Finding freedom through collective and individual responses to climate change (Part 1)

Author: Scott Schang

Buddhism offers liberation from samsara, the cycle of suffering, if adherents acknowledge the Four Noble Truths, follow the Noble Eightfold Path, and embrace the Buddhist precepts. Just as Buddhist principles guide practitioners down the path, society is currently creating legal principles to guide a response to climate change. Applying the Buddhist tools of deep looking, mindfulness, compassionate dialogue, and following precepts offers insights into collectively and individually creating these laws to be effective and enduring. Further, by being mindful of the relationship between humans and nature and engaging in constructive dialogue, this time of peril offers an opportunity to work towards liberating ourselves, future generations, and the planet from the core cause of climate change— living unsustainably.

Let me offer a few words of explanation and others of apology first. The perspective I bring to this paper is thoroughly American I use the American experience throughout this paper to provide illustrative examples because it is what I am familiar with, not because I believe the American experience to be more important than that of other societies. I was schooled as a Christian and began practicing in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh as an adult. Thus, when I discuss Buddhism, I speak from this fairly narrow perspective. I am not a Buddhist scholar nor well-versed in other Buddhist traditions. I apologize in advance for my ignorance of the wonderful richness and depth of Buddhist practice, and mean no offense if my words are not in-keeping with the understanding of my brothers and sisters in other traditions or in my own tradition. Any shortcomings in my understanding reflect on me as a student, not on my teachers.

The Relationship between Precepts and Laws

I о help Buddhist practitioners follow the path to enlightenment, the Buddha described the Four Noble Truths, offered many useful teachings, and suggested certain precepts to help guide practitioners' behavior. Similarly, laws are meant to shape behavior in communities. Because society's primary response to climate change is through the negotiation of treaties and the passage of national statutes to cause people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Buddhist use of precepts can illuminate the pitfalls and suggest potential solutions to the difficult process of finding laws that will successfully address climate change. Before we begin, we first need to have a common understanding of what precepts are. how laws and precepts interrelate, and how communities function with them.

Precepts as Trainings, Not Commandments

Mahayana Buddhism offers practitioners five basic precepts that serve as a moral compass: avoid taking life: avoid taking things that do not belong to us; avoid sexual misconduct; avoid false speech; and avoid intoxicating substances that cause heedlessness. These precepts are considered trainings or touchstones to guide, not rules to be used to judge or punish.

In the sutras. the Buddha often used the word 'precepts' to describe these trainings, but he also used the word siksha (trainings). This latter term is more consistent with the Buddhist understanding of how to practice these guidelines. Mindfulness trainings are practices, not prohibitions. They do not restrict our freedom. They protect us. guarantee our liberty, and prevent us from getting entangled in difficulties and confusion. When we fail, we lift ourselves up and try again to do our best. In fact, we can never succeed one hundred percent. The mindfulness trainings are like the North Star. If we want to travel north, we can use the North Star to guide us. but we never expect to arrive at the North Star.

Precepts are different from 'commandments' and 'rules'. They are the insights both from mindful observation and direct experience of Suffering. They are the guidelines that help us train ourselves to live in a way that protects us and those around us.

In following the precepts, the most important tool offered by Buddhism is mindfulness, the basic awareness of our actions in words, deeds and thought and of the world around us. Mindfulness helps the practitioner to see the results of abiding by the precepts, and thus nourishes the desire to continue on the path. It also allows us to detect when we are straying from the path so we can correct ourselves. Being aware also helps us to better understand the precepts themselves, perhaps leading us to change our actions or change our understanding of the precepts. Over time, we may also see ways to change the precepts themselves as a product of our insight.

Laws as Precepts

Laws can very much like precepts, depending on the type of law at issue. In the broadest sense, laws are mutually agreed upon codes of conduct that try to alter behavior for the protection and betterment of the community and the individual. Similarly, the Buddha and Sangha have agreed to the precepts as a code of conduct to protect the Sangha and help practitioners on the path.

Precepts and laws share a common origin they are created in response to suffering. The precepts were created to help to mold their behavior as they better understand the truth of human suffering. Many people I have met came to Buddhism and embraced the precepts out of a sense of spiritual longing or because of a significant personal crisis. Such moments have tremendous power to wake us up from our everyday assumptions and to remove the blinders of ignorance. Laws are often created in response to suffering as well, such as global warming.

Laws and precepts are somewhat different because laws are enforceable by society against an individual and can result in punishment. Precepts, however, do cam an element of enforceability in that abiding by them or not results in karma. In addition, some laws are merely expressions of goals, meaning they are not enforceable. And laws are rules that we agree to as a society and that we enforce and change as a society. They are not God-given rules that can be neither changed nor suspended. In this way, laws are more like precepts than commandments.

We often forget the malleability of our laws and allow them to become rigid and stale. Not only do laws have to be kept fresh, but unless we are diligent about abiding by them, they lose their force. Similarly, practitioners who fail to keep their practice fresh and to examine whether they are abiding by the precepts will lose the force of the practice.

