Crossing Nebraska

Some years ago, I was challenged to explain climate change in fewer than 200 words. As both a writer and lover of all life on this earth I found the challenge intriguing. Here’s what I came up with: Plants “breathe in” carbon dioxide and “breathe out” oxygen. The carbon becomes part of the plant’s new growth and the oxygen benefits animal life as well. Over the course of millions of years, the accumulation of dead vegetation became the coal, oil, and natural gas fields that now fuel our modern lifestyle. Burning these “fossil fuels” takes oxygen out of today’s atmosphere and puts carbon dioxide back in. In just one hundred years we have largely reversed a natural process that was millions of years in the making. Carbon dioxide is a “ greenhouse gas ”. It traps heat in the atmosphere and causes the earth’s average temperature to rise. This warming has taken place so quickly that it is disrupting weather patterns and making storms and droughts more severe. It is changing regional clim...

You will likely recall that the last of the Four Noble Truths points to the path leading to the cessation of suffering – the Noble Eightfold Path . You might also recall that the three “steps” along that Path referred to as right speech , right action , and right livelihood pertain to moral conduct , whereas the others pertain to either wisdom or meditation , as the case may be. Implicit, then, within the practice of Buddhism, is the understanding that the cessation of “our” suffering is only possible within the context of our relationship with “others” and the world. One simple way to think of how these steps of the Path might link together is to consider how difficult it is to act morally without at least a little bit of wisdom guiding our behavior. Likewise, it is difficult to settle deeply into meditation when our life is fraught with conflict due to the improper nature of our conduct. Furthermore, without the ability to settle deeply into the stillness of meditation our ...