Thanks v much for the Daily Telegraph page featuring a broadside against the thermomaniacs like me and the telling cartoon next to it.
The cartoon summarises my position nicely. We in the rich West and North of the planet are so busy making wealth (bonuses from our "you've never had it so good" sham society) that we haven't noticed that there is an unfortunate downside to our ever rising material standards of living - that is, rising problems! In other words, what we take today we won't have tomorrow and, these heavy footed life styles affect the planet's life support systems to the detriment of life on earth. The cartoon has snow and ice turning into water to leave little habitable land on which to enjoy our material bonuses - ever rising material standards of living gives rising problems like energy and food security issues. Even the government is now realising they must get to grips with securing energy and food for our descendants.
We all enjoy being promised the moon by the main parties who are not at all bothered about the rather more important but mundane matter of guaranteeing the earth for our children and grandchildren! Only the Green Party has, in fact, got its priorities right. In other words, we gain the whole world (literally from the most extensive, longest-lasting and most powerful empire in the history of humanity that is still in control) and lose our soul - as someone a little wiser than Simon Heffer said!
Heffer, Lawson, Melanie Phillips, et al are all part of the self-satisfied, self-enhancing majority who think that sacrifice is all about the heroic sacrifice of being killed in Afghanistan by the resistance fighters rather than the restraint and noble sacrifice of living to tread more lightly on the planet to leave a land fit - not for heroes - but for others!
This trio of unbelievers do, of course, have a huge problem with climate science being championed by the Greens and the greens and other assorted left wing groups for over 30 years. The right has grown complacent with their built-in majority amongst the electorate and in government. Now, we have won the battle and they don't like, one little bit, the left being right and the right wrong!
I think it is more sensible to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst. More sensible to assume that the vast majority of international climate scientists are right and to behave accordingly.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Friday, 11 December 2009
Ben and Sharon
The Liverpool couple, Ben and Sharon, this week, shows that evangelical Christians do seem to have a problem with Islam. A problem, too, with homosexuals, Catholics, evolution and with those who want abortion brought within the law. At one time, it was Jews that Christians had a problem with. Anti-Semitism was rife in Europe. It culminated in Nazism and World War part 2. Now, evangelicals have a special warmth for Jews and Israel, convinced that their divine destiny is wrapped up with their own and the return of Christ. Israel must be specially favoured (and armed to the teeth) by Christians and the West because God does favour His chosen people, Israel. God has promised all Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza to the people of Israel (actually, much more extensive area of land in Joshua 1v4) and no-one can get out of that one or, that God runs the world to fulfill His promises in the Bible.
Once, it was protestant Christian America that believed it was their manifest destiny from the Lord who gave them all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That belief drove them ever onwards and outwards to drive out the Indians, the Spanish and the French. The religious right in Israel is doing the same to this day - claiming, owning and settling ever more of the Lord's promised land. After all, it was promised only to themselves! Non-violence and sharing are alien concepts to these believers!
Yet, for me, the week began with my sitting in the prayer chapel at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley reading the first three or four pages of the Koran and being astonished at how much the Koran has in common with the Bible. The children of Israel were mentioned, being steadfast in prayer and that Allah is merciful. However, little of this aspect of God seems to be shown by the religious right in the Holy Land who behave in such an unholy way; yet, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all the children of Abraham - and, like everyone else, are all part of the one human family!
Once, it was protestant Christian America that believed it was their manifest destiny from the Lord who gave them all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That belief drove them ever onwards and outwards to drive out the Indians, the Spanish and the French. The religious right in Israel is doing the same to this day - claiming, owning and settling ever more of the Lord's promised land. After all, it was promised only to themselves! Non-violence and sharing are alien concepts to these believers!
Yet, for me, the week began with my sitting in the prayer chapel at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley reading the first three or four pages of the Koran and being astonished at how much the Koran has in common with the Bible. The children of Israel were mentioned, being steadfast in prayer and that Allah is merciful. However, little of this aspect of God seems to be shown by the religious right in the Holy Land who behave in such an unholy way; yet, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all the children of Abraham - and, like everyone else, are all part of the one human family!
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