http://www.climatejusticefast.com/index.php/blog/ en paulrobertconnor@gmail.com Copyright 2011 2011-03-16T05:51:36+00:00 http://www.climatejusticefast.com/blog/entry/michael/ http://www.climatejusticefast.com/blog/entry/michael/#When:10:38:11Z I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I have been very aware of and concerned about climate change for 25 years. I have involved myself in the science and psychology of this issues throughout this time. I have been growing more and more anxious about where we are heading and what role I can play in making the necessary changes happen. When I learnt about Climate Justice Fast! I welcomed the opportunity to make the strongest possible statement that I could. I immediately signed up to be a long term faster.     I am a musician who has had a succesful career working in bands, touring, recording and doing television and stagework.   I studied a Bachelor of Arts, Contemporary Music at Southern Cross University during 1990-1993. I play double bass as first instrument and play 'Boogie Piano' for relaxation.   In 1993-1994 I went to India where I worked for Mother Theresa in Calcutta at Kalighat for six months. This was on of the most rewarding and humbling times in my life.   I first became aware of climate change and the greenhouse effect in the mid-1980s.  It seemed dangerous that climate change should continue unabated and I was so concerned that I wrote and published three items which formed a trilogy about climate change.   The first item in this trilogy was a leaflet called 'Greenhouse Part 1' that I published in 1988. In this, I outlined the science of global warming in easily read form.  The leaflet also delves into the psychological and spiritual aspects of the problem.  The issues in this document are still as perfectly valid and relevant today as it was when I wrote it.   The second item in the trilogy, 'Solutions to Greenhouse' I wrote in 1989. This document offers some suggestions for dealing with global warming and gives more philosophy and psychology to the subject.  Again, most of this information is still valid today.   The third item was compiled in 1992 and was a music video entitled 'Worldwide'.  Worldwide offers a stark waring about the consequences of doing nothing abut climate change: a world undergoing constant war.  This is becoming frighteningly real and imminent.  We are now in a climate emergency situation.  Unless radical urgent action is taken stop the human race using coal and oil then the scenario outlines in Worldwide will come true.   I have been granted a provisional patent for the electronics to make solar photovoltaic panels which track the sun.  This technology is appropriate for small scale installations.    I belong to five organisations that deal with climate change.  I am currently learning more about drawdown which is concerned with drawing carbon from the atmospehere and storing it safely in the natural system.  I am developing a leaflet that focuses of a method to takes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it as carbon or lime.  These things need to be done urgently because soon it will be too late.   I firmly believe that greed and consequent consumption and materielism has enabled us to get into this mess.  We have taken the universally recognised defect of character, or sin, Greed and enshrined it as a virtue.  We have made it the operating principle of the earth.   God says 'No' The whole cosmos says 'No' Mother Earth says 'No' Climate change is a physical manifestion of a spiritual illness.   On another level, two helpful slogans spring to mind that I would like to share with you..... "No jobs on a dead planet" "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mother Earth"   Michael 2009-12-07T10:38:11+00:00