Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel a survivor of the Jewish extermination camp at Auschwitz and an eloquent spokesman for the horrors of the Holocaust passed away on Saturday July 2, 2016 at the age of 87.  The following is the full text of his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Elie Wiesel's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986

It is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor you have chosen to bestow upon me. I know: your choice transcends me. This both frightens and pleases me.

It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? ... I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

It pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.

I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember: he asked his father: "Can this be true?" This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?

And now the boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he asks. "What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?"

And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my peoples' memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of our people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab lands ... But there are others as important to me. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much of a disgrace as Josef Biegun's imprisonment. As is the denial of Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable imprisonment.

There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.

Yes, I have faith. Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all. Isn't this the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?

There is much to be done, there is much that can be done. One person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my deepest gratitude. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.

Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for mankind.

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1986, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1987

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1986

Orlando 2016 – An Inevitable Outcome of an Armed Citizenry

The horrific massacre that took place in a Gay Nightclub in Orlando, Florida in the early morning hours of Sunday June 12, 2016 is another in a long string of mass killings perpetrated by a heavily armed assailant(s). These assailants are typically mentally disturbed and apparently motivated by a blinding hatred seeking vengeance for supposed wrongs done against them or the group to which they identify.  In this case, the killer, Omar Mateen, was an American citizen of Afghan descent who was a Muslim and supporter of ISIS – the extremist Islamic group.  He was a young man filled with hatred and who legally purchased deadly firearms.

Such events are obviously very unsettling for the general population; for they highlight intense feelings of insecurity – the natural reaction is for individuals to want to protect themselves from such senseless violence.  The gun industry in the United States as represented by the National Rifle Association (NRA) invariably uses such events to encourage ordinary citizens to protect themselves with firearms in a country where by 2009 there were an estimated 310 million firearms owned by American citizens as published in a Congressional Research report.  The updated estimate is that there are more guns in the hands of individuals than the entire population.

In the current political climate demagogues like Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for President, are quick to find a convenient scapegoat focusing on the Muslim population; for, the purpose of exploiting and stoking fear in the minds of those who choose to listen to his invective.  The reality is quite different and far more complex than Mr. Trump would like to suggest.  In fact, hate crimes especially against minorities have been a fact of life in the United States for many, many years.  The African-American community is well aware of this history that began with slavery, continued through the post-Civil War era exemplified by Jim Crow throughout the American South and, of course, manifests itself to this day in many forms including police violence.  Other minorities subjected to discrimination and violence include homosexuals, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans and immigrants. 

It is interesting that those non-Muslims who have been responsible for mass-killings, regardless of their underlying motivation, have not been branded as terrorists.  These events though numerous – as chronicled by the New York Times  - are treated as isolated incidents

In fact, the underlying sense of stability and security that is necessary for a society to sanely function is being undermined by the reality that we have a well-armed citizenry.  The inevitable result of such an environment is that at any moment in any part of this vast country, an individual or group my feel compelled for some reason, inexplicable to most everyone else, to take vengeance upon some perceived threat, despised group or alleged enemy.  As a people, we are paying a heavy price for this blind allegiance to what has been proclaimed as our constitutional right to bear arms as embodied in the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution – some may find it difficult to envision that the framers of the Constitution had the current reality in mind.

I believe we have to ask ourselves as a people, if we really want to continue on this path.  Do we really want to be plagued, on a daily basis, with the fear that ourselves, or our loved ones or our community will be the indiscriminate target of someone’s senseless outrage?  Are we willing to accept these periodic events of mass killings as a natural outcome of our collective choice to be armed with deadly weapons?  If so, then we need to be prepared to accept the onerous psychological price that we are paying for such a choice.  If so, then we should be prepared to endure these disturbing events as a “legitimate” aspect of the national landscape.

Near Extinction of the World’s Largest Primate

The New York Times recently reported that it is now predicted that the so-called, “Grauer’s Gorilla” may soon be extinct as a result of their slaughter at the hands of humans.  This is dreadful news for a number of reasons.  The first of which being that our planet may soon be devoid of a magnificent creature.    There has been a precipitous drop in this gorilla population – 77% in 20 years – leading to merely 3800 survivors at the current time.  Their ultimate disappearance will be due entirely to the human propensity for violence.  It seems that their fate is directly linked to political and economic instability in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

These innocent creatures are being killed primarily for food by rebels residing in the deep jungles of the Congo.  Their presence in this environment appears to be connected to the attempted genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994.  An estimated 800,000 individuals were killed at that time and many potential victims fled to neighboring Zaire.  Many of those who fled formed into armed militias and chaos quickly spread to the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.  It is estimated that the ensuing violence has led to the death of over 5 million people over the intervening years.

