Joanna Macy & Chris Johnson — ACTIVE HOPE: How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power

This is an excerpt from the Introduction of the revised edition to an excellent, empowering, wise, and deeply needed book. I highly recommend this updated version of Active Hope. It is a book that I am giving to each of our adult children and which I hope will be widely read everywhere. Deepest bow, as always, to Joanna Macy and also to Chris Johnson. May we all come to increasingly embody Active Hope in how we live our lives, playing our part — whatever that may be — in working towards a more just, sustainable, equitable, caring and peaceful world. 🙏 Molly

The word hope has two different meanings. The first, which we've touched on already, involves hopefulness, where our preferred outcome seems reasonably likely to happen. but if we require this kind of hope before we commit ourselves to an action, our response gets blocked in areas where we don't rate our changes well. This is what happened for Jane she felt so hopeless she didn't see this point of even trying to change things.

The second meaning is about desire. When Jane was asked what she'd  like to have happen in our world, without hesitation she described the future she hoped for, the kind of world she longed for so much it hurt. It is this kind of hope that starts our journey — knowing what we hope for and what we'd like, or love, to have happen. It is what we do with this hope that really makes the difference. Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in the process of moving toward our hopes and, where we can, realizing them.

Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we start from where we are by taking in a clear view of reality, acknowledging what we see and how we feel. Second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we'd like things to move in or the values we'd like to see expressed. And third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction. 

Since Active Hope doesn't require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we focus on our intention and let it be our guide. 

...Our focus is on how we can best play our part, whatever that may be, in the healing of our world...

When we become aware of an emergency and rise to the occasion, something powerful gets switched on inside us. We activate our sense of purpose and discover strengths we didn't even know we had. Being able to make a difference is powerfully energizing; it makes our existence feel more worthwhile. When we practice Action Hope, it is not about being dutiful or worthy so much as it is about stepping into a state of aliveness that transforms our lives and our world.

— Joanna Macy & Chris Johnson

Excerpted from the latest edition of Active Hope:

How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected

Resilience & Creative Power 

 

https://www.activehope.info/

I will never miss an opportunity to see Joanna Macy 💗

Joan Halifax: What Would a Bodhisattva Do?

We have to ask: What would a Bodhisattva do? Whether it is in relation to revoking a woman’s right to choose, capital punishment, the deep incivility in our society, the exploitation of the natural world, the life-destroying patterns of attachment to lifestyle, or the myriad other sufferings that arise from our vast confusion, hatred, and clinging.


In her infinite compassion, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara of many hands and eyes brought all suffering beings to the other shore, turned around and saw the world was immediately repopulated by suffering beings. Did she, as one and many, turn away from those who were in samsara, retreat to a cave, and heap in futility? Or did she, as one and many, show up again... and again... and again? So many of us are endeavoring to show up in the tangle of this travesty around the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We as a community stand with you who are dedicated to protecting the rights of women and certainly those who are disproportionately affected, including women of color.

This recent decision by the Supreme Court is a tragic threat to women's health care and autonomy. In contemplating this situation, we feel that the decision is fundamentally about power and control, which is also reflected in gutted climate legislation, the threat to same-sex marriage legislation, and more. We know that there are medical and psycho-social reasons for abortion that are life-saving. We also know that there are varying views on when life begins. As we bear witness to these different views, we also feel that the protection of reproductive choice is a fundamental right that must be upheld.

We stand with millions of you whose voices are rising up across the land in opposition to the Supreme Court's decision. We see you on the steps of the Supreme Court, and in the halls of academia and in houses of worship, as this ruling opens the door for undoing other areas of personal autonomy, from contraception and same-sex marriage to interracial marriage.

So what would a Bodhisattva do? Like Avalokiteshvara, our way is to show up, to turn toward the world’s suffering, including our own, and to offer whatever relief we can as individuals and communities of care. May we do so. And may we do it with conviction, with courage, with balance, with love, and with each other.

🙏 Joan Halifax 

https://www.upaya.org/about/roshi/

Bill McKibben: The Supreme Court Tries to Overrule the Climate

There is so much that is happening in our nation and with planetary implications. It is tempting to look away. And it is deeply important that, as best as we can, we look with open eyes and hearts, we understand and absorb what we are seeing, and that we act individually and together in every way possible to intervene on the great harm that is being perpetrated on us all by the powerful who are so dangerously unconscious and asleep. So very important. 🙏 Molly

The Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia.

 A destructive decision in West Virginia v E.P.A.

 

By Bill McKibben

Credit where due: the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in West Virginia v. E.P.A. is the culmination of a five-decade effort to make sure that the federal government won’t threaten the business status quo. Lewis Powell’s famous memo, written in 1971, before he joined the Supreme Court—between the enactment of a strong Clean Air Act and a strong Clean Water Act, each with huge popular support—called on “businessmen” to stand up to the tide of voices “from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians” calling for progressive change. He outlined a plan for slowly rebuilding the power of industrial élites, almost all the elements of which were taken up by conservative movements over subsequent years: monitoring textbooks and TV stations, attacking left-wing faculty at universities, even building a publishing industry. (“The news stands—at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere—are filled with paperback and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on ‘our side,’ ” Powell wrote, but he was able to imagine a day when the likes of Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity would reliably top the best-seller lists.)

