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Manifesto for Copenhagen 2009
-A Guide to enjoying a Compassionate Life

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(Written for Copenhagen 2009 -generated using the Sustainability Principle of Energy)

 Be mindful in every breath you give that the universe rewards your trust with life-sustaining air. 

Be mindful that this air is a very rare and perhaps unique gift made of an exquisite arrangement of flowing gases in trace balances. 

Embrace your role as a steward amidst the change, which is our atmosphere. 

Enjoy the wisdom of the Conservation Principle of Energy, for it is as near as we have to a natural law.  

Be mindful we human beings have the great capacity to live in acceptance of change/stewardship and know joy and we have the equally great capacity to live in denial of change/stewardship and know misery. 

Know the power of symbols for they enable all life and especially human civilisation to exist. 

Know information is physical and bricks, bullets, words and metaphors are equally vibrations. 

Know our use of symbols reflects our total beings even as they generate our total beings.

Value and conserve the potential of our symbols so all human beings can enjoy vitality and harmony with the great trace balances that enable us to exist. Experience and embrace with each breath of our atmosphere the following: 

• Energy is the potential of the universe(s) and is so bountiful it can be considered a constant.

• In any moment only a trace, trace, trace aspect of the potential is realised and manifest.

• Energy constantly transforms and comes in myriad, myriad continually changing forms, all of which exist for trace moments – including we human beings.

• Any form can be known from many perspectives, including thermal, kinetic, electromagnetic, gravitational and other.

• Energy is not any form or group of forms though all forms are of the potential, which is energy.

• Energy cannot be created, generated, saved, conserved, destroyed, consumed, wasted or lost for energy is by its very nature conserved.

• There are no energy crises, though we can experience crises in our use of energy.

• The wise use of energy (“energy efficiency”) is not about using less or more energy but rather about using energy so our lives remain in harmony with the balances and flows that sustain humanity.

• Power is the measure of the rate at which the potential, which is energy, is manifest.

• There are myriad measures of power but power is no form.

• Electricity does not exist though various electrical phenomena of very different properties do. Each has a symbol for you to use e.g. electric charges, electrical energy, electrons, electric currents, imbalances of charge, electric fields, voltage, electrostatic, electric power, electromagnetism etc.

• Carbon is a vital and common flowing element of the universe(s) and provides the chemical basis of all living forms.

• Like all elements of the universal potential, carbon is continually changing the forms it is manifest in.

• Embrace our role as a steward amidst the carbon flux and know we can never “offset”, “neutralize”, “devalue” and “trade” away our use of the carbon potential. Beware of those who say otherwise for they are in deep denial of change/stewardship.

• Know psychopathic constructs such as “The Market” can only put a price on carbon forms; only each human being can put a value on carbon forms.

• Embrace taxes as a gift for enabling civilisation and know the ultimate tax is the one we each employ when we value and make use of any resource, which includes all carbon forms.

• Know we are each Thermal Beings and part of the continual, great universal exchange.

• Be mindful in every breath we give that we are warming as we are cooling, just as our planet is constantly warming and cooling with the day and the night. 

• Embrace warming and cooling with all your being, for in the balance of each thermal exchange all things can exist.

• Conserve the potential of the “warming” symbol and do not confuse it with “warming up”, for “warming up” is a change in the balances that sustain life and to say “warming = warming up” is the ultimate denial of the thermodynamics of the universe(s). Likewise take care not to confuse the “cooling” and “cooling down” symbols.

• Enjoy reverence for the “atmosphere” symbol and associate it with organic and dynamic systems in which the great powers of air for convection moderate the thermal balances of this planet.

• Beware of those who symbolize the atmosphere as a “greenhouse”, “blanket” and other human engineered object for they deny the essential change, which is our atmosphere.

• Conserve the “greenhouse” symbol so we can better create structures that make wise use of air as a thermal insulator by exploiting its great capacity to convect and small capacity to conduct thermal energy. 

• Embrace and conserve the balances of the gases that enable humans to exist and, in particular, teach of the Warmer Trace Gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane etc), for these exist only as trace gases on this planet and yet their power is such that they work to keep Earth’s surface warmed to a comfortable life- enabling 15°C.

