Feeling guilty about climate change hasn\u2019t proved to be a good motivator. The most recent report on greenhouse gas emissions puts March at a record-breaking level of emissions. Presidential urging doesn\u2019t move Congress to take significant steps at solving the issue. The world community passes well-meaning resolutions that don\u2019t lead to major global cooperation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We are headed on a downward track, and everybody knows it. But we already know that guilt is a poor motivator. Fear is somewhat better, because it implies imminent harm, yet if the Earth is the Titanic and climate change is the iceberg, there\u2019s enough open sea between us and catastrophe to lull the passengers into one more round of champagne and caviar.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m convinced that the problem will only be solved through higher awareness, not in a lofty spiritual sense but simply by applying self-awareness in place of guilt and fear. Instead of turning our backs on possibilities we\u2019re afraid to confront, we could embrace a positive emotion that everyone agrees upon, which is the feeling that humanity is bound with Nature. \u00a0What we\u2019re up against is the equivalent, more than a century ago, of the mass distress over losing faith in God. Only in our time, we are about to lose faith in Nature.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still shocking that the rise in ocean temperature of only a few degrees should lead to such rapid and devastating effects: extreme weather patterns, die offs of coral reefs, melting of the polar ice caps and more. It\u2019s like finding out that someone you love and trust has turned away because of a spat you can barely remember.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Earth outdoes any lover in its nurturing relationship to human beings, and life in general. We barely understand the intricate ways in which our genes are woven into the fabric of life, but it is known that microbes dating back billions of years were key in building human DNA and continue to play a major role in it to this day. There is no us-versus-them when it comes to planetary life. Earth\u2019s loss is our personal loss, Earth\u2019s gain our personal gain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the simple idea of \u201cI am the Earth, the Earth is me,\u201d we could educate future generations to take a completely new and healing attitude. For centuries the theme of man conquering Nature has treated the planet on a war footing. Many people, including the most educated and responsible, still implicitly hold this view, only the tables have turned. Nature is winning the battle. We all understand, even if we can\u2019t admit it to ourselves, that Homo sapiens could disappear overnight and the Earth wouldn\u2019t notice. The ecology would rebalance itself in our absence, given a period of adjustment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The result, in our own mentality, is a push-pull between hating what the planet is doing to us and taking responsibility for the harm we have done to it. Neither attitude is productive. The institutions that govern wealth and prosperity, from Wall Street to the local power company, coal mines, car makers, and so on, will defend the status quo because, in the end, we ask them to. They advocate selfish denial as our proxies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Which means, if you follow this line of reasoning, that only a shift in awareness can cut through old conditioned habits. Awareness is infinitely more important than an action plan. Action plans built insane nuclear stockpiles during the Cold War. Awareness created that war and eventually a shift in awareness ended it. The same is true of climate change. Our actions keep it going. Our attitudes will either change it or await disaster with white-knuckle dread.<\/p>\n
We need to instigate, in our children and in ourselves, some beliefs that are true if we make them true.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
None of these are revolutionary ideas, and being realistic, they won\u2019t save us until a critical mass of the world\u2019s population starts to adopt them. But it\u2019s valuable to know what the life-saving beliefs actually are, as opposed to the self-destructive ones humanity has been stuck with in the industrial and post-industrial age. How insane is it, after all, to build weapons of mechanized death that drain hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy while spending a pittance to avoid the iceberg that our luxury liner is heading toward so inexorably?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The\u00a0<\/em>Chopra Foundation<\/a>\u00a0and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is\u00a0<\/em>The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feeling guilty about climate change hasn\u2019t proved to be a good motivator. The most recent report on greenhouse gas emissions puts March at a record-breaking level of emissions. Presidential urging doesn\u2019t move Congress to take significant steps at solving the issue. The world community passes well-meaning resolutions that don\u2019t lead to major global cooperation. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[210,1189,367],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-solutions","tag-consciousness-2"],"yoast_head":"\n