There are job losses at Gatwick and Rolls Royce, and shops are closing all down the high street. Covid-19 started as a medical emergency, but the crisis has turned economic and we’re told there’s much more to come.
When people are suffering like this, how can we think about long term needs and especially the climate emergency, which finally seemed to have cut through for many of us before the pandemic came along? The need hasn’t changed, but when lives and livelihoods are at stake it seems the environment sinks inexorably back down the news agenda.
My thinking in this area is influenced by a remarkable piece of legislation in Wales, where I live, called the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. Since 2015 every Welsh Government body has been obliged to base its actions on the long term needs of people and the environment. Whether it’s a new road or new houses, no matter what the immediate pressures might be, policymakers have to think longterm, prioritise sustainability and consult local people before every major decision.
That long term perspective chimes with how I’ve learn to think as a Buddhist. Inscriptions in Buddhist temples across Asia declare: ‘This being, that becomes; with the arising of this, that arises.’ The seemingly enigmatic phrases express the Buddhist teaching of conditionality and the central importance of attending to causes. If these conditions exist, that result will occur. We must take care in the seeds we sow now because they’ll ripen in the future.
In the context of the Buddhist path, this is the rationale for turning away from immediate pleasures for the sake of mental qualities like contentment and compassion which, we believe, will bring deeper fulfilment in the future. Thinking of the world as a whole, it means attending to the conditions on which our collective wellbeing depends, now and in future generations. And these certainly include the needs of the planet and how we affect it.
Many of those calling for a green recovery insist that the choice isn’t between jobs and a healthy planet. We need to find a way to have both. Any crisis – and certainly this one – cries out for an immediate remedy; but in the long term sustainability and wellbeing are actually the same thing.
To ignore that is to resemble to the cartoon character who saws off the branch he’s sitting on. No doubt, he needs the firewood.
