Preface Reflection
We are our symbols and, without compassion, the ego can easily have us make them be our worst enemy.
Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements;[1] however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Wiki
Reflection
All men i.e. all human beings have a religion in that they are part of a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices. We all seek a way to transcend the human condition in order to survive.
Our Anglosphere culture is profoundly infused with two of the three largest Abrahamic religions – Judaism and Christianity, the latter including Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. They arise from the worship of the God of Abraham and are now monotheistic i.e. founded in the belief there is one God, the creator of all.
Each of these religions is represented in a graphic symbol e.g. the Star of David, The Cross, the Star and Crescent
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
The Origins of the Greenhouse Symbol
The use of glass in buildings dates back at least 2000 years to Roman Egypt, the use of translucent slate sheets even longer. It was known such sheets allowed sufficient light through to sustain plant growth out of season.
Considerable development of the greenhouse occurred about the 15th Century, notably heating systems in Korea and glass making techniques in Italy.
Larger greenhouses (glasshouses) were not developed in Europe until the 17th Century and ownership was in general limited to botanical research centres such as universities, in part because of the regime of window taxes in Britain and France.
However during the 18th Century merchants in Europe began an unprecedented, militarized invasion of lands around the planet and some began to accumulate great wealth. This they used to build grand greenhouses, heated with furnaces in the European winters.
It was not uncommon for them to use homeless children ( “Street urchins” ) to tend the furnaces overnight. Stories abounded of the fearsome lashing given any child who failed to keep the furnace alight overnight and caused the prized tropical fruits and flowers to become frosted.
In brief, these grand greenhouses became a symbol of might and power, of commercial and technological triumph and of Man’s dominion over time and space in Europe. “The Lords of the Manors” vied with each other to build the most impressive greenhouse. What finer proof of prestige and fine breeding was there than a man’s ability to take their guests on a tour of their collection of rare exotic plants and then serve them fresh-picked pineapples at an hibiscus adorned table – all grown completely out of season and distant from their natural climate on Earth.
The Origins of the Greenhouse World Religion
No one can be certain about the genesis of a major religion and what makes it unique. All religions arise out of other religions. Each shares many designated behaviours and practices in common with their contemporary religions. As mentioned, the Greenhouse World religion arose out of Judaism and Christianity and several factors make it a unique phenomenon:
– While it is a recent phenomenon, it has expanded at such a great rate that it transcends other religions and its adherents now inform the governance structures of most nations in radical and profound ways.
-Many of its adherents do not profess allegiance to a god as such but they believe in divinity in that they believe they are more potent that the principles of physics and are not bound by the ways of the universe.
– It has its own language, which expresses their belief they are above, beyond and exempt from the principles of physics. For instance, they conflate energy (the universal potential, all of which is active) with (a) power (the rate the potential is manifest) and (b) a few forms of energy. In other words, the religion is in complete denial the Conservation of Energy Principle.
-It arose in the mid 18th Century simultaneously with the radical change in behaviour that occurred with the English Combustion Revolution, also known as the English Industrial Revolution.
The Epicentre of the Greenhouse World Religion
Its origins were primarily a small state one square mile in size that exists near the mouth of the Thames River. This start started as small trading post and is now known as the City of London or The Crown, the centre of global finance this past few centuries.
When the Norman king, known as William the Conqueror, invaded the British Isles in 1066 he found it convenient to create a treaty with these resident powerful merchant traders. Soon after his coronation as King of England, William issued a charter of reassurance which reads:
“William king greets William the bishop and Geoffrey the portreeve and all the citizens in London, French and English, in friendly fashion; and I inform you that it is my will that your laws and customs be preserved as they were in King Edward’s day, that every son be his father’s heir after his father’s death; and that I will not that any man do wrong to you. God yield you.”¹
Basically it gave the City of London merchant-traders the status of an independent state with the right to be a law unto themselves and enjoy tax free status.
Note: this status has been reinforced as recently as July 2021- an almost inevitable consequence of the reality that half all global capital in the world is based in The Crown’s financial structures around the planet. From City AM:
“The City of London is set to win an exemption from new global proposals for taxing multinational companies in a boon for the Square Mile’s largest banks.
