Divine Equality, Climate Justice, and the Need for Global Renewal

There is a principle of divine equality that this time on the Earth has come to fulfill. It is based on the understanding that though each individual lifestream is unique in its expression and embodiment of the Divine, that all beings share a common core and essence that makes of equality among peoples a natural state of being, rather than an exceptional one. That this has not been able to be put into practice is historically true, yet we are here within this time and place to begin to bring this divine equality into being. Such equality does not submerge, minimize, or disregard individual differences. Rather, it places them in a larger context in which these very differences can flourish in harmony with each other.

In the world we have known, the gap in quality of life between those who have much and those who have little is a common understanding. This applies to communities, nations, and areas of the world. It is a gap that has existed from time immemorial, that is often taken for granted as an inevitable reality. Yet, history is not destiny, and in this time we are given the opportunity to address this gap, not just from the outside in, altering patterns of wealth distribution through governmental policies and practices, but from the inside out, altering the inner constructs that create the willingness within individuals and nations to perpetuate this gap.

Global renewal of the values of the heart is not an idea solely for a utopian society of the future. It is an idea that can begin to manifest now in response to the growing presence of climate disaster, and the need to find a collective solution to the problem of climate change.

The creation of outer equality so that all may live lives beyond their basic survival needs, must be based on the recognition of inner equality that establishes the fundamental unity among peoples of all walks of life. This inner perception must come into being so that the various layers of outer equality can also come into being.

Our recent use of the term ‘justice’ to describe the specific conditions under which greater equality might take place, has given rise to efforts in this direction. Racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice are all terms reflecting the pursuit of greater equality in these specific areas. Today, and in light of the significant global changes that are occurring for people everywhere, we must add to these ‘climate justice,’ for climate effects and climate change reparations are unequally distributed over wide areas of the Earth, often favoring the wealthy and adversely affecting the poor and non-white peoples of the world.

In order to move toward ‘climate justice,’ so that the poorer nations or areas of the world are not affected more severely by human-induced climate change than the wealthy, we must look at all whose lives have been disrupted by climate change as part of ourselves. Only in this way can the sense of ‘all responsible for all’ become embedded in our individual and global responses. Our movement toward climate justice would emanate from this heart recognition, rather than from a sense of obligation or a temporary sympathy which, while essential, does not address the underlying problem of the roots of inequality.

• We must eradicate the ways in which climate change and weather pattern disruption affect areas of the world unequally, through flooding, fire, drought, or earthquake.
• We must recognize the way in which economic disparity affects both the vulnerability of certain communities and areas of the world to climate disaster in the first place, and prevents them then from recovering with equal effectiveness in the second. Because sturdier structures in which to work and live are based on wealth needed for their construction, homes built out of materials that endure longer and with greater resistance to stressors tend to be more available to the wealthy.
• We must understand how education or the lack thereof may play a part in locating financial resources once a disaster has occurred. Those with greater wealth may have the education, time, and energy to locate such resources. Those who are without such a background may not.
• We must seek to form a global alliance so that soil erosion, which amplifies the harmful effects of both fire, flooding and drought can be prevented by regenerative agricultural practices. These seek to prevent erosion through wise planting of trees and allowing wildness to return.
• We must, as a global community, provide disaster relief not only to nations whose indigenous resources sustain our own lives, but to all peoples whether they serve our national self-interest or not.
• We must find within ourselves a willingness to accept responsibility for others, based on the awakening of a sense of oneness with them, so that we are willing to take from the Earth only what we need, and so that others might share in the Earth’s abundance as they are meant to.

These movements toward ‘climate justice’ come from an awakened heart that can no longer justify the disparity between those who have and those who have not. Out of this emerging intolerance, shall come answers to the problem of what structures and practices need to be put in place so that the new values of a unified Earth and a responsible global community can manifest.

The efforts of groups and nations toward the eradication of climate injustice will constitute a global renewal of the intrinsic values of the heart, a renewal in which life is held as sacred, and in which all people are seen as equal in terms of their worthiness to have a sustainable life. Global renewal of the values of the heart is not an idea solely for a utopian society of the future. It is an idea that can begin to manifest now in response to the growing presence of climate disaster, and the need to find a collective solution to the problem of climate change.

Once the values of the heart and an emerging sense of responsibility to care for all become part of our conscious experience, the means on a practical level for finding solutions to the problems of climate change, habitat loss, and all the other issues emerging from our separation from the Earth, will be able to be approached with a new sense of vitality. Inner necessity will create this new reordering of priorities, and tools with which to address the specific needs of the time will be discovered and made available. This is the global renewal that all hearts await, and its beginning stages are now.