Book description
Our planet is melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning.
This is the nature of our climate emergency as in the future millions may lose their lives through famine, war drought and displacement.
First part
The first part of the book explores this. It describes the physical caused of climate change but proposes the deeper causes lie in us turning away from spiritual values leading to us being driven by greed, not being aware of the bad karma we create leading to our disconnection from nature and imbalance in ourselves and the climate.
The book is permeated throughout with spiritual teachings in the form of wise quotes from different spiritual traditions showing we already have the guidance of what values we can adopt in order to guide us about what to do about the climate emergency.
There follows a description of the nature of the current climate emergency with well-researched global examples of the way it manifests in terms of extreme weather such as heat waves, flooding, and hurricanes leading to shortages of food and water, biodiversity loss and the spread of tropical diseases.
Second part
People fatalistically say that there is nothing they can do about the climate emergency, but in the second part the book describes different paths we can take to do something about it.
In the path of the individual the author illustrates how we can help minimise climate change by the food we eat, the way we travel and how we heat our homes citing examples from his own lifestyle.
There is a detailed description of the path of protest to make governments change policies to act on the climate emergency with many references to the author’s involvement in protest movements.
The path of green politics to change governments policy is also fully explored with global examples and also refers to the author’s involvement in the Green Party.
Third part
In another chapter, the path of supporting non-governmental organisations is explained with global examples. Lastly, the path of following a spiritual life is illustrated with examples from the authors’ own spiritual practice and in the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu traditions.
The third section of the book gives a brief but explicit description of what our world will look like at temperatures up to two degrees centigrade and the horrendous reality of temperatures up to 4 degrees centigrade.
If the reader is then depressed by the prospect of an uninhabitable world, the last part of the book gives succinct spiritual advice from various spiritual traditions of how to lead a climate friendly life.
