If you followed my coverage of the dispute between Cham Shan Temple, residents of the Kawartha Lakes region, the Government of Ontario and wind farm developers, over proposed wind farms in the vicinity of Cham Shan’s Peterborough retreat centre (a recreation of Putoshan), now under construction, you would have some sense of the difficulty of translating Buddha’s intentions into the modern, political world.
Here’s a link to my previous stories, as a refresher: http://www.sumeru-books.com/?s=wind+farm which include outbound links to other sites and publications on the subject.
Now, the influential Buddhist activist site Ecobuddhism has come out with a global report on wind power that should be required reading for anybody who intends to take a position on what is happening here in Ontario. This is the link: http://www.ecobuddhism.org/solutions/game_changers_/wpgmw
The bottom line is this: wind power is essential if we want to care for our planet and the legacy we are leaving to our children (not to mention all beings). Most of the world gets this simple fact, but North America is still addicted to oil and nuclear. How can North American Buddhists condemn the Keystone XL pipeline and/or the Northern Gateway pipeline, tracking, etc., but refuse to support locally-based alternatives. That does not compute.
So, I hope this debate continues and we get to a more enlightened place…
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