It would be easy to conclude that this disturbing reality is not our fault and not our problem.  After all, we know who the perpetrators are.  However, it is not quite that facile an argument.  This should not be thought of as an isolated event.  It is, after all, human behavior that is responsible – desperate circumstances invariably lead to desperate measures.  All of humanity should be deeply disturbed by this news.  For it is an indicator on the state of existence of mankind and the degree to which we have come to regard violence as normal and the degradation of the natural environment as essentially unavoidable. 

Anna Arnold Hedgeman

Anna Arnold Hedgeman (1899-1990) was an outspoken voice for racial equality and had a significant impact on the history of race relations in the United States.

The following short biography is taken from the online publication encyclopedia.com -

"Anna Arnold Hedgeman began life in a small, white, Midwestern community unaware of the discrimination African Americans faced in the United States. However, her curious mind and hunger for information and experiences exposed her to the realities of her time, and she made it her life’s work to balance the scales. From her work with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in the 1920s and 1930s to her duties with the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches in the 1960s, Hedgeman’s goals were singular. As the first African American female member of a mayoral cabinet, her example surpassed the city limits in which she worked. It began in her childhood which was marked with the influences that would last her lifetime. “Four ideas dominated our family life,” she wrote of her youth inThe Gift of Chaos. “Education, religion, character, and service to mankind.”

"Born Anna Arnold in Marshalltown, Iowa she moved with her family to Anoka, Minnesota when she was very young. Her father created an insular world for Hedgeman and her sisters. “I grew up in Anoka, Minnesota, in a small, comfortable Midwestern town with the traditional main street,” she wrote in her book The Trumpet Sounds. “There was no poverty as I have come to know it in the slums of our urban centers. I had not realized that a man could need bread and not be able to get it.”

"The only African American family in an area dominated by European immigrants, the Arnolds were very much a part of the community and the young Arnold children were never made to feel different. Hedgeman’s father created a nurturing environment that stressed education and a strong work ethic. In that environment, however, there was also a strictness and high level of expectation for Hedgeman and her two sisters. She learned to read at home, but wasn’t permitted to attend school until she was seven years old.

An Education In Mississippi

"Following her graduation from high school, Hedgeman prepared to attend Hamline University, a small Methodist college. She would become the first African American student at Hamline. One of the highlights of her college years was a lecture given by author and NAACP president W.E.B. DuBois in St. Paul. Hedgeman recalled in The

At a Glance …

"Born Anna Arnold July 5, 1899 in Marshalltown, lowa to William James Arnold and Marie Ellen Parker Arnold. Married Merrit Hedgeman in November 1933, widowed 1987. Education: Hamline University, B.A., 1922.

"Career: Teacher at Rust College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1922–24; began working with YWCA in Springfield, Ohio, 1924; executive director, YWCA branch in Jersey City, New Jersey, 1926; membership secretary, West 137th Street branch in New York City’s Harlem, 1927–33; executive director of a YWCA branch in Philadelphia, 1933–34; supervisor and consultant, Emergency Relief Bureau, 1934–38; director of the YWCA branch in Brooklyn, New York, 1938–39; assistant in race relations, National Office of Civilian Defense, 1939–44; executive director, National Council for a Permanent Fair employment Practices Commission, 1944–48; assistant to the administrator, Federal Security Agency, 1949–53; assistant in the cabinet of New York Mayor Robert Wagner, 1954–58; public relations consultant, Fuller Products Company, 1958–59; associate editor and columnist, New York Age, ” 1959–60; Coordinator of Special Events for the Commission of Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches, 1963–67; cofounder, Hedgeman Consulting Services.

"Member: Child Study Association, Community Council of New York, National Urban League, NAACP, United Nations Association, National Conference of Christians and Jews.

"Selected awards: Consumer Protective Committee Award, 1955; Outstanding Citizen’s Award, Abyssinian Baptist Church, 1956; Manhattan Arts and Educational Guild Award Certificate, 1957; Rust College Shield Award, 1971; Frederick Douglass Award, 1974; Pioneer Woman Award, New York State Conference on Midlife and Older Women, 1983.

