Towards Climate Balance
Climate change is slowly becoming – in the minds of people and their leaders alike – the definitive global challenge; one that humanity has to urgently and unitedly address and – to some extent – redeem, before we can fully resolve our other socioeconomic and political issues.
The connection between climate balance and survival and the realization that Life always precedes and makes possible any and all Activity, properly highlight how fundamental this issue is. Truly universal in its implications, it concerns the planet and everything and everyone on it, with humanity featuring as the main culprit and redeemer alike.
This Newsletter seeks to inspire further research, draw attention to noteworthy efforts already underway, prompt creative thought around the theme, and hopefully, lead to right action in a spirit of Goodwill. §
Climate Change, Traditional Knowledge
and the Transition into the Aquarian Age
It is surely significant that climate change is one of, if not the primary existential issue driving national and international conversations and shaping and determining the collective sense of the future.
From an esoteric perspective the current crisis of global warming and extreme weather events reflects a crisis in the climate of thought. The culture of materialism has produced a dangerous over-heating of the desire nature. Deeply inherited thoughtforms of humanity’s separation from and sovereignty over the natural world make it difficult for nations and peoples to act for the good of all life. In this sense, the climate crisis reflects a spiritual crisis. Widespread recognition that global warming is creating life-threatening disasters, particularly for vulnerable communities, is coalescing with a growing thirst for insights on wholeness and interdependence from ancient wisdom traditions and interdisciplinary thinkers. And so it is that individually, as communities and nations, and as a species, more and more human beings are considering choices to regulate desires in ways that will eventually manifest in cultures of balanced thinking and living[1]. Yet without fresh revelations and new scientific discoveries, this all takes time, generations, to work through!
World Goodwill, looks to profound changes in the subtle energies of the planetary life as key causal factors in the current climate crisis. These changes are described as drivers of evolutionary momentum (a working out of a Grand Design or Plan in the Mind of God), derived in part from a rebalancing of planetary energy centres and in part from the Earth’s relationship with other celestial bodies[2].
Yet, more than anything else, World Goodwill seeks to highlight the impact these changes are having on human consciousness leading to the many ways in which human intelligence and creativity is responding to crises like the climate crisis. In response to climate change the will to cooperate for the good of the whole is slowly awakening amongst peoples, institutions, and national and global governments. In this sense, the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are driving climate change would seem to reflect a clear recognition by humanity of its duty to clean up and transform the polluted and outmoded economic, social and legal frameworks based on ideas of separation.
One sign of the intersection of climate change policies and a metaphysics affirming the sacredness of life is to be found in local and national government policies that 
draw on the Traditional Knowledge of indigenous and local rural communities. In a paper in the International Journal of Modern Anthropology, Professor Mokua Ombati writes of the African tradition of prayers, and accompanying rituals to invoke rain, citing a seminal text on African Religions and Philosophy which states that in the mindset of the peoples of the continent “only God can make or produce rain”. Drawing on this tradition, a hybrid weather intelligence system has been developed in Kenya where research institutes, universities and the government meteorological department are partnering with widely-respected rainmakers in a tribal community in the western region of the country.
“The Nganyi rainmakers have perfected the science of rainmaking that they have long used in advising local communities about when and what to plant based on weather patterns. In the collaboration, modern scientists and the Nganyi rainmakers blend indigenous and conventional weather prediction in a model that combines each other’s knowledge”[3].
Another clear sign that insights from sacred traditions preserved by indigenous peoples are contributing to climate discussions and to a more balanced response to the growth of extreme weather events can be found in biodiversity conservation. An increasing number of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers are involved, and this is reflected in the Task Force on Indigenous and Local Knowledge Systems at the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Fikret Berkes of the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba, Canada notes that Indigenous and Local Knowledge “is not in competition with science. Rather the challenge is to build linkages between the two kinds of knowledge and [through the co-production of knowledge] to produce better understandings than either could alone”[4].
