Changing the Climate

“The splendor of the sun, which dissipates the darkness of this whole world, comes from Me. And the splendor of the moon and the splendor of fire are also from Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 15.12)

Question: “It seems that you like to editorialize against the idea of global warming/climate change. Yet these same movements aim to improve our environment and make our planet a better place. Wouldn’t Krishna want us to be good stewards of His creation?”

Answer: Devotees of Lord Krishna believe that bhakti-yoga, or devotional service, is the most sublime engagement for all of mankind. Regardless of a person’s geographic location, physical attributes, or religious affiliation, simply by regularly chanting the Lord’s names in a loving way, one can achieve the highest form of happiness imaginable. There are many movements in existence that aim to tackle all sorts of problems in the material world. Capitalism, communism, socialism, environmentalism, etc. all have certain aspects to them that are appealing, but in the end, they all associate exclusively with matter, meaning they only deal with God’s inferior energy. True perfection in life comes through association with the supreme spirit, Lord Krishna, or God. If we get caught up in these other inferior movements, we become more prone to ignoring our relationship with God. This is a decision that can end up being very costly.

The Vedas tell us that God is the original creator. Simply by exhaling once, Lord Vishnu creates this and many other universes. The same Lord then later exhales and takes all the universes back into Himself. Each of the material planets has a presiding deity, and the earth is no different in this regard. Known as Bhumi Devi, the earth is our mother whom we should respect and not unnecessarily burden. In this regard, we see that the technological advancements of the past two hundred years have certainly caused an unnecessary burden to the planet. Pollution has increased, and worst of all, mankind has become further bound up in fruitive activity. By working to gratify the senses, people become bound in karma, which then dictates that they be forced to repeat the cycle of birth and death. Human life is meant for breaking out of this cycle, for the soul’s natural home is in the spiritual world with God.

Being good stewards of the environment is certainly in line with religious practice. However, the modern day global warming/climate change movement goes beyond just taking care of the environment. There must be a distinction made between the ecology movement and the climate change movement. Many people are interested in maintaining the ecological health of the planet, and they certainly shouldn’t be criticized for wanting to recycle and keep pollution down. The leaders of the climate change movement, however, are not really interested in anything besides ascending to power.

This is a bold assertion, but if we do a quick study of the situation, we’ll see that this is indeed the case. The most prominent leaders of the climate change movement don’t actually follow any of their own teachings. For example, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore actively preaches that we should limit our carbon emissions, including curbing our burning of fossil fuels. Yet it was discovered recently that his home in Tennessee uses up much more electricity each month than the average American home. The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has also taken up the fight against climate change. Yet he regularly flies around in his corporate jet, something which causes much more pollution than the average person’s driving of their car. In response to criticism, the governor said that he was investing in carbon offsets, which essentially means that he continues to pollute while some company promises him that they are finding ways to cancel out his carbon emissions somewhere else.

“The Group of Eight industrialized nations joined with developing countries in agreeing Wednesday that average global temperatures shouldn’t increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius in a significant new acknowledgement in the fight against global warming.” (G-8 agrees to cap on global temperatures, AP)

If the leaders of this movement themselves don’t practice what they preach, how can we take them seriously? Wanting to take care of the environment is certainly nice, but leaders of this movement believe they can control the average temperature of the planet. Big commissions have proposed temperature caps, whereby governments would impose a restriction on how high the average temperature of a certain area could get for a certain time period. The Chinese government has even floated the idea of seeding clouds in hopes of steering hurricanes and other great storms.

These ideas seem ridiculous to the average person, yet they are seriously considered by the leaders of the climate change movement. The reason this thinking is so dangerous is that it aims to minimize or take away God’s influence as it pertains to controlling the weather. The climate of the earth is extremely complicated, so much so that computer models and scientific hypotheses are always being revised. We may be able to assume certain climate patterns based on past history, but that is still no guarantee of what will happen in the future. The Vedas tell us that Lord Krishna is responsible for creating this world and all the creatures that reside within it. At a set point in time, He will destroy this very same creation, and then recreate it again.