"Gift of Chaos, “The audience gave rapt attention and I returned to the campus with the image of black men of poise, dignity, and intelligence, who were determined to be free.”

"In 1922, armed with a degree and a deep conviction to serve, Hedgeman chose to teach at the small black Rust College in HollySprings, Mississippi. Having never been to the South nor having heard of some of the greater indignities African Americans suffered there, Hedgeman was in for a rude awakening. On the train from Chicago, the conductor informed Hedgeman that she would have to switch to the “colored” coach at Cairo, Illinois because African Americans couldn’t ride in the “white” coach beyond that point. She recalled in The Gift of Chaos, “When we reached Cairo a Negro porter escorted me from my comfortable seat to the “colored” coach. This coach was just behind the engine, and soot and dirt filled the air, soiling both the seat and my lovely new traveling costume. I was indignant; how could the railroad company permit such disgraceful service to any American?”

"When she arrived in Holly Springs, Hedgeman saw poor African Americans and experienced the humiliation of segregation for the first time. She also realized that her students, mostly poor children of sharecroppers, were forced to work for a wage at the expense of their education. “It did not take long for the love of the soil, which had been my heritage, to turn into hate,” she wrote in The Gift of Chaos. “For it was the soil and its demand that its crop be harvested which brought my bright, eager students late to the classroom, and it was the same soil which claimed them for spring planting, just when they were beginning to progress.”

"After two years at Rust College, Hedgeman decided she’d had enough. The circumstances in which she was forced to teach and the attitudes of Southern whites became too much to endure. Also, asa Northerner, she was resented by both blacks and whites in the South and could accomplish little without meeting stiff resistance. Her future, Hedgeman reasoned, lay in the North where opportunities to influence change were greater. “I decided that I must return North and organize the Midwest,” she recalled in Trumpet, “to help eliminate the cruelty of the Southern part of my country.

Began Association With YWCA

"However, Hedgeman faced difficulty when she returned to Minnesota in 1924. Unable to find a teaching job because she was African American, she went to work for the YWCA where she experienced a great deal of racial prejudice. After accepting a position in Springfield, Ohio she found that her branch, which was located in an African American neighborhood, had no gymnasium, swimming pool, cafeteria, or an adequate staff. Although the central branch had all of these amenities, African Americans were not allowed to use them. Hedgeman was also not allowed to eat in the central branch’s cafeteria, even though she was a YWCA employee.

"Despite the prejudice Hedgeman experienced, the YWCA was one of the first organizations to have African American executives and Hedgeman continued her ties with the association, becoming executive director of an African American branch in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1927, she became membership secretary of the West 137th Street branch in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Hedgeman welcomed the Harlem assignment because it had adequate facilities and was an environment free of racism. “I would have equipment with which to work and the challenge of the largest Negro community in the nation,” she wrote in The Gift of Chaos. “The walls of segregation had done its work. I was completely free of and through with white people.”

"As the Great Depression hit Harlem residents especially hard, Hedgeman and other YWCA staffers were called upon to redouble their efforts and provide essential social services. Seven-day work weeks were not uncommon and, after five years, Hedgeman decided that it was time for a change. In the late summer of 1933, she resigned her position in Harlem to become executive director of an African American branch in Philadelphia. Working in a more racially-mixed environment than Harlem, Hedgeman was forced to break her isolation from white people. “I knew this [position] would involve, in addition to the branch program, continuous contact with white Association and other community ĺeaders,” she reminisced in Trumpet. “I could no longer merely talk at white people. I had to work with them.”

Fair Employment Practices Commission

"In November of 1933 Hedgeman married her husband, Merrit, who was an interpreter of African American folk music. The following year, she returned to New York to be with her husband and took a job asa supervisor and consultant to the Emergency Relief Bureau, now called the Department of Welfare. She would remain in that position until 1938 when she went back to the YWCA as director of the African American branch in Brooklyn. Disillusioned with the blatant segregation policies of the national Association, Hedgeman resigned and went to work as an assistant in race relations for the National Office of Civilian Defense.

"In 1944, Hedgeman served as the executive director of the newly-formed National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. This organization initiated national legislative programs to ensure that minority groups would have access to education and jobs. The main goal of the organization was to secure passage of the FEPC bill, which would have guaranteed the right to work without regard to race, creed, or color. Passage of the bill was defeated in 1945.

