Forms and Opportunities for Engaged Practice
Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. Environmental despair is a poison every bit as destructive as the methylated mercury in the bottom of Onondaga Lake. But how can we submit to despair while the land is saying "Help"?
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
No small part of our challenge is the pervasive poverty of agency. How often do we hear, including from ourselves, “but I’m just one person”? Yet both Dharma and sociology disagree. Our words and actions matter so much and indeed they are all we have.
Yet whether or not our actions make a big difference that we can actually see, feel, and touch is, in a way, none of our business. Our opportunity is to meaningfully respond. We can speak in ways that actually help. We can act in ways that are deeply rooted, skillful, strategic, and unattached to specific outcomes.
Featured Action Organizations
- The Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA): “is the only regional organization of environmental legal experts who are both from and in Latin America. We use the power of international law to create sustainable solutions throughout the region.”
- Seattle Troublemakers: “Our mission is to disrupt the extractive systems that are devastating millions of lives worldwide, and that will be catastrophic to us all if we continue on the existing path. Connecting, supporting each other, and finding joy in community and resistance, we can help bring about an urgent end to the devastation—especially the burning of fossil fuels, industrial logging, and industrial agriculture—so that Earth and her ecologies can begin to heal.”
“Our intention and reward are the same: to experience and express the irrevocable connection to all beings. It is our only way forward.” Paul Hawken
Featured Calls to Digital Action
International
- Read: Florence Caplow’s Ten Practices for Frightening Times.
- Read: Climate Comedy Works from The Conversation.
- Act: Global Days of Action on Military Spending will organize events and actions from April 10th to May 9th.
- Read: Greenpeace loss will embolden big oil and gas to pursue protesters: ‘No one will feel safe’ at The Guardian.
United States
- Sign: Tell local leaders to rebuild a S.A.F.E LA: safe, affordable, fast, and electric.
- Read: Meditations in an Emergency an ongoing blog by Rebecca Solnit
- Sign: Tell your rep to fight for the EPA with Earthworks.
- Read: MAGA’s 7 Deadly Sins–So Far–and How to Fight Back by Qasim Rashid
- Read: DOGE is hiring. The response did not disappoint by Waging Nonviolence
- Sign: Demand Congress Protect FEMA Now with Interfaith Power and Light
- Read: Choose Democracy just published “In that spirit to help the movement, we’ve assembled reliable trackers and databases following the Trump/Musk administrative coup.” You can also find information about active boycotts and ongoing acts of resistance.
- Sign: National Parks Conservation Association has organized several petitions to protect the parks.
- Sign: Stand up to Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
- Sign: The doors have reopened for coal mining in Alberta. Reclaim the coal exploration footprint in Alberta with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
- Sign: Pledge for Canada. “The threats of economic coercion from the United States, our neighbour and leading trading partner, pose serious risks to the well-being of all Canadians and to our sovereign right to determine our political, economic, social, and cultural destiny.”
- Sign: Australia Conservation Foundation’s petition to “Say no to Woodside’s gas expansion plans in WA!”
Past Campaigns
Campaign
Campaign
Faith Climate Action Week 2024
- Katie Benvenuti
Our partners at Interfaith Power and Light are inviting people of diverse faith backgrounds to learn about and examine our relationship to our faith, food and climate this upcoming Earth Day.
Campaign
Campaign
Regenerative Solutions for the Living Earth Community
- Katie Benvenuti
Regeneration Nexus is a database of ecological solutions that aim to nourish and regenerate broader systems within the living Earth community while reducing warming.
Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. It's not enough to grieve. It's not enough to just stop doing bad things.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
Stories of Engagement
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Buddhism, Social Change, and Skillful Means
- Melvin McLeod, David Loy, Mushim Patricia Ikeda and Joan Sutherland
How does our Dharma practice call us into politics and shape our engagement? While we no longer live in the moment of Occupy and the Tea Party movements, the words of David Loy, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, and Joan Suthlerland speak powerfully to this moment of 2024.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
A Community Renounces Fossil Fuels
- Steve Seigan Miron
With its recent installation of an emissions-free heating system, Zen Mountain Monastery is one step closer to its goal of phasing out fossil fuel use by 2030.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Demand for Statehood and Ecological Protections in Northern India
- Justin Whitaker
In Ladakh, India, a coalition of political and religious leaders is organizing to safeguard human rights, cultural heritage, and environmental well-being.
