[In Taiwan,] two Humanistic Buddhist groups have influenced the majority of Buddhists on the island to adopt important aspects of sustainable lifestyles. This multi-sited ethnographic study uses participant observation with formal and informal interviews to research these two groups—the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation and Dharma Drum Mountain—in the two different social contexts of Taiwan and California.

A comparative analysis of the results finds that the believers’ adoption of pro-environmental lifestyle changes is strongly influenced by their membership in a strong moral community, by sensing the material and social, or “terrestrial,” strain of environmental degradation coupled with a feeling that the government and other official institutions are not doing enough, and by integrated religious teachings, which include theory and praxis, from authoritative figures who model the desired behaviors. Moreover, this study shows the power of the sacred to inspire behavioral change, which, in the context of Buddhism, is cultivation of the bodhisattva ethic

The report includes chapters for each continent, habitat type, and social system, analyzing the impacts on each in depth, ending with a chapter on sustainable development.

This paper is critical of any Buddhist environmentalism that fails to give due attention to both dimensions, and it emphasizes that both the relational and developmental dimensions must be held in balance in order for a genuine Buddhist environmentalism to be possible.

After articulating the array of “the practice of the same” that dictates every corner of our civilization, this paper proposes to turn to gong’an (Jp. kōan) to dismantle that dysfunctional habit of repetition. The soteriological practice aiming at realizing one’s Buddha nature provides a way to think about what I call “critical Chan liminality,” which deconditions us from the practice of the same.

when you use the law and science to change the mind, it can change tomorrow. But when you change the heart, it is forever. In the midst of the ongoing climate and COVID-19 crises, I believe that we can change the story of the world if we change the storyline. “The seeds of goodness live in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”

By exposing the ways that different societies have reacted to crises over their lifetime, this framework can help identify the factors and complex social-ecological interactions that either bolster or undermine resilience to contemporary climate shocks.

At whatever time, monastics, there are dishonest kings, […] the gods become agitated.

When the rulers of society are dishonest, that is a time of climate change

This study is the first to use empirical physiological observations to examine the well-publicized theoretical 35°C wet-bulb temperature limit for human to extreme environments. We find that uncompensable heat stress in humid environments occurs in young, healthy adults at wet-bulb temperatures significantly lower than 35°C.

Loy’s central thesis is that there are common “spiritual roots” to our ecological crisis and the Buddhist soteriological structure, when properly understood and applied from the individual to the collective case, holds the key to our way out.

Loy’s wish is not simply that we all “stop befoul[ing] our own nest” in the ways already mentioned, but that we all “awaken” to the true causes of environmental spoilage—our false belief in an ultimate “separation from other people and from the natural world” and our dysfunctional striving after “ever-increasing power and control” as a way of resolving our collective anxiety about what it means to be human. If these points weren’t proof enough of Loy’s unwillingness to play by any Maritainian or Rawlsian-inspired rules of compartmentalization, there is also his direct appeal to religions to change their internal lives: to “stop denying evolution and instead refocus their messages on its meaning.”

An article about Buddhist environmentalism and a critique thereof.

The article first identifies and assesses two different strategies used by advocates of Buddhist environmentalism in Thailand, one being textual and the other practical. Then, after laying out the deficiencies of the textual strategy, the article argues that the practical strategy offers a more meaningful basis for a discourse of Buddhist environmental concern.

Farming uses 50 percent of [Earth’s habitable land] and what you find is that around 75 percent of our agricultural land is grazing land. […] We are using a huge portion of usable human land to raise cows.

A realistic picture of what building a “green economy” would require.

Everything’s been said
But one last thing about the desert,
And it’s awful: …

In this video, we’re going to look at some prominent climate deniers, what they have to say, why what they say is clearly wrong, [and] why they seem to believe it anyway

I do not exist and yet I am everything. You know what I am. I am History. Now make me good.

… and Bhutan’s famous Gross National Happiness, which uses thirty-three metrics to measure the titular quality in quantitative terms.

All these indexes are attempts to portray civilization in our time using the terms of the hegemonic discourse, which is to say economics, often in the attempt to make a judo-like transformation of the discipline of economics itself, altering it to make it more human, more adjusted to the biosphere, and so on. Not a bad impulse!

But it’s important also to take this whole question back out of the realm of quantification, sometimes, to the realm of the human and the social. To ask what it all means, what it’s all for. To consider the axioms we are agreeing to live by. To acknowledge the reality of other people, and of the planet itself. To see other people’s faces. To walk outdoors and look around.

A novel attempting to imagine civilization coming through climate change stronger for it.

Fish and their feces play a hugely important and vastly underrated role in ocean chemistry and the carbon cycle that shapes Earth’s climate

See also, SN 36.21.

[T]he great, irreplaceable potentiality of fiction is that it makes possible the imagining of possibilities.

When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and writers to be equally culpable—for the imagining of possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians.

This book began as a set of four lectures, presented at the University of Chicago in the fall of 2015. The lectures were the second in a series named after the family of Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin.

To contend seriously with the problem, you first have to let it in. And when I say “let it in” I mean “drag it towards you, press it down and sit with it.” Sit with it past the point of discomfort and pain and dispair until you can observe it without blinking, until its weight is just another thing about about you. In a way, “letting in” is too passive. What I’m talking about is fitting a hyperobject into your heart without it breaking.

A conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us.

You never begin by saying, “I’m going to be a tyrannist dictator, and I’m going to ruin your life.” You don’t start out that way. You start out by saying, “I’m going to make things so much better. And you want that, don’t you, Ezra?”

Feeling comfortable with one’s balance of harmful and helpful actions is qualitatively different from reducing harm in the first place.

Ultimately I think we have to come down to the realization: it’s to help us respond appropriately

… the belief that we humans occupy a realm of being separate from the rest of nature encourages what he all-too-politely refers to as “environmentally irresponsible behavior.”

A history of modern conceptualizations of “nature” and an early defense of the so-called “first/second nature” split—a concept we now call “the anthropocene.”

… a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems

A few case studies of humanity setting out to fix the environment.

By zooming in on tiny fish and out to the entire stratosphere, it beautifully captures the staggering scope of climate change and its challenges. In highlighting the scientists and engineers working on it, the book offers a somewhat more hopeful picture of our possible future: less apocalyptic but still incredibly strange. See 99pi’s “Model Organism” for a taste.

The book also makes a strong case for being skeptical that we even can engineer our way out of climate change. While it nods to the “but what other choice do we have” counterargument, I hope that readers come away from this tension in the book more confident than ever in our need for decarbonization and I hope that readers won’t leap to even worse ideas than those highlighted in the book, such as fatalism or population control. As one character in the book memorably put it:

Pissing your pants will only keep you warm for so long.

We’re already geo-engineering the planet, we’re just doing it accidentally and badly

Ezra Klein has a wide-ranging conversation with novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (of Mars Trilogy fame) about his “cli-fi” book, Ministry of the Future, and how strange our society is.

“Anthropocene” is the proposed name for a geologic epoch in which humans have become the major force determining the continuing livability of the earth. The word tells a big story: living arrangements that took millions of years to put into place are being undone in the blink of an eye. The hubris of conquerors and corporations makes it uncertain what we can bequeath to our next generations, human and not human.

This is a gorgeous pair of edited volumes collecting papers and artwork grappling with the enormity of climate change and painting a uniquely multifaceted portrait of our damaged planet. Better suited to the coffee-table than the night-stand, these hefty books contain not a single, pat message but just a series of snapshots from around our pale blue dot.

Such cultivation of mindfulness provides the foundation by establishing the balance within oneself that then enables helping others.

On how mindfulness can help us face climate change productively.