"In 1949, after working on Harry Truman’s presidential campaign, Hedgeman went to work as an assistant to the administrator of the Federal Security Agency, which was later known as the Office of Health, Education and Welfare. This position enabled her to spend three months in India as an exchange leader for the Department of State. Upon returning to New York, Hedgeman became involved in city politics and, following the election of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. in 1954, became the first African American woman to hold a mayoral cabinet position in the city’s history. In this position, Hedgeman was responsible for corresponding with eightcity departments and served as a liaison for international guests visiting New York.

"Disenchanted with the back room bureaucracy of city hall, Hedgeman resigned in 1958 to take a job as a public relations consultant for the Fuller Products Company, a cosmetics firm. At Fuller Products, she made contacts with church and civic groups and gave daily lectures to salesmen. When company president S.B. Fuller bought the New York Age, the nation’s oldest African American newspaper, Hedgeman was asked to serve as associate editor and columnist. Due to dwindling circulation, the paper ceased production in 1960. That same year, Hedgeman was the keynote speaker at the first Conference of the Woman of Africa and of African Descent held in Ghana.

Helped Plan March On Washington

"In 1963, Hedgeman was asked to serve as Coordinator of Special Events for the Commission of Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches. Her first task was to locate 30,000 white Protestants from across the country who were willing to participate in a March on Washington scheduled for August 28, 1963. Hedgeman played a major role in what is considered one of the greatest civil rights moments in history. When she noticed that there were no women scheduled to speak at the Lincoln Memorial, Hedgeman moved swiftly to correct the oversight. She also worked with the National Council of Churches to ensure passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, a descendant of the FEPC bill proposed twenty years earlier.

"In 1965, Hedgeman ran an unsuccessful candidacy for City Council President in New York. Two year later, she retired from the National Council of Churches. Along with her husband, she founded Hedgeman Consultant Services. With the consulting firm serving as a home base, Hedgeman spent the 1970s lecturing, teaching, and consulting on race relations and black studies to educational centers, colleges and universities, and public school teachers. Following the death of her husband in 1987, Hedgeman moved to the Greater Harlem Nursing home where she lived until her death on January 17, 1990."

Sources

Books

Hedgeman, Anna Arnold, The Gift of Chaos: Decades of American Discontent, Oxford University Press, 1977.

Hedgeman, Anna Arnold, The Trumpet Sounds: A Memoir of Negro Leadership, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

Periodicals

Jet, February 12, 1990, p. 17.

New York Times, January 26, 1990, p. D-18.

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained from the Rare Books and Manuscripts division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

—Brian Escamilla

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate - Rigoberta Menchú Tum

The following is a brief account of Rigoberta Menchú Tum's of efforts to secure more equitable rights for the indigenous people of Guatemala as well as her notable efforts to seek reconciliation for the disastrous impact of civil war on her country.  This short biography was taken from the website of the Nobel Women's Initiative -

"Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation work based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples in her native Guatemala. She is the first indigenous person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2007, Rigoberta ran for Presidency of Guatemala with Encuentro por Guatemala in 2007.  Subsequently, Rigoberta made important contributions in spearheading the first indigenous party in Guatemala, and garnering enough votes to make her WINAQ party official, and ran again for President with this party in 2011. Despite the fact that she was not elected, she remains a steadfast presence in Guatemalan politics and the struggle to end impunity.  

---

Rigoberta was born in 1959 to a poor Indian family in the highlands of Guatemala. Like many other countries in the Americas, Guatemala has experienced great tension between the descendants of European immigrants and the native Indian population. The Menchú family experienced extreme hardship as a result of their Mayan background.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Guatemala’s repressive military dictatorship began a large-scale repression of Indian peoples. Before she was 21, Rigoberta's mother, father and brother were brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army.

Rigoberta confronted the oppression faced by her family and her peoples by actively protesting labor and human rights abuses. In 1981 she was forced to seek exile in Mexico, where she became an eloquent defender of the rights and values of indigenous peoples and other victims of government oppression. On several occasions, Rigoberta returned to her home country to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats forced her back into exile. In 1983, Rigoberta's testimonial book I, Rigoberta Menchú, catapulted the plight of indigenous people in Guatemala into global headlines.

After receiving the Peace Prize, Rigoberta established the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation which promotes the rights of indigenous people around the world.  In 1998, she published Rigoberta: La Nieta de los Mayas, later translated into English and titled Crossing Borders.

