10 Ways Rallies and Marches Can Move Us toward a Better Planet

credit: Alma Sheppard MatsuoRallies and marches have increased since the U.S. election of 2016. This month alone, major marches and rallies are planned on Saturdays, April 15, 22, and 29. A Tax March on the 15th, Tax Day, aims to tell Trump that 74% of the public want him to release his taxes. In addition to the march in Washington, D.C., satellite marches will be held around the country. A March for Science is scheduled for April 22, Earth Day, in Washington, D.C., with satellite marches around the country. Check online to see what your area is doing. Then, a week later, a People’s Climate March is scheduled in Washington, D.C., and again satellite marches will be happening around the country. I’ll be at the one in Oakland, CA. Juanita, my spouse, has been actively involved in planning the one here in San Diego. Last Saturday I went with her to my first ever “Art Build”—a gathering of people for a day of creating butterfly and sunflower placards with ecological messages. Banners were being painted. Drums being built and drumming practiced. Lots of fun and conversation in anticipation of a big day of speaking with Earth instead of against her.practiced. Lots of fun and conversation in anticipation of a big day of speaking with Earth instead of against her.

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Allies in Spreading the Message of OneEarth Ways

When I heard scientist V. Ramanathan, Scripps Oceanography Institute, speak a couple of weeks ago (see March 14 blog), a woman in the audience asked him about buying an electric car. He responded gently and redirected our focus: “The most important things we can do now are not personal acts, but forming alliances with others so we multiply our impact.” It carried such urgency that I’m upping my efforts to link up with others working on the ecological, economic, and spiritual issues that are my prime focus.

One ally I’d found a few years ago is Greg Voisen.

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Ecological Events Accelerate Despite Washington, D.C.

The current Republican leadership in Washington, D.C., is pulling the nation out of essential and responsible agreements on the global climate whose changes are destabalizing shores, weather, and food supplies. The folly of it has foreign governments immediately stepping into the vaccuum of leadership the U.S. withdrawal is creating. Multiple countries are gaining economic advantage and showing themselves to be reliable friends even as the U.S. loses both.

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Four Years to Prevent 1.5°C Rise in Global Temperature; Best Action? Form Alliances

Veerabhadran Ramathan / photo from UC San Diego News CenterWe are close to reaching an unwanted milestone. So many greenhouse gases now blanket the globe, holding Earth’s heat close to the surface like a blanket holds in our body heat on a chilly night, that the entire planet’s habitability is being affected. This past week I heard climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramathan say that in just four years his children and grandchildren, like all of us and our offspring, will be experiencing Earth as 1.5°C warmer than before the Industrial Age UNLESS we rapidly create the alliances necessary to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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One Decisive Question for Keeping Earth Livable; Three Responses

There’s a diverse Conversation going on about the multiple, growing ecological and civilizational crises underway on our continents and in our seas and atmosphere. I listen to that conversation with one decisive question in mind: Is the person talking about these crises doing so in ways that move us to OneEarth living or are they justifying MultiEarth patterns? That, to me, is the question that cuts to the life-death choices before us. MultiEarth patterns are crescendoing to civilizational and ecological death. OneEarth choices are opting for a whole different way of living that fits on our beloved Earth and keeps her livable.

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Patricia St. Onge, "Foreword" Writer for My Book, and I Will Be at the Same Event and YOU ARE INVITED!

Here’s an invitation I hope you can accept! Below is the official invitation from the venue sponsor, The Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley, California. I’m excited to be part of this event; especially excited that Patricia St. Onge (Haudenosaune) will be there too. She helped me so much with my new book, “From Egos to Eden,” and wrote an important “Foreword” to it. My presentation will be based in my book. But look at the other presenters! There’s a lot here for us about how to construct courage and hope using spirituality that fits ecologically with our one planet.

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Richard Rohr Brings Us Closer to Nature and to Our "True Selves" by Joining Action with Contemplation

In the past several decades, Richard Rohr, a priest in the Franciscan order, has helped so many of us change our picture of who we humans are in the natural world. He has urged us to see ourselves within Nature’s community of life—a view that directly counters civilization’s way of seeing us as separate from that community, even making us rulers over it.

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