Continuing an Ever-More-Needed Initiative
The RC Communities update their goals every four years at the World Conference. We first adopted a goal about the environment in 2001 and have had a goal on the environment ever since.
In 2017 I proposed a goal on climate change to guide us until the next World Conference, which we expected to be in 2021. That goal pointed us in the direction of becoming aware of and discharging about the degradation of the environment.
As our awareness of the climate emergency has increased, our goals on the environment have directed us more and more toward understanding the connections between the climate crisis, oppression, and exploitation and toward taking action with others to address the crisis.
Our governments and industries have not made the changes needed to begin to solve the climate crisis. It is doubtful that they are going to make those changes without massive pressure for change from outside those structures.
In 2019, with the climate emergency unfolding more quickly each year, I decided to act between World Conferences, publishing a Climate Initiative in the April 2019 Present Time.
Given the current state of the climate emergency and the need to act without delay, I am now publishing another initiative and presenting it to the RC Communities at our Pre-World Conferences, for adoption at the World Conference in August 2022. (See the new initiative below.)
I am asking all RCers to read this new initiative and discharge about our current climate emergency. I want each of us to face any distress in our way of making this initiative our own and taking action to stop and reverse climate change. The RC Communities are already playing a significant role in addressing the climate crisis. With all of us engaged, we can become a powerful force for change.
The New Climate Initiative
The RC Community, recognizing the clear evidence of dangerous and ongoing climate change caused primarily by human activity, will actively organize and support its members to face the challenge of finding and implementing ways to halt and reverse climate change.
We will support all RC Community members to discharge any distress that keeps them from playing any role in the struggle to preserve the world. In doing this, we recognize the role that all oppressions have played in creating the climate crisis, and the need to act against all oppressions to find solutions.
We will create opportunities for RC Community members to gather to discuss the situation, discharge, and develop new ideas, tactics, and strategies—using webinars, think-and-listens, and other means useful in building common understanding.
Taking on this important task will require each of us to challenge the distress recordings that have left us feeling powerless and alone. In challenging these recordings, we can learn to move rapidly forward—together and with increasing confidence—in our relationships with other individuals and in public opposition to irrational policies.
We will assist and support each other to learn about and understand the always-developing situation with the Earth’s climate—including by getting involved with individuals, Indigenous peoples, and organizations that are working to stop climate change. This will provide us with direct knowledge and contradict, for ourselves and others, the distress recordings of isolation and helplessness.
We will also share our RC knowledge and practice, so that those who are working on the climate crisis can function more effectively.
(Present Time 206, January 2022)