“O Arjuna, I control heat, the rain and the drought. I am immortality, and I am also death personified. Both being and nonbeing are in Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.19)

The scientists who lead the climate change movement believe that the world was created through a random collision of chemicals. Essentially, this leads them to think that if they can find a way to control and adjust these chemicals, they can control the weather. After controlling the weather, they will look for other things to control as well. For devotees of God, these ideas seem preposterous. These ideas represent a direct assault on the very essence of spirituality. The climate change doctrine can be thought of as its own type of religion. There is a specific set of sins; i.e. the burning of fossil fuels and the driving of SUVs. There are scriptures represented by the scientific journals and agreements formed by international commissions. There is a promised panacea, that of a world with a controlled climate. There is even a God in this movement; the government leaders and spokespeople who will implement the proposed ideas.

In America especially, people are leery of politicians who bring up religion in public. This is because the Constitution has an Establishment Clause whereby Congress is prohibited from establishing a national religion. If a politician were to propose a law that demanded everyone convert to Catholicism or Judaism, there would be a public outcry. Spirituality is a personal pursuit, something that involves an intimate relationship between a person and the Supreme Lord. Religion is not something that can be imposed on people, because at the heart of spiritual life is love for God. Love can never be forced. History is filled with instances where governments tried to force citizens to practice a specific form of religion, and the results were never good. Following this flawed model, the leaders of the climate change movement try to impose their belief system on the entire world, for without intervention from the government, none of their solutions could ever be implemented.

The climate change movement is popular because people have a natural inclination to serve something. They want to take part in a cause higher than themselves; they want to be part of something that will make their life matter. They want to help their fellow man live a better life. These are certainly noble intentions but if we direct our services to the wrong areas, we will essentially be wasting our time. Suppose that the climate change people were right and that we could control the earth’s temperature. Suppose that we decide to work very hard to curb carbon emissions and that in the future, we end up being successful. Pollution becomes virtually eliminated, but do our problems stop there? Have we done anything to advance the plight of our soul? Lord Krishna tells us that anyone who has material desires at the time of death must accept another material body in the next life.

“Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 8.6)

The material world is governed by three modes or qualities: goodness, passion, and ignorance. The desire to improve the quality of the environment certainly falls into the mode of goodness, but association with goodness means that we are still interacting with material nature. The human form of life is meant for understanding the constitutional position of the spirit soul. Religion means learning how to love God, for material nature represents Krishna’s inferior energy. As spirit souls, we are part of the superior energy, but due to our forgetfulness of this fact, we have become allured into associating with maya, or material sense gratification. If we remain on the platform of goodness but don’t advance beyond that, we aren’t really doing anything for ourselves.

To illustrate this point, let’s take the example of vegetarianism. Since animals are also living entities, the Vedas advise us to be kind to them and to refrain from killing them unnecessarily. Also, devotees of Krishna try to eat as much prasadam as possible. Prasadam is vegetarian food, more specifically food in the mode of goodness, that is prepared with love and offered with devotion to the deity of the Lord. Krishna then spiritually eats the food and leaves the remnants for us to partake of. Lord Krishna has not asked us to offer Him non-vegetarian food, thus meat is never offered to the deity.

Devotees of Krishna advise others to give up meat eating, illicit sex, gambling, and intoxication, since these make up the four pillars of sinful life. By giving up these practices, one becomes dhira, or sober. Just as being sober is a requirement for those wanting to drive a car, it is also necessary for those wanting to make spiritual advancement. Along with abstention from the four pillars of sinful life, we are advised to chant the names of God as often as possible, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”.

Yet we see that people have trouble giving up sinful life in the beginning stages, especially meat eating. So which practice is more important; giving up sinful activity or performing the chanting of the holy names of God? The Vedas tell us that it is more important to chant God’s names than it is to simply abstain from harmful behavior. For example, say that we have one person who doesn’t believe in God at all, but remains a strict vegetarian. And let’s say there is another person who has trouble giving up eating meat, but sincerely tries to take up devotional service and chants regularly. In the spiritual estimation, the meat-eating chanter is considered superior because by regularly connecting with God, they will eventually give up all sinful habits automatically. The strict vegetarian, however, is not making spiritual advancement, so their renunciation is considered false and useless, phalgu-vairagya.