Laws, like precepts, also must be organic to the society they govern or they will ultimately fail. I have seen countries whose environmental laws were written for them by foreign consultants, and these laws often base relatively little meaning within the country and usually are ineffective. Laws have to both reflect the conditions and mores of their communities and be internalized and accepted by the individuals to whom they apply in order to work: they have limited effectiveness if given force through government enforcement alone.

Laws and precepts also have to be implemented. Just because something is a law or a precept means very little—they are words on a piece of paper or floating in air. Thus, one must usually write domestic legislations to give meaning and force to international treaties. It is the same with precepts. Individuals must decide how to take these guidelines and craft their own understanding and code of conduct for implementing them. Thus, although there are some differences depending on the type of law being discussed, laws and precepts are largely similar. Roles of

Communities and Individuals

Laws and precepts can operate at the various levels of society: individuals, communities, nations, and international community. In order for Buddhist practice to thrive, it is imperative that all parts of the sangha support each other in practice. For climate change legislation to work, all levels of society must be involved. Countries, companies, universities, nongovernmental organizations, provinces, towns, spiritual communities, and individuals are all essential elements in creating the treaties, laws, regulations, corporate policies, social norms and personal ethics that respond to climate change.

With government-created laws, each unit of government holds the other units responsible for meeting the laws and commitments that have been made:

International Community
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Nation
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Provinces
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Towns
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Citizens

The international community is supported by the nations. Nations, in turn, are supported by and held accountable by both the international community and those units below. This continues throughout the chain of government. For the purposes of this paper, however, I will focus on the international community, nations, and individuals as the main three drivers behind climate change law.

Creating Laws to Address Climate Change

The Buddhist use of precepts offers many lessons for creating climate change laws. Just as practitioners create the precepts, take the precepts, and renew their vows to them, below we will look at the creation and implementation of climate change laws as well as the process of keeping them evergreen.

Awakening to Our Suffering

Thanks to the work of thousands of scientists, politicians, and environmental activists, it is now apparent that human addition of certain gases to the environment is causing our climate to warm and change. The effects of these greenhouse gases on the planet arc not certain, but scientists have reached a broad consensus that they will cause dramatic increases in temperature, rise in sea level, redistribution of fresh water supplies, extinction of species, and dislocation of human populations. A simple paragraph in a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows the distressing degree to which Earth is suffering:

The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. Hooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g.. land use change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources).

High confidence (High confidence: about eight out of ten chance)

Climate change promises tremendous suffering for humans and other species. From this suffering we now see a strong desire awakening across the international community to take collective action to combat climate change. The international community) is in the process of adopting climate precepts in the form of a series of treaties. At the Rio conference in 1992. The international community adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Signatories to the UNFCCC. including the United States, declared as their objective the adoption of additional agreements (protocols) that would result in stabilization of climate change:

The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a lime frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

The Four Noble Truths recognize the problem of suffering and the goal of its cessation and then describe an eight fold path for achieving that goal. The precepts are general guidelines to follow to walk this path and try to achieve the goal, and a practitioner is expected to internalize them and create her own set of ethical guidelines for implementing the precepts. Similarly, the UNFCCC recognizes global warming and serves as a framework to negotiating future protocols that are like precepts that will provide guidance and milestones for nations themselves to translate into rules and policies that they follow to implement the treaty. Both the UNFCCC and the precepts leave enforceable provisions to a later, but necessary, stage where enforceable treaties, laws, and regulations are agreed to

Suffering
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Four Noble Truths
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Fight Fold Path
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Practices, including Precepts
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Actions

Practitioners do not, in the traditional sense, 'create' the precepts. We are taught them. But precepts are created in that there are various sets of precepts in Buddhism that apply to the various communities within the Sangha. And within these communities, the precepts have been restated in forms that are better understandable over time and place. Thus, precepts are, with the consent of the Sangha, rewritten and created just as climate change law is being created.

Buddhist practice also calls on us to practice with the precepts in such a way as to create them everyday. Only by coming to understand their meaning through our own experiences can we really know the precepts. In that sense, the precepts are only real once we have "created" them for ourselves by living them, testing them, failing to abide by them, and coming to embrace them again.

Creating Organic Principles

This same creative process works as we craft international agreements to address climate change. International climate agreements are born through years of discussion, debate, disagreement and experimentation all informed by an ever increasing body of knowledge that we did not have before. By being created in this way, the agreements become organic to the international community, in that they are adopted by the community members by consensus. Having this organic origin is critical to the strength and resiliency of the agreements. Rules imposed on any community from a source outside that community or without the community's consensus are weak, prone to being unjust, and unlikely to endure.

This same process has to occur at the national and individual level when creating climate change rules. The principles to be followed have to be discussed, debated, rejected, reformulated, and ultimately agreed to. As they are implemented, they at times have to be adjusted to reflect new understanding and new information. At other times, they have to be completely overhauled.

