Making a Personal Environmental Commitment   

The following emerged from our work in supporting environemental sanity, and is shared in a spirit of humility, knowing how much we all have a long distance to go to be doing all that we could and should to save the planet from the destruction to which our current economic and political system contributes, and knowing that you can probably devise an even better statement of a personal environmental commitment that more fully fits your own situation, capacities, and limitations.

Personal Environmental Commitment

 

[   ] I will learn more of the details of the multiple levels in which we are undermining the life support systems of the planet, from overpopulation to over consumption to dumping our garbage, to destroying the air and the water, to excessive use of the resources of the planet to…endless other ways. I will work within some community of which I am a part in order to raise the issues of environmental degradation and what we can do not only as individuals but as a community to challenge our government to take all steps necessary to reduce the carbon in the air to below 350 parts per million.

 

[   ]  I will carefully follow the activities of my elected representatives in Congress to ensure that they do not adopt compromise measures which they justify as “politically realistic” but which do not adequately reflect the actual needs of the planet for immediate and drastic action to reverse all the ways in which we are destroying the life support systems upon which we, the animals, fish and birds depend.   I will then let neighbors, friends and members of any group or community to which I have access know about the behavior of these elected officials.

 

 

[   ] I will myself take significant steps to reduce my own misuse of the environment, starting with: 1

                        2.

                        3.

 

[   ] Recognizing that one reason I do not act politically on these issues is my own sense of powerlessness, I will take the following steps in the next few months to reverse that sense of powerlessness:

                        1.

                        2.

                        3.

 

[   ] Recognizing that a central problem is that people in this society believe that there is no limits to what is possible to take from the earth and no limits to the capacity of the oceans and the land and the air to absorb the polluting garbage that we create, and that “progress” means endlessly extracting from the earth its minerals and endlessly producing new chemical combinations whose long-term impact on the planet we have no way of knowing in order to produce new items for consumption,  and recognizing that all this is supported by notions of  “success” for an economy that do not take into account the health, welfare, happiness, spiritual fulfillment, intellectual development or psychological health of the world’s inhabitants but instead focuses on production of material goods, I will take the following steps to challenge that notion of progress or success  whenever I hear people alluding to it:

            1.

            2.

 

[   ]  Recognizing that I myself  and many others sometimes feel I need to consume something, buy the newest something, overeat, immerse in a computer (or fill in what you do)  in order to fill up my own sense of loneliness, despair, depression, inadequate recognition by others, inadequate love from others, or fear that I won’t have enough or that there will not be enough later on,  or  as a way of diverting my attention from other unmet needs, I will do the following:

a.     The next time I feel that need, I will refuse to do what I normally do to avoid it or fill it up.

b.     If I find that I’m too addicted to that behavior to stop, I will take some specific steps to limit it in the next few weeks, and see how that feels. I will buy less, eat less, give less time to drinking or drugs or sexual excess or to whatever other addictive behavior I use to fill up or divert my attention from my unhappiness or yearning, and instead will focus on the source of those feelings and how to overcome them.

c.      Failing that, I will seek help from others to find another way besides my current attachments to fill up those needs—including some spiritual path like Shabbat, prayer, meditation, walks in nature or listening to music, building community with others, and working for Tikkun—the healing and transformation of our world to rebuild it in ways that are ecologically sustainable, socially just, non-violent, and filled with love and generosity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of all that is.

 

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Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner for The Tikkun Community and the NSP (Network of Spiritual Progressives). Please take this commitment, rewrite it in ways that would make it real for you so that you could genuinely make this commitment, then make the commitment and sign and date it, and then re-read what you’ve written once a week.  Circulate this invitation to a personal commitment on the environment to everyone you know, including all the groups to which you have access both on email, on the web, and in person. You can also place this on your website or share it on Facebook or Twitter references to it at www.spiritualprogressives.org where it will be on the home page.

 

If you wish to help build a world in accord with this approach, please join and support the Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org. Read our Spiritual Covenant with America and then donate or join!