ready foundation capable of supporting conventional moral principles (No Racism) and norms (Fair Play) applicable on the field and off.
Environmentalism and global warmism work the same way, with an added wrinkle that declares perfectly benign conduct (using fossil fuels) to be evil in the aggregate but not individually, thereby damning aggregate evildoers (e.g. the human race, oil companies) while absolving individuals belonging to or exploiting the damned aggregates. This kind of category trickery is obviously illogical, which is why individual concentration camp guards were not absolved of their crimes against humanity by virtue of merely following orders.
Religious conventions don’t make this same mistake without suffering severe consequences (e.g. church schisms in protest of the sale of indulgences). This is why I’m shocked and saddened to see so many religious organizations and leaders jumping on the AGW bandwagon. I suspect that they’re doing so to make themselves more relevant and attractive to non-members by incorporating the new gap fillers. Even so, how could they miss the glaring logical fallacy and its toxic moral consequences that must follow? It seems they’ve learned nothing from history.
These teachers have failed to do a fact based investigation. They should not be calling themselves Buddhists.
When Buddhists start building space stations I’ll listen to what they have to say. The only empirical fact they are showing me now is what they WANT to believe.
When Buddhists start building space stations I’ll listen to what they have to say.
Well, Buddhism originally stems from Hinduism- how’d you like to “start building space stations” without the math?
What we are seeing is religion trying to co-opt some sort of social programs, seeing that as the sole measure of success.
Buddhism is the ultimate other worldly religion, but no more. They forget that Islam really tried to destroy it every place they could, seeing the followers as atheists.
Now, it would seem that many are now idolaters, worshiping social programs so they can be like everyone else.
I personally hope to see the whole bunch of them die under their own weight. If you care to think of it, we are seeing a massive violation of the Third Commandment.
The Dalai Lama Ding Dong’s true colors shining through…
The Dalai Lama has capitalized on the media’s sympathetic portrayal of him as a kindly Bhuddist wrongfully ousted by the Chinese. Holywooders’ bumper stickers notwhithstanidng,his clan ruled Tibet as a feudal dukedom, kept peasants in poverty, and never did a thing to bring the country into the current century. Lord help the Tibetans if he were to return.
# 26 Nobless is closer to the truth than most on this board.
I live in China for the last 7 years…some of the monks operating Temples in Tibet and wandering streets from Tibet to Beijing are about the same level as NY street hawkers and vendors. They sell trinkets for as much as they think you will spend, and will walk with you to your car and continue trying to sell their wares until you actually leave Temple property or as i learned call police usually guarding the locale and ask them to remove the monk from the car hood, its actually pretty disgusting. Its also unfortunate as some of these temples have spectacular History, architecture and engineering and well worth the trip and effort.
They operate their local Temples more as a corporation along lines of organized religions.
The actual History of Tibet and their people are not as popularly portrayed by western media, with innocent monks and happy peasants living in harmony with the land. It is a myth created by shrewd marketers and politics. The truth is far closer to Nobless Oblige’s post; they were as oppressive as typical regime managed by ruling elite..more along lines of an eastern Soviet Block country in the 1950′s – 70′s.
I live[d] in China for the last 7 years…some of the monks operating Temples in Tibet
“Temples in Tibet”? This is cooler than Disneyland’s “Space Mountain”, right?
and wandering streets from Tibet to Beijing are about the same level as NY street hawkers and vendors. They sell trinkets for as much as they think you will spend
This may or may not be true, but this is different from a Chinese Buddhist temple in the PRC- how? Oh, yeah- that would never happen to you in Hangzhou, Xi’an, or Shanghai- frickin’ HILARIOUS.
Its also unfortunate as some of these temples have spectacular History, architecture and engineering and well worth the trip and effort.
Well, yeah- that was kind of the tragedy of Mao’s Cultural Revolution (and the destruction of about 2,000 “unregistered” Chinese Buddhist and Daoist temples back in 2000).
