Religions, Ethics and Climate Change, October 2009
What is the good life?
Exploring secular and faith-based values and action-perspectives to mitigate climate change
8th (Thursday) October evening – 11th (Sunday) October 2009
Fireflies Inter-cultural Centre, Bangalore
Climate change is the direct result of the paradigm of development we have embraced. We continue this paradigm because we do not want to give up the ‘good life’. (Of course, there are many millions of poor and excluded people who are outside this so called ‘good life’). But how much of this good life is a need created by consumer attitudes and values, and how much of it really contributes to our happiness and well-being? Perhaps if we measured the good life in terms of a meaningful happiness quotient we may find it highly inadequate.
To change the paradigm of development that is relentlessly contributing to climate change we might have to rethink the question “what is the good life?” It is more than likely that human communities that emphasize ‘quality’ rather than ‘quantity’ will find that meaningful human relations, connectedness with nature, voluntary simplicity, appropriate philosophic or spiritual outlooks and deeply democratic and compassionate values may be more exhilarating than the illusory fulfillment that today’s market driven values offer.
At this workshop we hope to discuss and identify the ingredients that go to make up this alternative understanding of the good life that can kill two birds with one stone: contribute to genuine human well being as well as weaken the pace of climate change. We hope to have contributions from both secular perspectives and faith-based traditions.
We will also have contributions on mitigation and adaptation strategies that can help the poor and excluded to better deal with the problems that climate change throws up. These have to do with water use, more appropriate agricultural practices, renewable energy, specific challenges posed to forest dwelling and non-forest dwelling communities and a host of other subjects.
This workshop will attempt to come up with concrete suggestions that will help NGOs and policy makers prepare for the decades of increasing climate change that will hit everybody hard, but more particularly the poor and excluded.
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Pipal Tree
Fireflies Intercultural Centre
Dinnepalya, Kaggalipura P.O.
Bangalore - 82 India
Phone: +91-80-28432725
Pipal Tree
Fireflies Intercultural Centre
Dinnepalya, Kaggalipura P.O.
Bangalore - 82 India
Phone: +91-80-28432725
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