Fatefully, he also wrote: “American business and the enterprise system have been affected as much by the courts as by the executive and legislative branches of government. Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” At the time he was writing, the “activist” court was standing up for things that most Americans wanted, such as clean air and water—and the right of women to control their own bodies. But the Supreme Court, and hence the judiciary, has come under the control of the kind of men that Powell envisioned—he may not have envisioned women on the bench, but Amy Coney Barrett is otherwise his type of judge. And, with this ruling, they have taken more or less total control of Washington’s ability to generate policy that might disrupt the status quo.

In essence, the ruling begins to strip away the power of agencies such as the E.P.A. to enforce policy: instead of allowing federal agencies to enforce, say, the Clean Air Act to clean the air, in this new dispensation, Congress would have to pass regulations that are much more explicit, as each new pollutant came to the fore. As West Virginia’s attorney general explained, “What we’re looking to do is to make sure that the right people under our constitutional system make the correct decisions . . .  these agencies, these federal agencies, don’t have the ability to act solely on their own without getting a clear statement from Congress. Delegation matters.”

But, of course, the Court has also insured that “getting a clear statement from Congress” to address our deepest problems is essentially impossible. The decision in Citizens United v. F.E.C., in 2010, empowered corporations to game our political system at will. That explains, in part, why Congress has not passed a real climate bill in decades. The efforts that Democratic Administrations have made to try and control greenhouse gasses have mostly used provisions of the Clean Air Act because it is the last serious law of its kind that ever came to a President’s desk (Nixon’s, in this case).

A train of similar cases now approaches the high court—they would, for instance, make it all but impossible for the federal government to regulate tailpipe emissions or to consider the financial toll of climate change when deciding whether to approve a new pipeline. As the Times reported in a recent investigation, the plaintiffs in these cases “are supported by the same network of conservative donors who helped former President Donald J. Trump place more than 200 federal judges, many now in position to rule on the climate cases in the coming year.”

And this new jurisprudence would, in turn, make it even harder to achieve any international progress on rising temperatures. If the United States—historically, the world’s largest emitter of carbon—can’t play a serious policy role, it won’t play a serious leadership role. John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, who has been trying to rally the world for more aggressive climate action, is running out of cards to play.

Given the record flooding in Asia, the record heat in the Mideast, the record fires in the Southwest, and the record rainfall in Yellowstone, there’s a nihilist strain to this ruling. Be careful what you wish for: the biggest threat to corporate futures today is not a paperback about “erotic free love”; it’s an out-of-control climate that will undercut financial stability. But the conservative drive to roll back federal power has long since become more ideological than practical; the right-wing luminary Grover Norquist updated Powell’s plan for a feistier age, when he said that he wanted to shrink the federal government to a size that he could then “drown in a bathtub.” But drowning whole communities as the sea level inexorably rises?

And what about the large majority of Americans who want action on climate change, and the activist campaigners who have pushed that desire to the fore? Those activists have engaged with good faith over many years in an effort to use the latent power of the federal government to make necessary change, but now that effort seems less and less sensible. There remains an outside hope that the Build Back Better bill might still pick up fifty votes in the Senate before the fall, when Republicans could potentially regain control of Congress; the tax credits for renewable energy it contains would probably pass Supreme Court muster. But beyond that it’s hard to see exactly what the point of demanding federal climate action is now; why march on the Capitol or the White House if the Supreme Court won’t let elected leaders act even if they want to? And there’s no real way to march on the Supreme Court—it exists outside the ambit of normal politics—though rulings like this will also raise the pressure to expand the size of the Court, if and when the Democrats have the votes to do so.

You could also hope that an engaged Federal Reserve might take action—as Aaron Regunberg pointed out in a recent article, Court precedent (for whatever that’s still worth) might give the Fed some latitude. And state legislatures can act, too, though even there the Court may hem in their ability to, say, set mileage restrictions on cars—in fact, Republican attorneys general from around the country have already filed suit in the D.C. circuit court to do just that. (The D.C. circuit court contains new appointees such as Neomi Rao, who oversaw deregulation efforts in the Trump Administration before he offered her a seat on the bench.) Campaigners will keep trying to win elections, and to write policy, but it took Lewis Powell fifty years to win this fight, and it may take fifty years to win it back—and we do not have that kind of time in the fight against warming.

