Rabbi Arthur Waskow 3/8/2005

Dear Friends,

We have posted on our Website a BBC report on rising European wrath against the US for its CO2 emissions. During early March, I was in Edinburgh to speak & teach at a conference on the spiritual roots of peacemaking. In one of my talks, I said:

The present government of the US has declared war on Europe. Its preferred weapon of mass destruction is carbon dioxide, its means of delivery is oil and coal, and its strategic target is the Gulf Stream.

For as global scorching melts the polar ice, the huge supply of fresh, cold water is likely to shatter the warm Gulf Stream that gives Britain and much of Europe their temperate weather. Global scorching is likely to bring Europe the Great Chill, disrupting agriculture and possibly causing famines.

Why is this happening? Mostly because the US is so addicted to Oil and the Bush Administration so intertwined with the drug lords of Big Oil that it has pretended global scorching is a myth and refused to join in even the mild requirements of the Kyoto treaty for restricting emissions of carbon dioxide.

If that's not war, what is?.

Critiques by British scientists will no more change US policy than have critiques by American scientists. How then might Europe effectively respond to this massive war against its future?

My own suggestion would be a major coordinated boycott of US-produced goods, including divestment from Big Oil & Big Auto companies that are heavily implicated in opposing US accession to Kyoto and beyond.

As for Americans: we are less immediately vulnerable to the impact of global scorching, and more addicted to our Oiloholic habit. But we ought to be considering what action we ourselves could take to (a) challenge the Drug Lords that keep us addicted because, like the Drug Lords of coke and heroin, they fatten off our addiction; and (b) press our community to far more vigorous action supporting sustainable energy.

Shalom, Arthur