The challenges of climate change are stirring human thought and planning, becoming a central issue in national and international politics, and reaching into every field of activity. They provide something of a stress-test, measuring the quality of our response as a species to incoming Aquarian energies—namely, the principles of sharing, brotherhood and cooperation. §
- Hindu Declaration on Climate Change
- Lucis Trust, ‘The Heavens' and 'Electric Climate’
- Mokua Ombati, ‘Rainmaking rituals: Song and dance for climate change in the making of livelihoods in Africa’, International Journal of Modern Anthropology, (2017) 10: 74-96
- Fikret Berkes, ‘Co-Production of Knowledge’, in Learning from indigenous Populations and local Communities One Earth 1, September 20, 2019
Climate and Goodwill
KK is a Sustainability Advisor with over 17 years experience
in Environmental Governance and Practice.
In February 2021 the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Patricia Espinosa, designated the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn as the first UN Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador[1].
UN Climate Change is the largest of more than 20 United Nations organizations in Bonn . This designation emphasizes the need to motivate people to positive action to restore climate balance.The climate has changed, it is changing, and will continue to change. Even if we could stop all man-made carbon emissions right now, the climate would continue to change, as the anthropogenic carbon emissions have distorted the earth’s carbon cycle in a way that creates cumulative consequences over time. To simplify, if a person has been smoking for years, their lungs are full of tar, which doesn’t stop creating negative effects for their health, even if that person stops smoking today.
As the earth’s climate changes, its biodiversity and ecosystems become distorted, and both chronic and acute physical and transition risks occur. This affects all life forms, particularly humanity with its complex social structures and interdependent economies.
It is a change for the worse; but it brings about opportunities for the better. It is a systemic change, a domino effect; this requires systemic mitigation and adaptation from mankind. Systemic change requires understanding of the system, but most importantly it requires systemic goodwill.
Climate change is a global issue with local implications. Similar to the recent pandemic, it brings about a feeling of belonging. Belonging to something bigger than ourselves, our family members, our social network, our neighborhood or our local community. During the pandemic, no matter where someone was located, they could empathize with what all of humanity went through. With climate change, humankind faces a similar and more severe global problem. This requires us all to come together in goodwill to resolve it.
Goodwill on the personal level is more or less familiar to all of us. It involves trust or the willingness to go the extra mile to help someone or to resolve an issue, without additional gain necessarily. Systemic goodwill is similar but on a larger scale. In finance, goodwill is an intangible asset that raises a business’ value. It depends on elements that cannot be quantified easily like a company’s good customer relationships, good name, and brand.
When a person or organization chooses a sustainable, ethical option and decides to cover the extra cost or make the extra effort to support it, they are giving an example of systemic goodwill. The choice creates a chain reaction that influences many lives and builds a new culture. The difference is that in this new culture there is the necessary room to appreciate the value of intangible assets, like goodwill, and how important they are to rebalance our world. §
- UN Climate Change, ‘Beethoven Orchestra Bonn Designated First UN Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador’
Sore Throat – Sore World!
There are several causes for the Global warming and climate change that we see happening in the world around us now. There are the obvious external reasons such as as greenhouse gas emissions, but there are more interior causes, which also need to be acknowledged.
One of these can be seen by drawing an interesting analogy from the ecology of the human throat. In a healthy state, the throat is populated by a mixture of bacteria, fungi and viruses which live in a state of balance and ensure the smooth and healthy functioning of this major organ of the human body. One of the more important of these is the streptococcus bacteria. But when the colonies of this bacteria multiply uncontrollably, we develop some sort of infection like a sore throat or tonsillitis. The toxins released in this condition lead the body to generate a higher temperature than usual which reduces the streptococci to the correct level, and this leads to the recovery of health.
Now let us imagine that humanity is occupying an analogous global position as the planetary streptococcal colony. Here we are, multiplying out of control, and our toxic emissions of greenhouse gases and the general pollution of the global biosphere are helping the earth to warm up, for it is this rising temperature which will inevitably – and tragically – reduce human numbers to a size that is in harmony with the earth’s needs. That is, if we don’t do it first by some catastrophic 3rd world war on the physical plane.