Wall Street may be the only other actor large enough to actually shift the momentum of our climate system. The pressure on banks, asset managers, and insurance companies will increase precisely because the Court has wrenched shut this other spigot. Convincing banks to stop funding Big Oil is probably not the most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis, but, in a country where democratic political options are effectively closed off, it may be the only path left. ♦

Please go here for the original article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-supreme-court-tries-to-overrule-the-climate

Please go here for Bill McKibben's website: http://billmckibben.com/ 

One of the many times that I've had the privilege of seeing Bill McKibben

US Supreme Court Drops Carbon Bomb on the Planet

I am infuriated! I am outraged! This extreme right wing majority Supreme Court is demonstrating again and again that they have gone rogue and are acting in ways that are the opposite of being “pro-life.” This is a death cult. This profoundly dangerous majority is prioritizing the rights of the fossil fuel industry, guns, Big Brother's power over our bodies, their toxic religion, and a patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system over the rights and welfare of human beings and life on Earth. This is madness! We must unite in finding ways to intervene on this fascist death spiral that we are in today. We must. ― Molly

"This will undoubtedly be the most important environmental law case on the court’s docket this term, and could well become one of the most significant environmental law cases of all time," said environmental law expert Jonathan Adler. (Photo: Getty Images)

One Democratic senator warned the right-wing majority's ruling "could unleash a new era of reckless deregulation that will gut protections for all Americans and the environment." 

 By JAKE JOHNSON

Update:

The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority handed down a decision Thursday that will severely limit the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, undermining the federal government's ability to combat the climate emergency.

In its 6-3 ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court's conservative justices—led by Chief Justice John Roberts—sided with the coal industry and Republican attorneys general who sought to curb the EPA's rulemaking powers under the Clean Air Act.

Amy Coney Barrett, one of the right-wing justices who voted to limit the EPA's authority, has family ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan warned in her dissent that "today, the court strips the Environmental Protection Agency of the power Congress gave it to respond to 'the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.'"

Environmentalists echoed that assessment in response to the majority's decision, the latest in a series of hugely consequential rulings over the past week. According to EPA data, the power sector represents the United States' second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

"A Supreme Court that sides with the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of its people is anti-life and beyond broken," said John Paul Mejia, national spokesperson for the youth-led Sunrise Movement. "We cannot and will not let our Democratic leaders standby while an illegitimate court and the GOP goes on the offense."

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that the court's ruling is "part of a broad-based assault on the ability of regulators to protect our air, water, and climate."

"Long-sought by corporate polluters, industry-backed think tanks, and politicians who serve monied fossil fuel interests, this decision strikes at the heart of federal experts' ability to do their jobs," added Hauter, who stressed that "while this ruling intends to hamstring the federal government's ability to regulate dangerous emissions, it does not signal the end of climate action."

"The climate movement must and will continue to pressure agencies and elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels to enact policies that ensure a swift reduction in climate pollution and an end to the fossil fuel era," Hauter said. "The Supreme Court will not stand in the way of the fight for a livable planet."

The court's ruling spells serious issues for President Joe Biden's vow to put the U.S. on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2035. Meanwhile, the administration is moving ahead with oil and gas leasing on public lands, drawing backlash and legal action from climate groups.

The People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition, made up of more than 1,000 U.S.-based environmental groups, called on Biden to use his still-existing authority to "declare a climate emergency and stop new fossil fuel leases, exports, pipelines, and other infrastructure today."

"Using authorities under the National Emergencies Act and the Defense Production Act," the coalition noted, "the president could also halt crude oil exports, stop offshore oil and gas drilling, restrict international fossil fuel investment, and rapidly manufacture and distribute clean and renewable energy systems."

Earlier:

Climate advocates are apprehensively watching the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday morning as it's expected to deliver a ruling that could imperil the federal government's regulatory authority to rein in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, striking a potentially fatal blow to global efforts to fight the climate crisis.

The closely watched case, formally known as West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the culmination of a yearslong legal campaign by Republican attorneys general and right-wing activists financed by the oil and gas industry, which is hoping the high court's right-wing supermajority will hand down a decision that guts the EPA's rulemaking authority.

If the court does just that, it would spell doom for President Joe Biden's stated goal of transitioning the U.S. to a 100% clean electricity sector by 2035. As the Washington Post notes, West Virginia v. EPA "comes before a Supreme Court that's even more conservative than the one that stopped the Obama administration's plan to drastically reduce power plants' carbon output in 2016."

"This will undoubtedly be the most important environmental law case on the court’s docket this term, and could well become one of the most significant environmental law cases of all time," said Jonathan Adler, an environmental law expert at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Given the United States' status as the world's largest historical emitter and second-largest current emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide, the Supreme Court's decision will have serious ramifications for global efforts to avert climate catastrophe.

"The Supreme Court could hand down an extreme decision in the case of West Virginia v. EPA, which would devastate the federal government's ability to curb climate chaos," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted late Wednesday. "The Supreme Court must not give corporations license to recklessly destroy our planet."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) similarly warned earlier this week that the Supreme Court's ruling "could unleash a new era of reckless deregulation that will gut protections for all Americans and the environment."

During oral arguments over the case earlier this year, the Supreme Court's conservative justices appeared inclined to restrict the EPA's regulatory authority to slash carbon emissions—authority that the court affirmed a decade and a half ago in Massachusetts v. EPA.

Climate experts and advocates fear the worst from the industry-friendly Supreme Court majority.

"Each morning at 10 am, my anxiety spikes," Sara Colangelo, director of the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, told the Post Thursday morning, referring to the time the court's ruling is expected to drop.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/30/us-supreme-court-drops-carbon-bomb-planet