- Why Climate Emergency; Why Now
- Stay connected: Join the Declare Climate Emergency Now mailing list (live webinar and resources coming soon!)
- Access the full text of Thanissara’s call to Declare Climate Emergency Now
- View the live webinar with Thanissara and guests recorded on May 18
- Organize an event in your community to recognize, contemplate and resolve to act.
Why Climate Emergency; Why Now?
Ever since the gigantic wake-up call of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report of October, 2018, climate mobilization has blossomed like never before. After hearing the world’s climate scientists warn we have only 12 years to limit extreme climate change catastrophe, citizen activism around the world has soared:
- Climate emergency declarations have been announced in nearly 400 councils and major cities that cover 34 million citizens, and counting, around the world.
- In the U.S. the Green New Deal resolution, launched by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez together with the youth-led Sunrise Movement, aims to catalyze WWII level mobilization to address climate catastrophe.
- The rise of Extinction Rebellion and their Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) has spread exponentially around the world at lightning speed.
- Children from more than 125 countries worldwide have joined the School Strike for Climate, walking out of class to demand climate action.
We can all join this momentum. Inspired by the core Buddhist ethos, “Avoid evil, cultivate the good, and purify the heart,” we offer here an invitation to declare, for ourselves and with each other, climate emergency.
Come together: We invite you to start by bringing the power of declaring climate emergency into our practice, families, circles of friends, Sangha’s and local meditation centers to mark the necessary spiritual and psychological shifts needed to meet our cataclysmic reality. We begin by having conversations to acknowledge truthfully the depth, extent, and impact of our crisis. In this way we deepen refuge, tend our broken hearts and cultivate the courage and solidarity to act together.
Mobilize: This call is also a springboard for mobilizing to demand action from the body politic, corporations, institutions and all levels of society. Grounded in our practice and a fresh alignment with this immense collective challenge, we are positioned to take decisive, collaborative and sustained action. By joining with countless others, we have the power to generate an unstoppable momentum for radical change.
Please join us! Sign up below to stay connected to this initiative.
We Are Change
We Are Power
We Are Nature
We are Earth’s Immune System Rising
Declare Climate Emergency Now (DCEN) Working Group:
Thanissara, Anita Kline, Charity Kahn, Kitty Costello, and Kristin Barker
Get Involved
Editor’s Note: This campaign has ended. Links have been removed. View the webinar recording here.
