The Dalai Lama and other panelists touched on human consumption, the economy, political action and individual behavior during a sold-out Environmental Summit this morning at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
The visiting spiritual leader began by recognizing the Buddhist position on impermanence.
"Things are always changing," the Dalai Lama told an audience of about 10,000 people. "The planet's own position is changing. The whole universe, the Milky Way is moving, according to scientists." If a collision is in the offing, he joked, it's a few centuries away. If and when it happens, he joked, "then no need (for) any concern."
But until then, he said, "We have responsibility. Our own behavior makes a difference. If some destruction happens, its our own fault."
He referred to his own escape from Tibet to India several decades ago.
"But now the whole world had no other place to escape," he said. The idea that human beings could flee to the moon is "poetic," he said, but not practical. "We go there, begin to settle down. It's impossible. No hope. This is our home. We have to take care of it."
David Miller, host of Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Think Out Loud," moderated the panel, which also included Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, scientist and television host David Suzuki and Andrea Durbin, executive director of the Oregon Environmental Council.
United States Sen. Jeff Merkley introduced the Dalai Lama. After brief remarks, Miller asked Suzuki how he saw the environmental future.
"We have passed too many tipping points to go back," Suzuki said. The challenge is that human beings believe they "are in control."
"For 99 percent of our existence we realized we were deeply embedded and utterly dependent on nature," he said. That perception changed over time as humans left hunting, gathering and farming behind and moved to the cities, where their jobs became central concerns. "The economy became our highest priority."
Miller asked Durbin about her environmental priorities. She said her son recently asked her what she was doing to help prevent global warming.
"I shared some of that we're doing, but I couldn't say we're on the way to solving it," she said. "He was actually despondent about it." The challenge, as she saw it, was how adults can give children and young people a sense of hope. She added that she's working on a range of issues from the widespread use of untested chemicals to the dependence on fossil fuels.
"We need to change our ways," she said. "We need to hold our politicians accountable."
Kitzhaber called for a "new metric," re-imagining the systems that "we have lied on for decades."
"We have to create an economic system that is not based on unlimited growth and unlimited consumption," he said.
In a lively give and take, the Dalai Lama observed that as human beings moved away from farming, they became isolated from nature. The race to produce and consume more may leave the poor behind, he added.
"Just make money, make money, make money, spend it on luxuries, I think not good," he said. "Perhaps I am socialist." He waited while his audience laughed but made another point.
"As far as social economy is concerned, I am Marxist." More laughter from the crowd. "But freedom is very important," he continued. "Without freedom, socialist countries collapse and fall."
If there was a refrain to the morning session, it was improved education.
The Dalai Lama confessed that he has no personal experience of modern education, but he's critical of it none the less. He encourages education that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things, the interdependence on the 7 billion people who inhabit the world.
"Whether or not we like it," he said, "that is reality. The entire population of the planet is part of me. How to build a happy society, happy human beings on this small planet?
"We have to care about others' well-being."
-- Nancy Haught
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