The FT reported that Britain’s pitch for a carve-out for its financial services sector has been accepted in the ongoing talks at the OECD in Paris. But sources said that as recompense for the exemption, the UK would have to get rid of its digital services tax.”
It requires a vast bibliotheca of books to communicate the enormity and radical nature of The Crown’s empire. What can be expressed in small paragraph?
In the past three centuries The Crown’s English Empire first expanded and morphed into the British Empire, the largest empire in history. The empire then morphed in the past century into the Anglosphere Empire, which is so vast and powerful that its constitutional, legal, linguistic, technological and culture forces impact every people on the planet.
The Crown dialect of English is the dominant force in global Business language and determines the governance of most international transactions, including the exploitation of the creatures, minerals, soils, waters and airs of Earth.
The fundamental force enabling and driving its empire this past two centuries was The Crown’s adoption and enforcement of the radical belief that the planet’s biomass (living and fossilized) exists for it to burn without regard for the principles of physics. This force is now manifest in the air we breathe with carbon dioxide now registering over 400 parts per million.
We are Our Language
This radical belief of the English oligarchy is reflected in The Crown’s use of the English language.
Here is one, brief example of how The Crown dialect of English is in complete denial of the Conservation of Energy Principle.
English merchant bankers stripped the word “economy” of its associations with frugality, careful management and frugality and they redefined it as “wealth and resources of a country” after 1650, in particular, “the wealth and resources of The Crown”.
They then stripped the word “resources” of its associations with something that arises again and again and by 1779 it was redefined by as “a country’s wealth, means of raising money and supplies“. This meant the combustion of fossilized biomass is now classified as a resource even though such potent matter took eons to form i.e. is irreplaceable.
Then in 1833 fossilized biomass was redefined as “fossil fuel”, signifying it existed to be burned.
Then in the 1950s the merchant bankers of The Crown, now a truly colossal supranational state, defined a couple of forms of energy (fossilized biomass and Bulk-generated Electrical products in particular) as energy itself and The Economy as a system of planned obsolescence and waste.
In brief, global trade is now ruled by their fatally flawed commercial equation:
Energy = Fossil Fuels = Power = Electricity =
Bulk-generated Electrical Products.
“Springtime of the Peoples”
The decade 1840-50 was a time of extraordinary turmoil in over 50 countries across Europe. It was known by many as the “Springtime of the Peoples” or the “Springtime of Nations”. The reasons for the revolutions vary with each people though there were common drivers:
-The Jesuit accounts from China of the existence of a meritocracy with its notions of universal education, health and justice fired the imagination of many Europeans, including the founding fathers of the USA who enshrined Confucian principles into the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
-The brutal processes of industrialization process that accompanied the Combustion Revolution disrupted and devastated the lives of many people in Europe.
-Many merchants prospered at the expense of those colonized in countries by European expansion and they challenged the existing feudal order in their home country.
-Climate change mid-decade caused widespread crop failure and famine, including in the British Isles particularly in Ireland and Scotland after The Crown confiscated much of their land and food.
The merchant bankers of The Crown, such as Joshua Bates, Thomas Baring, Lionel de Rothschild and Antony de Rothschild and the English Royal Family observed the widespread unrest with great concern. The Crown’s feudal system and way of life was under direct threat. Prince Albert became the face of their plan to keep their fiefdom on the British Isles intact. Together they conspired to build a great edifice to distract, entertain, inspire and unite the peoples of what The Crown calls “The United Kingdom” and “The Commonwealth”.
“a living picture of the point of development at which mankind has arrived, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their future exertions”
Prince Albert, Royal Consort. (qtd. in Hobhouse 14).
Brief Reflection on the Nature of Meaning
The Conservation of Energy Principle is our great and wise guide to the ways of universe. No other symbol has been subject to such intense, ingenious scrutiny. No man (human being) has ever disproved this enduring principle of physics. It reminds us we each exist in the continuous, universal transformation and, an inconvenient truth for the ego, the fact that our human form is finite like all other forms of energy.
