By Diana Hoogesteger
“The best way to face poverty this millennium is cooling the planet.” These were the words from the ex-president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, in 2010, at the General Assembly of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and during the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16), both of which took place in Cancún.
The reflection is that we often (almost always) see the effects of problems, but not the origin of their cause. What are some of the biggest problems we face today?
- Climate change
- Lack of enough and clean water
- Disappearance of animal species
- High environmental toxicity
- Obesity and malnutrition
- Migration and war as well as climate refugees
- Mountains of trash and plastic
Just to name a few …
On April 22, we celebrated the Day of Mother Earth, this year with the message from the United Nations emphasizing that we hear the call for taking care of and rebuilding biodiversity.
Mother Earth is a living being that feels, breaths, gets sick … and if we recognize that she is our mother, because she holds life in all its forms, and that we are intrinsically connected to her, then we can understand that our health and well-being depend on her health and well-being.
She is sick. The oceans are filling with plastic and are becoming more acidic. Extreme heat and forest fires, flooding, and other climate-related events are increasing and affecting millions of people and environments.
What we are experiencing are the symptoms and reactions from years of carelessness and abuse of Mother Earth in the favor of human comfort—of satisfying our desire for pleasure and the inexhaustible thirst for fun, well-being, and richness. But if we see clearly, we notice that such actions not only hurt Mother Earth, but they also weaken us and make us ill.
Coming back to Evo Morales’ words saying we need to cool the planet and the previous list of problems we’re facing worldwide—and considering other serious issues like social injustice (never before in history has there been so much richness in the hands of so few people), demographic imbalance (more people living in high energy-consuming cities and so many farm fields left abandoned), desertification (in the last 40 years, we have desertified one-third of the planet’s arable land, i.e., degraded our drylands and their ability to produce food or host biodiversity), rising violence among countries and in the family, and individual problems like addiction, medicine abuse, and depression—and we can see that it is urgent to look at ourselves and discover the roots of our problems.
Many spiritual masters have said it. In this time of electricity and magnetism, where we understand that the universe works through energy, we have achieved great technological and material advancements, but without the accompanying spiritual growth through which we understand who we are and what our purpose is, we are in danger of self-destruction. And that is what we are facing. But those of us who understand the concept of regeneration see that life wants to live and that it has all the mechanisms to heal and prosper. As the body heals by creating the right environment for healing, so does Mother Earth.
We have caused this great unbalance, and we can fix it. If, instead of using our human energy in the form of armies and money to “combat the war on drugs” (which in reality only creates more violence and weapons), we use that energy to reforest, change the agricultural system from degenerative monoculture to edible forests and biodiversity … If we help humans to live from what Mother Earth gives by restoring the ecosystems and we dedicate ourselves to taking care of the planet instead of looking only for material satisfactions, we surely can turn things around.
And let’s remember Children’s Day and all our children … How can we take care of and protect them as we help cool the planet? We can expand the areas of natural conservation and protection, creating more green spaces in our homes and cities, making compost and reducing our trash, walking and biking more, traveling less, consuming less, spending more time taking care of gardens and animals than behind our screens. Let’s take care of our direct environment and our relationships. When we work together with the Earth, we relate with each other, we sweat, we feel the air, watch birds and insects, we notice the changes around us. The spiritual problems we face are related to the terrible disconnection to Mother Earth, to the elements, to feeling we are part of the whole. Let us get out into nature to get inspired, to feel alive, connected.
We invite you to come visit us at Via Orgánica Ranch and get inspired on ways to cool the planet and come back to health.
