Dear friends,
A most inspiring environmental campaigner, Becky Tarbotton, Director of the US Rainforest Action Network drowned while on holidays in Mexico on Boxing Day, 2012. These words are from her speech celebrating the successful campaign which resulted in the Disney Corporation ceasing to source its paper from tropical rainforests and other unsustainable sources.
Becky talks about the trap of ‘win/lose’ thinking for environmental activists.
“We need to remember that the work of our time is bigger than climate change. We need to be setting our sights higher and deeper. What we’re really talking about, if we’re honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet…We don’t always know exactly what it is that creates social change. It takes everything from science all the way to faith, and it’s that fertile place right in the middle where really exceptional campaigning happens–and that is where I strive to be.”
Listen to the whole speech by clicking on the video at: http://ran.org/becky
It’s not easy to keep working for positive social and environmental change while we mourn so many losses – ecosystems, our fellow creatures of the earth, social gains hard won in the campaigns of past decades. Yet that is precisely where our greatest spiritual challenge lies. Not giving in to despair, not burying our heads in the sand of ‘business as usual’, but staying present amidst all the beauty that still is, amidst all the losses, ready to act, to do whatever we can to help in any minute – forever. The story of our planet and our story as human beings is far from over.
As Ocean Robbins, the founder of Y.E.S. – Youth for Environmental Sustainability, said: “I think the gap between the beauty of what’s possible and the pain of what’s taking place is where our challenge lies.”
Let each moment of 2013 be a new beginning.