Our brief life is fundamentally a search for meaning, a dance with the universal flows and balances that is confounded all the way by intricate interplay of compassion and the ego residing in each of us. We are mortal, moral beings and our lives enjoy meaning to the extent we are able to transcend the limitations of the ego and live in accord with the principles of physics. The quality of meaning in our lives is determined by our ability to distinguish between the delusions of the ego and the true hopes of physics revealed in compassion.
Any man’s search for meaning is inextricably, intimately informed by their society and ultimately informs all Mankind. All are informed by what is sanctified and held sacred. We are all religious beings even if we believe we are beholden to no named religion.
Our sense of religiosity informs our every action from our first moments of self-awareness. It informs our language. It informs what we hold as sacred whether it be trees or cars or human beings or jet travel or foods or computers or waters or any other form of energy. It informs our survival as an individual, as a society and as a species.
The Meaning of the Crystal Palace
Quote displayed at The Crystal Palace
“Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living a period of the most wonderful transition which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which indeed all history points – the realization of the unity of mankind.”
Albert, the Prince Consort, to politicians, ambassadors and investors at the Mansion House attending the Lord Mayor’s Banquet of 1850, anteceding the 1851 Exhibition in London.
As mentioned, very rich Europeans used the symbol of the large greenhouse (glasshouse) filled with exotic plants and non-seasonal crops to proclaim their great wealth, power and intellectual enlightenment. It was already a very potent symbol of their might by 1850. The Crystal Palace took this expression of Man’s might to an unprecedented scale and sophistication, especially Christian Protestant might. Above all it was a display of the might and majesty of The Crown and its English Empire.
The enormous structure of cast iron and 900,000 square feet plate glass covering 1 million square feet of floor was compared to the greatest temples and cathedrals such as the Basilica in Rome.
Its design and its contents together sanctified the Combustion and Industrial practices and beliefs serving the interests of the merchants of The Crown. Its avowed purpose of generating peace, harmony and wealth for all men obscured the reality their empire was primarily sustained by their use of warfare and despoliation of land, disease and addiction, enslavement and dispossession of peoples around the planet. The Crystal Palace had a very different meaning for those impacted thus than it did for its architects at the epicentre of the English Empire in London.
The Crystal Palace as a Religious Phenomenon.
Psalm 24 -the Psalms of David The Anglican hymnbook
THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S, AND ALL THAT THEREIN IS:
THE COMPASS OF THE WORLD AND THEY THAT DWELL THEREIN
Apart from a brief visit to The Home Country, England, as a three year old in 1951, I have lived my life in New Zealand, which is a colony of The Crown. So I was thoroughly inculcated by our dominant English media in the Greenhouse World religion.
It is now 30 years since I began my journey exploring the meaning and origins of this religion as a result of a chance remark. I will detail in the footnotes the serendipitous path by which I realized the true nature and role of the Greenhouse World religion in 2001.
This past decade university researchers have written a number of theses exploring The Crystal Palace as a religious phenomenon. Unfortunately some impose restricted access. For the sake of brevity, I will reprint quotes from the two most accessible theses – that of Ekaterina Turta and Jonathon Cohn.
The quotes from Ekaterina’s work illustrate the monumental nature of this edifice of The Crown’s notion of capitalism.
For some it was a vision of utopia – heaven on Earth.
For others its was a vision of dystopia – hell on Earth.
Both visions were to inform social movements in Europe and impact global ecological balances in profound ways.
Utopia or Dystopia?
https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/np193b441?locale=en
…a “miracle of art, beauty and splendor” ,
Chernyshevsky on the Crystal Palace
“A city with its millions and its worldwide trade, the Crystal Palace, the International Exposition… Yes, the Exposition is striking. You feel a terrible force that has united all these people here, who came from all over the world, into a single herd; you become aware of a gigantic idea; you feel that here something has already been achieved, that here there is victory and triumph. You even begin to be afraid of something. No matter how independent you might be, for some reason you become terrified.”
Dostoevesky reflecting on his experience of The Crystal Palace.