• Beware of those who describe the Warmer Trace Gases as “greenhouse” gases for they evoke images that deny change/stewardship of the atmospheric balances that sustain us.

• Know we are not here to “fight”, “combat” and “stop” the change, which is our climate, but rather to live in harmony with Earth’s atmosphere.

• Embrace climate change and do not confuse it with a human-inducted thermal build-up in the atmosphere.

• Remember to lift thine eyes upwards from searching the ground underfoot for minerals to the plants around us and to the sun above and find symbols for all their great potential. Without those symbols their potential cannot be manifest.

• Smile in the knowledge this planet did not begin with humans and most probably will not end with humans and it is not in need of “saving” – it is our ingenious capacity for denial of stewardship/change that puts us at greatest risk and wipes out civilisations.

• Be a true conservative, knowing this is the title most truly accorded to the person who conserves the flows and balances of resources that sustain humanity.

• Beware of those who say science is a way of thinking and be mindful that it is a state of being born of compassion that enables the arts, language, civics and all that is civilisation.

• Know that you and all human beings are born in the state of science and those that call themselves “scientists” deny this state of being.

• Also know the state of science in us is revealed in our total lifestyle, not just in our knowledge of a subject.

• Be mindful that the greatest teachers – Jesus, the Buddha, Socrates, Blake, Confucius et al – needed no plane or car and yet travelled far.

• Enjoy compassion, search for the truth, reflect deeply and share knowledge freely for without compassion, experimentation, reflection and sharing science ceased to exist.

• Be mindful we are Mirror Beings, exquisitely designed to detect and reflect the harmony (acceptance) and dissonance (denial) in others and thus we are each symbols, which is our lifestyles. We are inextricably our actions.

Experience all this and you can enjoy greater harmony with the universe(s). Use symbols thus and according to the Sustainability Principle of Energy you can transcend our great and ingenious capacity for denial of stewardship/change. Magic happens: 

Every breath is a celebration and walking a joy. 

A cottage becomes more luxurious than any mansion ever could be. 

A nearby plot of soil and even a plant pot becomes a treasure. 

The desire and need to own and use cars evaporates. 

The use of jet travel becomes an anathema to the free spirit, an impossible notion. 

The freed mind travels to places no car or jet can take a person. 

The misery mongers, who are the merchant bankers and their media, lose their power over you. 

Waiting for and using derelict mass transport becomes an opportunity for rewarding reflection and rich conversation. 

Even as others reject, dismiss and abuse you as a crank one finds greater joy and humour in being amidst the variety and activity, which is humanity. 

The desire to beget children fades as the children of the world become as one. 

True friends are revealed and the love shared has richness beyond anything money can buy. 

And miracle of miracles you may well find that without any sense of deprivation your emissions of carbon dioxide are less than 3 tonnes per year while your rate of destruction of our fossil fuel resource drops several fold. And thus you are at one with the billions of other humans who conserve our balances and you live in the knowledge our children may well be thankful for your existence. 

Written this morning Sunday 18 October in response to two articles I read this last evening: 

Without Drastic CO2 Cuts Immediately, the World Faces a Massive 'Oh Shit' Moment By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation. Posted October 15, 2009.

Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair.

 Posted 2:45 PM on 14 Oct 2009 by Adam D. Sacks

Adam writes:

“Try your hand at a letter—to an editor, or to a friend, or to a lover, or to a child—availing yourself of all the passion you can muster….When do we start?  Now’s the time.  Quill and ink (or keyboard) in hand, summon your muse and write for our lives!”

Footnote: More on the Sustainabilty Principle of Energy at www.bonusjoules.co.nz I am currently creating a series of short video on our use and abuse of our prime symbols. The first two discuss the “energy” symbol and are at

“What is Energy?” 1:The Grand Denial  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66sbyWmdQig

“What is Energy?” 2:The Potential, which is Energy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5N3_Rd6Gs

The third video, by far the most important and vital one, explains some of the rationale behind the Sustainability Principle of Energy. As mentioned I used it to generate the Copenhagen Manifesto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fCqBG8URTg

  Compassionate Curriculum Framework

  Sustainability Principle of Energy

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