Does it have to be like this? Most emphatically not, if – and this is a very big IF – humanity as a whole collectively takes remedial action. Much is already beginning to happen with, for example, the major switch over to electric cars now taking place and parallel moves towards decarbonising electricity generation, and also to a more biologically benign system of agriculture. These two sectors of the world economy, transport and industrial food production, together directly generate about 34% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions, and indirectly a lot more.
But behind this need for radical change in our physical use of the planet and in our demands on its resources lies another need – a much more spiritual, and therefore primary one. And this is the need to foster within humanity as a whole a deep spirit of cooperative responsibility. Many millions of people around the world are already replacing selfishness with the values of the soul – generosity, kindness, love. But nations and governments are lagging far behind. We need to transmute national selfishness into world service. We need to transform national borders – those great symbols of fear and the sense of separateness – and replace them with bridges of understanding and hope. Then the ground is ready for us all to work together with a common vision and bring renewed life and healing to the planetary biosphere of which we, as physical beings, are in integral part.
Worldwide a great many people and groups recognise the seriousness and urgency of the present situation. A significant number of politicians and government officials 
also realise its gravity, but most of them appear to be content with kicking the issue into the long grass because economic, employment and electoral interests take a priority over this problem.
But we need to remember that we are not just a pesky bacterial colony. Humanity is also the planetary energy centre of creativity. We are collectively the interlinking cells that make up the planetary brain which in reality anchors the consciousness of our planetary life onto the physical plane and throughout the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms in nature. Collectively we can choose to respond to the promptings of the planetary Soul, the ideas and ideals for which It, like each of us on our infinitely small scale, came into incarnation.
Climate changes, however we may understand these, hold before the eyes of the world the need for major changes and they are producing multiple visions of a possible way out of our current cul de sac of difficulties. In this sense the warming climate can also be seen as an image of higher fires of creativity fuelling multiple approaches to sustainable and regenerative ways of living on the earth.
Systemic goodwill, demanding the “best for everyone” is arising in humanity, producing the understanding that happiness comes from good human relationships, not from the idolatry and possession of things. In so many different spheres (UN agencies, civil society, business, national and local governments), a vision is emerging of viable political and economic systems based on ‘living simply that others may simply live’, yet at the same time giving full rein to the spirit of enquiry and creativity. §
Towards Climate Balance
One of the notions associated with the ideal of balance in living organisms is that of homeostasis. It suggests that there is a fixed optimum internal state in living systems, which permits their optimal functioning, and that the organism should seek to return to this state when it is somehow removed from it[1].
Homeostasis is a 19th century concept although the term was coined mid-20th century. It is still widely used but its meaning has been shifting to what is more accurately described as allostasis or adaptive homeostasis[2][3], recognising that change is natural to living organisms. Thus, a continuing disturbance and re-balancing of internal equilibrium is a more realistic way to perceive systemic health. From this perspective, balance is a dynamic rather than a stationary concept.
Therefore, the exact points of balance and equilibrium shift constantly and depend on many factors such as environmental circumstances, an organism’s purpose within that environment, its subsequent intentional action, and others.
One of the words that often comes up in the discussion on how climate change should be engaged globally, is “holistic”[4]. However correct this may be, such a vague directive cannot be effectively applied without identifying several “wholes” within the greater “whole”-- whether individual, communal, global, planetary, or the solar system itself. Determining the whole within which a “holistic” approach is seeking to offset imbalances, enables the identification of the different agents causing imbalance. Once identified, their symptoms can be neutralised, and in time, the root cause eradicated.
Another word that often comes up in the discussion on climate is “biodiversity” and the urge to preserve it as a means of facilitating sustainability. Cultural diversity is another means of achieving the same goal. With the call for a “holistic” approach and for a “global” response to facilitate the preservation of “diversity” on the biological or cultural level, two poles emerge in the discussion on climate: the pole of singularity in the aspiration to holistic and global, and the pole of plurality in the effort to preserve and safeguard bio- or cultural diversity.
At this point in time, humanity is called upon to play the role of the synthesising third factor[5][6] and create a response that is flexible enough to apply to very different circumstances around the planet, and specific enough in its overall purpose to allow priorities to emerge with clarity and facilitate decision-making in these varying conditions.