“You believe in the Crystal Palace, forever indestructible, that is to say, in one at which
you won’t be able to stick out your tongue even by stealth or cock a snook at even in your pocket. Well, perhaps I am afraid of this palace just because it is made of crystal and is forever indestructible, and just because I shan’t be able to poke my tongue out at it even by stealth.”
Dostoevesky in his novel Notes from the Underground.
“Dostoevsky prophesied that “new” Western science presented revolutionary views of nature, truth, and ultimately man. His prophesy was correct, as time shows… However, Dostoevsky finds this new view of man ultimately destructive. By building a conceptual framework on a naturalistic philosophy of science, these new men would create residencies, most notably the Crystal Palace, that are uninhabitable, inhuman, and as Dostoevsky reveals, absurd. Though this residency’s new scientistic view of man had sincere motivations to improve society for the “greater good,” Dostoevsky foresaw that, within this framework, the greater good was trivial, even dangerous because it robs man of his soul, and as Lewis argues, creates “men without chests” (The Abolition of Man 32)—men who are brains and viscera but who do not possess the tripartite soul or the ability to meaningfully communicate.”
In other words, The Crystal Palace was essentially a product of the ego. It expressed and reflected a vision of science so lacking in compassion that, if this world view prevailed, then human beings would destroy the planet that sustains us all. Its oppressive force would generate a language in such complete denial of the principles of physics that a human being’s use of language would alienate them from themself, from other men and ultimately from reality. The Crystal Palace was a Tower of Babel gone berserk.
The New Rulers of the Heavens and Earth
(The God-given Right to Act as God?)
The word “dominion” arose from PIE “dem” (house, household) , which evolved to mean steward or master of the house. Then in the 1650s it came to mean in law, “power of control, right of uncontrolled possession, use, and disposal”. The Crystal Palace with its Great Industrial Exhibition took this legal meaning to a cosmic level.
It was a ceremony consecrating money speculation, “science” and technology.
It affirmed The Crown’s divine right to have dominion over the Lord’s creation on Earth and be as the Creator, the genesis of the principles of physics.
Jesus of Nazareth was primarily crucified because he spoke out against excessive personal wealth accumulation and money speculation in the Temple of God. Can it be said Christianity arose from this sacrificial event, which is why The Cross became its symbol?
The Crystal Palace was primarily constructed to glorify and reinforce the global might of the English Empire. Can it be said the Greenhouse World Religion arose from this celebration of wealth accumulation and money speculation, which is why the Earth in a Greenhouse became its symbol?
The quotes below from Jonathon’s work are a few samples of the wide range of references he provides to illustrate the profound theological discourse and motivation underpinning the creation of the enduring symbol of the Crystal Palace.
Jonathan writes:
‘Burris claims that the wave of industrialization and prosperity manifested at the Great Exhibition led to a conflation between religious hierarchy and international hierarchy. He writes, “The gap in the relationship between material productions and the divine was clearly closing at the Great Exhibition, and as it did, it was becoming more feasible to equate industrial and technological progress with some form of religious sanctification.”
John Burris in Exhibiting Religions (2001)…
….Britain, by the mid-nineteenth century, having reached a point of economic, political, and
industrial power viewed itself as “a chosen nation.”In addition to the religious rhetoric that dominated the discourse of both royalty and clergy, the design of the Fair also spoke to such imagery: “With its palm-trees and fountain, the shining glass and visual profusion, the gathering of nations and a sense of utopian triumph, no wonder the Crystal Palace was depicted as Revelation’s New Jerusalem.”13 Bar-Yosef explains how Great Britain attempted to forge a unified religious identity, positioning itself as the new site of an international pilgrimage and the new divinely ordained arbiter of world values.
