Column: Spiritual Psychology

The crisis is quickening. Evidence of environmental decay is everywhere:
Icebergs melting, sea levels rising, vanishing rain forests, average temperature increases around the planet, the ozone layer widening, the prospects of increased famine from crop reductions, drinkable water supplies shrinking, proliferation of disease as insects migrate north, intensified hurricane and earthquake activity, just to name some of the clear warning signs. One web site lists 100 consequences of global warming. And scientists have sounded the alarm: “We may be reaching the point of no return.”

On June 23, 2008 The Tallberg Foundation, based in Tallberg Sweden, took out a full page ad in the New York Times warning that we are facing environmental catastrophe. The statement informs us that 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now considered by scientists the critical danger line and that we are currently at 385ppm and rapidly moving to 450 ppm. The Talberg Foundation calls upon “all nations in the ongoing climate negotiations to adopt 350ppm as the target to be reached peacefully and deliberately with all possible speed. 350ppm is one of our planet’s boundary conditions. It should not have been transgressed. We must go back to have a future.”

Emissions from burning fossil fuel is the main culprit. What’s our answer: Conservation and accelerating the drilling for more oil.

Conservation is a great idea—we should not waste energy and should curb excessive use of vehicles and other sources of environmentally destructive emissions. Unfortunately, though, conservation is not the answer to the catastrophe we are facing. It’s too late for conservation as a solution. Arithmetic trumps and buries conservation. Conservation might have been a useful band-aid twenty five years ago that could have slowed the process of environmental decay. But billions of people around the globe are now acquiring the economic means to fulfill their dream of automobile ownership—a frightening prospect that will leave conservation in the dust—dust that eventually may cover the entire planet.

Drilling for more oil is mostly a political move to bring prices down. It’s pandering to immediate economic concerns while ignoring the big picture. That’s not unlike offering passengers on the sinking Titanic a discount on their next voyage.

We need a massive commitment to an “Energy Manhattan Project”—and we need it now. The Energy Manhattan project” should not only study and develop exiting alternative technologies but should also explore new and unknown ones. We should enlist the best scientific minds to think outside of the box— what Buddhists call “beginners mind.” That means thinking without assumptions or limits. Just embracing existing technologies of a number of companies and corporations, as some politicians have proposed, runs the risk of lobbies, cronyism and pork barrel projects running the show.

That’s why the “Energy Manhattan Project” should be initiated, organized and administered outside of Government—preferably by trustworthy elder-states-men and women from the business world who are at a point in their lives that is beyond personal financial self interest.

If we don’t act decisively here’s what a “crystal ball” glimpse into the future might reveal:

Imagine space travelers at some time in the future visiting our barren planet devoid of humans. They examine the records of our planet’s brief history of human life. Picture the amazement of these highly evolved, highly intelligent space travelers as they discover our willful destruction of the planet—the warnings, the evidence, and our refusal to act.

They might wonder, “What were those creatures thinking? They must have been missing some essential components of intelligence to allow billions of people to drive individual vehicles that spewed destruction into the atmosphere, eventually leading to the suicide of the species. And what were their religions about? They worshiped and praised their God for his miraculous creations and then mindlessly desecrated those creations while feeling highly devotional and religious. They loved God, the cosmos, and the creation in the abstract but could not muster the intelligence and moral courage to honor those miraculous gifts; they stood by witnessing the destruction and did nothing.

Then the space visitors might shrug their shoulders and lament: “just another evolutionary failure—beings that did not evolve intellectually and morally fast enough to overcome their primitive self-destructive impulses. In this case, maybe God did make junk!”

Is that the legacy we want to leave? We have a choice. Do we have the courage to act?

Will someone please step forward to launch the “Energy Manhattan Project?” The life of a world is at stake!

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In case you missed my last two Columns on the Energy Manhattan Project:

Let’s Launce and Energy Manhattan Project Now: Open Leter To Lee Iacocca

The Suicide Bombing Of Science


(My recently published book "Escape Your Own Prison: Why We Need Spirituality and Psychology to be Truly Free" is published by Rowman and Littlefield (Oct. 2007) and is now available at Amazon.com,Barnes & Noble.com and other major book outlets.)
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Bernard Starr, Ph.D., formerly professor of developmental and educational psychology at the City University of New York, now teaches “Spirituality and Psychology in Film” at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition to his work in radio (“The Longevity Report”), he is a longtime contributor of commentary and opinion articles to numerous major publications. He is also the President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy and is the main United Nations representative for the Institute of Global Education that founded the Mucherla Global School in Mucherla, India. © Copyright 2008 by Bernard Starr.