It is worth noting that the competing forces – and from the occult perspective any conflict or imbalance that emerges on the mental, emotional or physical level is expressing such forces – involved in climate balance could be harmonised in a number of ways, some more energy-consuming or more painful than others. However, the presence of a single goal for humanity, creates an opportunity for the utilisation of the energy of goodwill with its intrinsic unifying and harmonising potential. This becomes increasingly possible as a multiplying number of minds acknowledge climate balance as the global issue of our time. The single purpose of creating sustainability through rebalancing humanity’s activity on the planet, namely its relationship to the animal, vegetable and mineral life, can serve as a beacon directing activity and fostering goodwill. The presence of goodwill is especially relevant when method needs to be decided on both global and local scales.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect in discerning which action to take then is to ascertain that the point of balance one wishes to pursue, and the method chosen to achieve it, are indeed the right ones for the occasion. The answer moves beyond data and procedure to the degree humanity itself – the synthesizing agent – is morally and mentally sound, and therefore able to make sound decisions[7]. As members of the human race, the responsibility lies with each one of us to pursue, cultivate, check and re-check our moral and mental condition by the means – esoteric and exoteric – available to us. Then, we know that we are lending the weight of our conviction to a method of approach which serves the greater good rather than a version of the “good” safeguarding a personal sense of comfort and satisfaction or promising to end a personal sense of discomfort and dissatisfaction. This is practicing goodwill, or expressing goodwill in the worlds of everyday living, and this is the sacrifice it requires. There is no life for the lesser if the greater of which it forms a part, perishes. §
- A. Burke, M.C. Peros, C.D. Wren et all, The archaeology of climate change: The case for cultural diversity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2021) 118 (30)
- K. J. A. Davies, Adaptive Homeostasis, Molecular Aspects of Medicine (2016) 49:1-7
- P. Mason, Homeostasis v Allostasis, University of Chicago online
See also: Homeostasis, Cognito - See e.g.: Closing panel of 2022 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development on ‘Climate security and development beyond the Stockholm Forum'
- Alice Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire 1212-1216
- Alice Bailey, Esoteric Psychology I 262
- As above, 343, 70, 205
Resources on Climate Balance
A wide range of resouces on climate balance.
UN Climate Change
UN Climate Change (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. The Convention has near universal membership (197 Parties).
UN Climate Change focused in its early years largely on facilitating the intergovernmental climate change negotiations. Today it supports a complex architecture of bodies that serve to advance the implementation of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. §
More at: https://unfccc.int/
Regional Climate Weeks 2022 – Africa
The Climate Weeks were established in 2021 as part of a historic year for global climate action, when we would either lose sight of the Paris targets, or start implementing the Paris Agreement. It turned out to be a year of strong regional collaboration, with these virtual events bringing together more than 12,000 participants for discussions on advancing climate action.
Continuing into 2022, the Regional Climate Weeks move next to Africa Climate Week 2022, which will be held from 28 August to 2 September in Libreville, Gabon. §
More at: https://unfccc.int/ACW2022
World Goodwill 2022 Seminar
Geneva – London – New York
This year’s World Goodwill Seminar will take place on 29th October, in the aftermath of the Scorpio New Moon period. Held under the theme In Search of a New Culture: Perspectives on Human Flourishing, it seeks to focus on how the numerous realisations and shifts of recent years can take on form as a new culture that retains the best of the past, expresses humanity’s better qualities, and creates space for a future of greater unity.
“The educators … must prepare for a renaissance of all the arts and for a new and free flow of the creative spirit in man. They must lay an emphatic importance upon those great moments in human history wherein man’s divinity flamed forth and indicated new ways of thinking, new modes of human planning and thus changed for all time the trend of human affairs. These moments produced the Magna Charta; they gave emphasis, through the French Revolution, to the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity; they formulated the American Bill of Rights and on the high seas in our own time [1954] they gave us the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms. These are the great concepts which must govern the new age with its nascent civilisation and its future culture”, A. Bailey §
