For many religious communities, caring for the environment is an essential expression of faith. The upcoming Parliament of the World's Religions (taking place in Melbourne, Australia, from 3-9 December '09) will draw forth the sacred nature of the environment from all religious and spiritual traditions. It will also showcase the partnership between communities and other guiding institutions in pursuing practical approaches for reversing climate change and its effects.

If you have the good fortune to attend: "At the Parliament, you’ll experience dozens of keynote speakers, seminars, debates, workshops, discussions and more on topics including local farming, reducing energy consumption, mitigating climate change, the growth of green architecture, and more." Check out the theme: Healing the Earth with Care and Concern

The Lancet has just published a series of articles on health and climate change. Besides being informative, I love the following sentence in the executive summary: "Addressing climate change is not just an issue of international agreements, or economic costs; it is a choice of what kind of world we want to live".

Just back from a trip to Tunisia to support a Sphere Arabic Training of Trainers (ToT), hosted by IFRC N-Africa. One of the nice things I saw is during a 'social' day is water harvesting methods in mosques (or zaouias/ zawiyas, Sufi study places) in Kairouan about 1,000 years old... if we want to live sustainably, so many options are already out there, we just need to remember them and reuse them...because as the Grand Mufti of Egypt said in July 2009: "The development and the preservation of environment as well as human rights are one package. They also constitute a whole integrated vision."

And in other good news: the Faith & Climate Change project I helped initiate some years ago now and am fortunately still greatly involved with today got announced as winner of The Guardian Green Hero Awards for Best Urban Project at the Green Communities Conference. [added link on 2 Dec '09]

Happy to see the acknowledgement and hopely give our work more exposure and thus hopefully inspire others to do similar things in their localities.

According to an article in The Independent, the GLOBAL number of swine flu deaths so far is 6,250. Of course a tragedy for the affected families, no doubt. However, let's again put these figures in perspective: that's PEANUTS compared with the 20.5 MILLION who died of starvation, just so far in 2009. According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008 in his book L'Empire de la honte, Fayard, 2007), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 million people, all causes of death combined, die each year. One in twelve people worldwide are malnourished. In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients.

And considering that, as economist Amartya Sen observed, in recent decades, famine has always a problem of food distribution and/or poverty (inability to exercise purchase/ procure food), as there has been sufficient food to feed the whole population of the world (so NO need to push GM - this will only make things worse, putting start of food chain in hands of global corporate behemoths), this is a collective disgrace in my opinion.

According to an article in The Independent, the total number of deaths from swine flu in the UK so far is 154. Though these are tragedies for the affected families, let's keep it in perspective: road traffic FATALITIES in the UK in 2008: 2,530; all road traffic casualties in the UK in 2008: 212,733. But do we stop driving? No, we focus on the MANY less affected by swine flu (and private corporate companies heat up swine flu PANIC).

On food: more than £12bn worth of food and drink that could have been consumed is thrown out every year by householders in the UK alone, according to new figures today that reveal the scale of the UK's food waste mountain.

According to an article in The Guardian, the world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit (according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying). But going for nuclear is NO alternative in my view: for starters the UK is thinking of just burying the nuclear waste... out of sight, out of mind (just small matter of £18 bn price tag and morality of dumping consequences of our choices onto generations after us).

However, to not make you (and myself) too depressed to stay hopeful and take action (as is our God-given duty to look after Creation):
When thinking of Spain, do we have images of a country full of wind turbines? No, but, according to an article in The Times, Spain was yesterday celebrating its commitment to renewable energy after wind turbines dotted across the country produced more than half of all its electricity for the first time. If they can do it, why not others?

According to article in The Independent, the Peruvian empire of the Nasca went down due to a self-inflicted wound of cutting down the huarango tree, exposing the land to floods and drought and subsequent soil erosion, turning the lush agricultural land into desert. We CAN save ourselves (by stopping the cutting of trees for monocultures), but do we want it?

According to an article in The Times, research by TerraChoice, a US marketing company, the amount of goods sold as 'green' in the UK, US, Canada and Australia has risen by an average of 79 per cent since 2007. It also found that 98 per cent of products being advertised as green had some environmental failings. Do we realise this? Do we care? We CAN do it (change this fakery and push for true sustainability), but do we want it?

In more positive news:

Solar power from Sahara is a step closer: the German-led Desertec initiative believes it can deliver power to Europe as early as 2015, according to an article in The Guardian (but I've read about it for quite a while now...technology is there, what's stopping it is will – those who would lose out from deserting nuclear, oil and gas.

And in more good news: The Maldives announce windfarm plan to provide 40% of island's electricityAs Mark Lynas sums it up in The Guardian: "If a middle-income country can cut its emissions by a quarter through standard commercial partnerships, the rich world has little excuse for saying that carbon reductions are too expensive."

With less than 40 days to go before the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, representatives of several faiths present in the UK got together at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury on 29 October at Lambeth Palace. In the first statement of its kind, signed by leaders from every faith community (including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha'i, Jain and Zoastrian) the signatories recognise "unequivocally that there is a moral imperative to tackle the causes of global warming" and that "Faith communities have a crucial role to play in pressing for changes in behaviour at every level of society and in every economic sector. We all have a responsibility to learn how to live and develop sustainably in a world of finite resources".

God willing we can all reflect on that, that God has given us so many blessings, but also a duty to behave responsibly in using those blessings and sharing them equitably (with all our brothers and sisters in the current generations, but also our brothers and sisters in time, those after us, who have just as much right to God's blessings/ Creation as us).

God has given us so many gifts, we tend to forget... for example, I like this article (which is not unique, though fossil fuel funded etc sources won't want you to know!) that indeed "shifting the World to 100 percent clean, renewable energy as early as 2030: here are the numbers" IS possible as "most of the technology needed to shift the world from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy ALREADY EXISTS." (my emphasis, and this fact is contrary to some of the fancy suggestions regarding options on fossil fuel (e.g. so-called 'carbon capture & storage' - sound nice, but NOT proven beyond lab). The 'only' things that stops us is "implementing that technology requires overcoming obstacles in planning and politics." Might help to remind people that of the 100 biggest economic entities, MORE THAN 50 are COMPANIES (NOT countries!), and that of the 10 biggest companies, 7 sell cars and/ or oil... money talks & big money talks a lot...