The actual History of Tibet and their people are not as popularly portrayed by western media, with innocent monks and happy peasants living in harmony with the land.
Very true. Hell, the Taiwanese peasants were hardly “living in harmony with the land” before Meiji Japan showed up . . .
The truth is far closer to Nobless Oblige’s post; they were as oppressive as typical regime managed by ruling elite..more along lines of an eastern Soviet Block country in the 1950′s – 70′s.
OK, the original incursion/invasion of Tibet by the Chinese Communists (that would be under Chairman Mao Zedong) was around 1950- this nation (Tibet) organized “along [the] lines of an eastern Soviet Bloc country” needed “liberation” by . . . another 1950s Soviet-style country . . . why, exactly?
The Dali-Lama said he is a Marxist-Leninist,therefore, would I trust his word ? No.
As I have read Tibetan History, prior to its invasion by China, Tibet was a fairly primitive, feudal Buddhist society run by the religious/noble class. Yes, there were beggars, yes, the “cangue”–a very heavy circular wooden collar was fastened around criminals necks as a punishment, and there was poverty. But it was a very distinctive Buddhist-based society native to Tibet, and of and by Tibetans, and the land was theirs.
Now, Tibet has been overrun, conquered, and occupied by the Chinese–most the Tibet’s 6,000 religious sites, institutions, temples, monasteries, and nunneries were destroyed and looted by the Chinese, especially during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, and only a handful have been rebuilt, and they are mostly under tight Chinese control, reportedly many new monks have been selected for their “political reliability, ” and higher Buddhist education to the PHD level–that used to produce the leaders of Tibetan Buddhism–has apparently been forbidden. The Chinese have dismembered and expropriated the great mass of Tibetan lands, which now comprise something like one third of today’s China, essentially possess everything, run everything, many tens of thousands of Chinese “settlers” have been brought in to replace Tibetans and dilute their influence, and the Chinese are systematically dismantling Tibetan culture, language, and religion (Chinese is now the language of instruction in schools, not Tibetan) and the Chinese are looting the country of gold, gems, uranium and other rare metals and minerals, wildlife and wildlife products–all shipped back to China. Meanwhile, Chinese gulags dot the harshest parts of Tibet.
To my way of thinking the former situation–a Tibet –however primitive and “backward” we might think it, but run however Tibetans wanted to run it–was and is infinitely to be preferred to a Tibet occupied and looted by the Chinese, who are striving mightily to obliterate Tibet’s traditional culture and religion and the Tibetans themselves as a people.
The U.N. in Action: Global Warming, Global Fleecing, Global Revamping
As of this writing, Reuters is reporting a tentative accord, not an amicable accord and still tentative, at the gathering of rich and poor nations at the U.N. climate conference in Durban, S.A.
In essence, the evil rich–including the United States and the emerging rich China and India– beat back the deserving poor–including 43 island nations, which have no reasonable excuse for existing as nations, and the rest of the envious planet. Another serious issue had been the U.S. contention that prodigious polluters China and India should be required to play by the same emission rules as we do. (http://tiny.cc/ibe0k)
As usual with the United Nations, nothing was accomplished even after the Durban confab ran two days overtime as representatives from pretend nations like Comoros and Vanuatu sought to do anything to avoid returning to Comoros and Vanuatu.
The significance of Durban is not its failure but in the immediate and long-term climate and geopolitical goals of the United Nations, none of which favor the United States.
When it comes to the global warming/climate change charade, the United Nations has long abided by the tried and true axiom that nothing beats a good defense better than a good offense. If the U.N. excels at nothing else, and it doesn’t, it is superb at absorbing attacks and damaging truths by ignoring them as if they didn’t exist and braving on with even more outrageous scams.
In the wake of the second expose’ within two years that revealed the lies behind man-made global warming/climate change, instead of backtracking and conceding the facts, the U.N. went on the offensive by drafting a treaty at Durban to further milk the Western world by requiring us to compensate the rest of the planet for our rudeness toward “the rights of Mother Earth.”