Eitan Bar-Yosef in The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799-1917 (2005)…
…The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, an evangelical Anglican group that
sponsored a number of charity schools, created a lesson booklet for the express purpose of teaching about the Great Exhibition. “ the potential results of the Fair and England’s duty, “as the nation blessed with the largest amount of spiritual light and influence.” ”…
…The English Monthly Tract Society, in their publication “The World’s Great Assembly,” also saw the Exhibition as a testament to man’s dominion over nature: “Oh, ‘tis indeed wonderful, how God gives man skill to make an inheritance of all things—see the mightiest beasts his docile servants; the most stubborn metals his instrument or his ornament.”22
Reverend Stoughton, likewise, writes, “[The human soul’s] attempt to rule over all around, and to enrich itself with the spoils of the conquered region, is not a contest with a co-ordinate of equal power, but it is the effort of a kingly nature so formed by God, created in his image, and inaugurated into regal office.”23 To put the earth to the uses of industry is to do God’s work; as God reigns over mankind, man should reign over nature. Material gain through the use of nature was man’s obligation.”….
….He (Prince Albert) explains that England is “at an auspicious moment when we are celebrating a festival of the civilization of mankind, to which all quarters of the globe have contributed their productions and are sending their people, for the first time recognizing their advancement as a common good, their interests as identical, their mission on earth the same.” In the context of the speech, these advancements would have been linked to the evangelizing efforts of the Society. Albert even proclaims, “And this civilization rests on Christianity, could only be raised on Christianity, can only be maintained by Christianity!”….The prosperity manifested by the Great Exhibition, opened barely a month before, was inextricable from the British march of progress
( Prince Albert. Speech given at the Third Jubilee of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, June 16, 1851)…
…Albert’s praise of the Fair was paralleled by the gushing praise he received from the
event’s proponents. Reverend Birch proclaimed the Prince Consort “the Prince of Peace” and noted, “Immortal honours will crown they head. Poets will celebrate thy praise, —historians shall record thy triumphs,—and the Christian Church will be ready to acknowledge thee as the harbinger of millennial glory.” The reference to Albert as a “Prince of Peace” by a minister is particularly incongruous because of the traditional association between the title “Prince of Peace” with Jesus; Albert, consequently, became a Messiah of industry.
Samuel Warren also praised the Fair as an unparalleled princely creation, an “enterprise right royal, nobler far than ever Prince before accomplished.” Such effusive praise dominates Warren’s poem.
The London Times, furthermore, provided an even more all-encompassing praise in an editorial in February 1850, affirming, “The Prince Consort can take the credit of having projected a festival in the appreciation which all men and all nations concur. Such unanimity of approval has never yet been gained for any object, however, intrinsically laudable, however, sincerely promoted, or however enthusiastically desired.”
“We shall be disappointed if the next generation of London children are not brought up like cucumbers under glass”.
Satirical magazine Punch commenting on the Great Industrial Exhibition
The Crystal Palace was used as a troop training ground during the “War to End All Wars” and then became the Imperial War Museum afterwards.
The Physics of the Greenhouse World Religion
The consequences of our use of air are governed by this physics: the ways of the universe are such that air has a large capacity for thermal convection (the transfer of thermal energy via the movement of atoms and molecules) relative to its capacity for thermal conduction (the transfer of thermal energy via atoms colliding with each other).
We ignore these truths at our peril.
For instance, we touch a hot iron and get burned.
For instance, we increase the thermal capacity of the atmosphere and escalate the risk of hurricanes and forest fires.
We embrace these truths to our profit.
For example, we can design buildings and clothing so as to reduce air convection and thus stay warmer.
For example, we can compress refrigerants to keep our food cool and our homes warm.
When our lives are not in accord with these principles of the universal thermodynamic processes, then this dissonance is reflected in our use of symbols, in our language.
This dissonance is manifest in the language of the Greenhouse World religion in profound ways.
For instance, both “Climate scientists” and “Energy Experts” tend to be adherents of the Greenhouse World religion. Both groups teach directly against their own objectives of promoting wise uses of air. They compound this dissonance by actively confusing each other’s communication i.e. they undermine the foundations of the education frameworks of climate care and healthy habitats.
The Psychology~Physics of Chaos Theory.
Modern English defines “chaos” as a state of utter confusion, a confused mass or mixture, a state of things in which chance is supreme. In general it describes a state of things we are observing.