From 1994 to 2003, Rigoberta served as the official spokesperson for the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Peoples. She has held the position of Good Will Ambassador for the Peace Accords in Guatemala since 2004. Rigoberta is also president of the company Salud para Todos ("Health for All"), which aims to offer affordable generic medicines to indigenous people in Guatemala."

The complete text of Tum's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech can be found here.

America – the Crisis of the Intellect

The apparent ascendancy of Donald Trump as the front-running candidate for President of the United States in the Republican Party and the decision made by the Republican leadership in the United States Senate to refuse to even consider the sitting President’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court are powerful indicators that our political system, based on democratic principles and the rule of law, is in serious jeopardy.  In my mind, it reflects a crisis of the intellect.

In regards to Donald Trump, his bellicose and often mean-spirited pronouncements and apparent worldview readily exposes both a poverty of intellect and a severely troubled personality.  It is my contention that he displays a behavior that is indicative of a pathological narcissist.  His speech exposes an apparent inability and outright refusal to engage in the political process which requires a capacity to listen to opposing viewpoints and to make compromises based upon reasoned judgment.  The political process embodied in compromise is essential if we, as a people, are to retain the democratic principles that we claim to cherish.  Otherwise, we willingly embrace demagoguery – a path that will necessarily have disastrous consequences; for, we are not a monolithic society.  This country is made up of very diverse elements in terms of race, culture, world view and perspective; it is this diversity that allows for our collective growth, development and maturity as a people.  To suppress this diversity or to deny entire sectors of the population an opportunity to engage as full members of the culture is to effectively diminish us all.

The recent decision of Republican Senators to refuse to even engage in their constitutional responsibility to accept or reject a Presidential nominee for the open seat on the Supreme Court following the death of Antonin Scalia is a serious abrogation of their role in this very important process.  The arguments that they have put forward to justify this position are untenable and border on the absurd.  This kind of collective behavior reflects, in my mind, a determination to have their own way regardless of the cost and undermines the veracity of the political process.

If the American people find this behavior acceptable then we do suffer from a crisis of the intellect.  Admittedly, the nation is faced with serious issues that need to be addressed and undoubtedly arouse fear.  Reasoned solutions to these problems, however, will not be achieved through authoritarian and intellectually vacant policies that may temporarily alleviate those fears but will eventually lead to unfortunate consequences.

Can We Avert Calamity

One hundred and ninety-five countries recently reached a consensus at the end of an historic meeting in Paris regarding the need to lower carbon emissions and thereby diminish our dependency upon fossil fuels as the predominant source of energy for human activity.  This, in itself, is a major breakthrough in that it represents a nearly universal recognition of the reality of climate change and its very real threat to the future of the species upon planet earth.  

However, there is a wide chasm between recognizing the threat and collectively implementing the degree and intensity of change that is required to meaningfully address the problem.  The enormity of the issue cannot be understated.  The level of CO² in the atmosphere has already breached 400 parts per million (ppm).  This compares to ~ 270 ppm that was the measure of CO² in the pre-industrial age.  The current level compares to eras in the earth’s distant past in which the climate conditions were of such extremes that human existence would be seriously constrained.  The effects of climate change are very much in evidence around the planet.  It is not within the scope of this article to attempt to enumerate the details.  Human activity is literally transforming the earth’s climate – no manner of obfuscation or denial can alter this reality.

The degree of political, social, cultural and religious unrest that seems to infest human communities throughout the world provides suggestive evidence that human beings are collectively unable to face the enormous challenges posed by the seemingly ineluctable “progress” of climate change.  In reality, there is no threat to the future viability of the human species greater than this issue.

In order to successfully and radically diminish the production of greenhouse gases to a degree that would obviate the threat to humans in the near and more distant future, action is required on a scale of unheard proportions.  This level of global cooperation will not be possible or even conceivable if we persist in responding to real or imagined threat with violence and irrational behavior; if we continue to value the self at the expense of the larger community; if we insist on showing little or no compassion for the hundreds of millions of our species faced with dire circumstance in everyday life and if we put the immediate interests of the State above the well-being of humanity.

Simply put, in my judgment, without true and lasting peace of mind and spirit both individually and collectively, the solution(s) to the problem of climate change will elude us.  In the final analysis, it is up to us – the viability of future generations of human beings is in in our collective hands.