Conferring at the U.N. climate summit, United Nations’ one-worlders conceived a new guilt trip, “climate debt,” designed to suck more money from the “have nations” to fill the pockets of “have-nots,” after being funneled through the rapacious maw of the monstrosity on the East River.
Just as the U.N. carried on after Climategate One in 2009 as if it had never happened, it was unfazed by Climategate Two.
As a refresher, in 2009, so-called scientists at the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-funded East Anglia University Climate Research Unit were caught with their warming pants down.
Pseudo-scientists of IPCC, the same group that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007 for their efforts to terrify the world, were discovered not merely fudging climate data but lying and covering up findings which contradicted their pre-conceived, PC notions of anthropogenic causes of global warming.
Hackers broke into computers at the CRU and released 61 megabytes of 72 confidential documents and 1079 secret emails to the public, emails that irrefutably substantiated climatological fakery.
As the London Telegraph reported at the time, the purloined documents exposed “conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more:” http://bit.ly/InbR7.
Thievery is reprehensible. Global fraud is far worse.
Undismayed by CRU Director Phil Jones’ admission that the data “appear to be genuine,” the following month the U.N. went ahead with its scheduled Copenhagen Climate Summit, which achieve nothing.
Truth will usually, eventually, out and last month U.N. perfidy was outed once again when 5000 new IPCC emails were hacked confirming what Climategate One had originally proven, that man-made global warming is the biggest fraud since Copernicus was shown to be wrong in the sixteenth century. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=10419.)
The Dalai Lama’s credibility is even worse than you all imagine..
Recently Bishop Desmond Tutu celeberated his 80th birthday in South Africa and invited his friend the Dalai Lama to attend. The ANC because of their pro-China position wouldn’t give the Dalai Lama a visa, so he couldn’t come to SA.
Bishop Tutu was up in arms but could change nothing.
So?
Well the thing is Bishop Tutu is a hardcore Jew-hater who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and every other dictatorship under the sun and a lot more besides, he also supports BDS against Israel. It doesn’t say much for the DL that he is buddy buddy with a hardcore Jew-hating dhimmi supreme, like Tutu. You don’t have to be Jewish to see the hypocrisy here.
Imagine if Tutu, instead of the Jews, really hated Native Americans or Australian aborigines for whatever reasons; and this was well-known since Tutu was hypothetically very vocal on it, it always being in the media over how anti-Native American he was, or whatever. Would you be friendly with such a person and attend his high-profile birthday bash (at least it all got a lot of media attention in South Africa)? That is would you be friendly with such a famous and frothing at the mouth bigot who had a lot of influence, especially if you yourself were a spiritual/religious leader with a lot of influence who inspired millions around the world.
Now get this – I could not find a single (Jewish or not) source anywhere in the world taking the Dalai Lama to task for being friendly with that anti-Semitic bigot Tutu and accepting his birthday invitation (even though he couldn’t go to SA in the end). Hey maybe somebody somewhere, I couldn’t find anything..
There was a big furor in the SA media over the ANC’s refusal to grant the visa, naturally even the SA Jewish community probably didn’t see the real story there; namely what it tells us about the Dalai Lama that he is willing to associate and be friendly with such a notorious bigot/Jew-hater as Tutu. Remember Tutu’s anti-Semitism is well-known, he is very vocal here. So the Dalai Lama can’t claim ignorance on this front.
So let’s see 3 counts against the Dalai Lama:
1 goes gaga over global warming pseudoscience
2 calls himself a Marxist (the poor Buddha must be rolling in his grave)
3 is buddy buddy with one of the international Left’s most notorious Jew-haters, bishop Tutu.
3 strikes and you are out I’d say.
Fascism as defined by Benito Mussolini himself.
Highlights: “The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fas cism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.”
“…The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone….”
one more reason not to be Buddhist …
apparently not too bright.