Chaos arises from the PIE word “Ghieh” meaning “to yawn, gape, be wide open.”
Which definition is more sustainable and enables us to transcend the paradox inherent in the name “Chaos Theory”?
The principles of physics form an anathema to the ego in each of us. This is because the ego is exclusive and arrogant by nature. It is the archetypal “know-all”. Typically if it observes a system it cannot know to control or that is inconvenient to its acquisitive whims, the ego describes and dismisses the system as acting by chance, unpredictable, disorder, disarray, confusion, even mayhem and madness.
The compassionate element in each of us, being inclusive and humble informs us otherwise – chaos means openness, a gap, a chasm exists in our knowledge of the intricacies of a system. It reminds us we are mortal beings, finite forms amidst the continuous, universal transformation and so we cannot know all i.e. our experience of any system involves an interplay of psychology~physics.
Put simply, the ego would have us believe, for instance, that small actions only generate small changes whereas our compassionate element reminds us that small actions can generate massive consequences, this being true of the trace elements in our body, the trace gases in the atmosphere or trace changes in compounding interest rates on money.
The ego insists there is no alternative to the Greenhouse World view and its notion of “greenhouse gases”. Compassion suggests otherwise. It has us ask, “What if we speak of the “Warmer Trace Gases” to describe the atmospheric gases existing in a few parts per million that act as warmers and are much warmer than 99.9% of all atmospheric gases? “
Below is an illustration exploring this question:
The Evolution of The Warmer Trace Gas Symbol
(A brief timeline)
The above illustration is a draft attempt to summarize the flow charts I created in 2002 as I attempted to find meaning in the chaos I perceived in climate discussion. Here is a brief, perhaps instructive, timeline of events leading to its creation.
1988
James Hanson testifies to the US Congress that it is 99% likely that human activity is impacting the balances of Earth’s Climate. I concur.
1991
We invade Mesopotamia (Iraq) again and I realize our abuse of carbon must generate catastrophic dystopia. I vow to never buy another car or fly in jets again.
1992c
I am reading electrical meters during a particularly stormy day in my home town, Wellington NZ. My route included the meters of the city’s large greenhouse in the Botanical Gardens. Wind-blasted and sodden cold, I rested a few minutes observing the incongruity of the huge tropical leaves hanging motionless from the rafters and the large water lilies floating still on the ripple-free pond. Meanwhile I can hear the high-powered rain slashing the glass roof outside.
An American tourist staggers in, shakes the rain off and sits down beside me and savours the strange stillness. “To think,”he wryly drawls, “to think that they try to tell us the atmosphere works like a greenhouse.”
His causal remark resonates deeply with me. So I determine I will discover why some very influential people like to believe Earth’s atmosphere acts like a greenhouse.
1998
I do a postgraduate “pressure cooker” University course and train as a primary school teacher (5-12 year olds). I cannot recall a single mention by my pedagogues and fellow students of the vast looming threat to our children, which is our wasteful, polluting combustion of carbon.
2000
I am employed to summarize the 2000 NZ Climate Change Impact Report into teaching posters for NZ primary school teachers and children. In the process I am stunned and disbelieving to learn the immense thermal potency of a group of gases constituting less the 0.1% of the atmosphere. I ring Martin Manning, then head of NIWA, to confirm this is true. I express my shock that no one has ever informed me of this critical information in my 53 years.
Martin replies in most passionate way, “If only, if only someone could get it across that we are talking about trace gases here.”
It is already clear to me that no one else is prepared to speak this truth and so I determine I will be that “someone”.
2001
Funding for my Climate Care education endeavour gradually dries up during the year and I determine to continue with it. Kind friends invite me to live in their converted garage and I am able to persist.
Together we watch the British American TV series “Victoria and Albert” and I realize the profound significance of the Crystal Palace.
By now I have asked many leading “Climate Scientists, “Energy Experts”, Science and Environment pedagogues and teachers this simple question, “Could you please tell me the science in your communication likening the atmosphere to a greenhouse?” Not one of them ever did. Indeed the response was typically of vast irritation akin to that I experienced as a child when I asked our devout priests and nuns, “How can we could be sure the Pope is infallible.”