Perceived Benefits Must Outweigh Costs

The process of 'creating' climate change laws involves the same calculus a practitioner makes when deciding whether to 'take' the precepts, in other words whether to abide by them. This is a fairly simple calculation: do they reflect my core beliefs; do I believe that by following them, my community and I will be happier; and am I committed to practicing them? It is generally true that people will not act until the pain caused by not acting is higher than the perceived reward to be gained from acting. Formal cost-benefit analyses are often required in the United States when an agency is creating a new environmental regulation to weigh a rule's economic, societal, and environmental costs against its likely benefits. These, in a very imperfect way, parallel the questions a practitioner asks herself.

The cost-benefit ratio for addressing climate change seems to be straightforward: if we do not decrease greenhouse gas emissions, then the planet, future generations, and fellow species will suffer greatly. As a result, the international community has banded together to address climate change through the UNFCCC. But it is not clear the community's commitment is as heart-felt as a practitioner agreeing to live the precepts. Many laws, regulations and other guidelines must be put in place before the climate change regime is complete, and these instruments will ask people to make many changes. The fact that the Kyoto Protocol, the follow-on agreement to the UNFCCC that placed binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions on developed nations, has not been universal I) embraced and that man) of those countries that have embraced it have seen their emissions rise rather than fall, also demonstrates that much work remains to be done in creating an effective climate change legal regime.

U.S. Resistance to Kyoto Protocol

The United States' refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is an example of the difficulties to be faced in creating climate change law. While the United States agreed to the UNFCCC, it has steadfastly refused to adopt the Kyoto Protocol. It was not particularly difficult for U.S. leaders to agree to the UNFCCC principles that greenhouse gas emissions ma) need to 'stabilize' and that economic development also mist be allowed to proceed: they are sound principles that come at no cost.

The Kyoto Protocol, in contrast, calls for actual emissions reductions by 2012 in developed nations only. For American politicians, he Protocol's cost-benefit analysis was unacceptable: the cost to the United Stales of implementing the Protocol would be in the neighborhood of $300 billion, with benefits of only $12 billion, American leaders felt the protocol was unfair and not in the economic interest of their people. The Protocol picked 1990 as the baseline year measuring emissions, which benefited Russia, Germany, and England, whose greenhouse gas emissions dropped after 1990. While emissions rose after 1990. More importantly, the Protocol did not apply binding emissions limits on developing nations such as China, which would soon surpass the United States in overall emissions. Before the Protocol was done being negotiated and long before the current Bush Administration took office, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 that the United States should not ratify any agreement that failed to include developing nations."

While President Clinton's administration embraced the Protocol, it had very little support within the legislature and among the public. As such, it had little practical effect on domestic behavior and policy.

Central Role of Mindfulness

Why were Americans unwilling to adopt the Kyoto Protocol? The threat of global warming was not real enough to outweigh the fear of the costs involved in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Future harm is always discounted when people look at risks, as is future benefit. To the degree that the Protocol calls for people to make sacrifices in what they now enjoy, the benefits of these actions will have to be quite significant to convince people that they should embrace the principle and make it their own. This was not apparent for many Americans when considering the Protocol.

When a person who enjoys alcohol considers the fifth precept, the potential benefits offered by not ingesting alcohol must become real to that person through their practice of mindfulness. The effects of a clearer mind and lighter body must be present in the person's awareness. It also helps if the person can become aware of the toll of alcohol on her society and the benefit of not exposing future generations to alcohol. Thus, it takes a strong dose of mindfulness to make the practitioner aware of the positive benefits offered by foregoing alcohol and to encourage her to embrace the precept.

This process describes what has happened in American public opinion in the past few years with global warming. Scientific consensus about climate change has become more apparent to many Americans who have also seen changes in their local environment that are consistent with a warmer globe. Hurricane Katrina and Vice President Gore's efforts made a significant impact in public opinion about climate change as more information about global warming became available and experience of climate change became real, American hearts and minds opened to the pressing need to control greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, education and mindfulness worked — eventually.

Watering Positive Seeds

As American understanding of climate change has grown, social momentum has grown as well that highlights the positive consequences of addressing climate change. To date, most efforts to discuss climate change have focused on the threat of global warming. Very little has been said about the benefits of living sustainable and the joy of living as if our future mattered. People respond better lo encouragement than to admonishment. In my local Sangha practitioners often voice frustration that the precepts are phrased in terms of what not to do instead of encouragement about what to do affirmatively. This same lesson can help those seeking new climate change laws to balance language of fear and prohibition with language of possibility and encouragement. Now, as social attitudes in the U.S. public have started to shift, being "green" has become fashionable and is being promoted by advertisers and many companies.

While there is good reason to be suspicious that some of this may be 'greenwashing', this social phenomenon shows the importance of focusing on the positive when advocating change. This is particularly true in the United States, where some politicians continue to oppose climate legislation out of a belief that any reduction in U.S. economic growth to address climate change is unacceptable. It is critical to point out the promise of newer technologies to create new jobs. As developing nations consider their roles in climate change and whether to restrain their greenhouse gas emissions, these same tools can be used.