I am concluding devotion to the symbol of a greenhouse has all the hallmarks of a religion.
2002.
I continue the endeavour, now living on the minimum NZ unemployment benefit ($NZ9800 per anum)
In January the NZ Minister for the Environment (Rt Hon Marion Hobbs) learns of Energy Action 2008 education programme I have been involved in editing. She instructs her officials to call an urgent meeting of representatives of all Government Departments involved in Climate education. I await several months for the call but they stymie her instruction.
While I wait I devote my days and months to studying the comparative impacts of the prevailing Greenhouse World view and a Trace Theory world view on our English Education Framework from the new-entrant (5 years) level to the post-graduate and professorial level. By late October I finally manage to condense the hundreds of notes plastering my bedroom wall down to the following flow chart and write to the Prime Minister of New Zealand and Minister of the Climate Change Office(Rt Hon Helen Clark) requesting a meeting with her. I explained I could show her how and why our current way of teaching Climate Care is fatally flawed and how we can rectify this.
A few days later an urgent email arrives requesting me to attend a meeting with representatives of Government Departments most involved in Climate Change. This includes the NZ Royal Society, Climate Change Office, SMF, Ministry for the Environment.
Notably and predictably the Ministry of Education representative invited is “too busy” to attend though I know privately he does not fault my work.
I am initially surprised to find the President of the NZAEE present and she offers to help me hold up my flowcharts. I begin my exposition of them but after about two minute she drops them down, shouting that I do not know what I am talking about.
Other attendees sit stunned, the meeting breaks up in disarray and no minutes were ever kept.
I continue living in the converted garage and try a different approach. My kind hosts~friends and I also create a pioneer Online cartoon series exploring the nature of energy and Energy Efficiency. Called “Bonus Joules and The Knowledge Economy”, the cartoon trip is to eventually reveal to me the profound, sustaining power of the Yinyang symbol and to be visited by millions of people.
2006
I finally “crack the code”of the English language using the Conservation of Energy Principle. Our leading Climate communicators constantly wring their hands and ask, “Why am I not getting my message through.” I soon discover they are not interested in learning that they get their message through very clearly. However it is not the message they think it is – perhaps it is quite the converse.
2021 September.
Carbon dioxide now is 412.17 parts per million and reports this week suggest that as methane is in the order of 90-115 times more dangerous than CO2. emissions over the first decade of emission i.e. it could well have explosive impacts on climate balances. Perhaps it is time to pull those flow charts from under my bed and give them another airing. Maybe a younger generation better appreciates how we are dynamic, organic, trace beings?
Final Reflection
We are our symbols and this matters because they simultaneously reflect and generate our worldview, for better and for worse. Thus it is wise to explore our most potent symbols to ensure they best align with the principles of physics and sustain humankind.
Revelations from this inquiry challenge beliefs we hold dear. So it is helpful to appreciate how subtle these matters involving the human condition are and how they are best understood in compassion.
This is because they always involve that mercurial, ingenious, acquisitive, deceitful element of our being: the human ego.
The ego or the “I” is born of the division of our consciousness with self-consciousness and it thrives in division and alienation. Thus the nature of the ego is such that it is relentless in its denial of reality – this being the continuous, universal transformation, the cosmic flux we are all part of.
Without compassion, the ego can easily have us be our own worst enemy, no matter how wise our individual psyche, no matter how civil our society, no matter how profound our religion.
It is the compassionate element of our being that allows us to embrace our perceived errors and limitations so we are able to learn from them, enjoy greater truth and be more in harmony with the universal ways.
The Doughnut Economics symbol and the Te Reo Maori Doughnut inspired this exploration, which now includes the Yinyang symbol, the Greenhouse World symbol and my own attempt to create a wise, sustaining symbol: the Mobius Loop of Life.
Introducing the Mobius Loop of Life
Reflections on the Doughnut Economics symbol
Reflections on Te Reo Maori Doughnut symbol
Reflections on the Yinyang symbol
First draft 1 September 2021