“A person who properly performs his regulative duties according to varna and ashrama but does not develop his dormant attachment for Krishna or awaken his taste to hear and chant about Krishna is certainly laboring fruitlessly." (Shrimad Bhagavatam, 1.2.8)

Devotional service involves nine different processes, of which chanting is considered the most effective for this age. If we regularly remember God, offer Him prayers, and hear about Him, we are guaranteed to achieve perfection in life. What’s more is that taking up devotional service automatically solves every other problem in the world, including hunger, poverty, and the destruction of the environment. Two of the greatest Vaishnavas in history, the brothers Rupa and Sanatana Goswami, were excellent stewards of the environment without even knowing it. Empowered by Lord Chaitanya, Krishna’s most recent incarnation on earth, to revive the bhakti cult in Vrindavana, the two brothers spent twenty-four hours a day engaged in Krishna’s service. They were completely renounced, for they lived on basically nothing. They would sleep outside and wear only a small rag for clothing. They ate almost nothing; they spent all their time building temples, writing books, and chanting God’s names. Obviously this type of renunciation is reserved for the most advanced devotees, but their example is well worth noting. One who engages in devotional service gradually loses their taste for karmic life. This means that they automatically use less energy, pollute less, and have less material possessions. Any energy they do use is for God’s service, thus there is no waste or pollution.

Devotees of Krishna try to tackle the spiritual climate change problem. Due to the effects of Kali Yuga, more and more people are turning away from religion and becoming enchanted by various causes pertaining to the material world. If we take up the process of devotional service, we can benefit not only ourselves, but our fellow man as well. The highest welfare activity is the spreading of Krishna consciousness. The planet belongs to Krishna, thus it is not ours to save, maintain, or destroy. We can control the fate of our souls, however, and by regularly chanting God’s names, we can ensure that our soul returns back to home, back to Godhead.

Progress

“Because of their uncontrolled senses, persons too addicted to materialistic life make progress toward hellish conditions and repeatedly chew that which has already been chewed. Their inclinations toward Krishna are never aroused, either by the instructions of others, by their own efforts, or by a combination of both.” (Prahlada Maharaja, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 7.5.30)

Comment: “I believe in a loving God. I don’t believe that God would let us destroy the planet simply through trying to achieve progress.”

Response: Supporters of the man-made global warming theory contend that it is human activity which is responsible for drastic shifts in the earth’s climate. First it was believed that the earth was getting warmer, but when the warming stopped, the movement chose to go by the more generic term of Climate Change. In essence, followers of this movement have now found a way to blame any major climatic event on the behavior of mankind, focusing especially on the burning of fossil fuels. Recent events, including leaked emails and exposed computer models, have pretty much blown the lid off these flawed theories, proving that the movement was a source of confusion more than anything else. Those who were against the movement from the beginning view the recent news as substantiation for their belief that material progress can never be harmful to mankind at large or to the environment. The Vedas actually tell us otherwise.

People who don’t believe in God, or those who don’t necessarily understand His power, are often prone to adopting the mentally concocted theories of scientists. During the 1970s, the consensus opinion among scientists was that the earth was headed for a drastic cooling period. Famous magazines ran stories about the impending ice age. Just a few years later, scientists changed their outlook and started talking about global warming. To support their argument, they pointed to the slight rise in average surface temperatures of the earth during the previous one hundred years. The only thing they could attribute this rise to was the increase in the burning of fossil fuels. “Planes, trains, and automobiles caused increases in pollution, and this in turn led to an increase in global temperatures”.

“O Arjuna, I control heat, the rain and the drought. I am immortality, and I am also death personified. Both being and nonbeing are in Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.19)

This scientific theory was flawed from the very beginning since we know from the Vedas that Lord Krishna, or God, is responsible for creating and destroying this world. In fact, this creation isn’t the first one to have ever existed, nor will it be the last. Krishna expands Himself into guna-avataras to manage the material creation. In His Lord Shiva avatara, God takes charge of the destruction of the world. This belief isn’t exclusive to the Vedas, for pretty much every spiritual discipline believes in the idea of a divine creator. If God can create, He most certainly can also destroy.

The recent scandal involving leaked emails from The University of East Anglia shows that the global warming movement was more political than it was scientific. More and more people are coming out of the woodworks and admitting that there was never any scientific basis for the theory. In fact, one prominent proponent of global warming recently came out and admitted that the earth hasn’t warmed at all since 1995. We saw real-life evidence of this recently as there were record-cold temperatures around cities in America this past winter. Even in the Bahamas, which is a popular vacation destination during the winter months, people suffered through unseasonably cold temperatures. The low temperatures dropped into the fifty degree Fahrenheit range, and people didn’t know what to do since none of the building structures were equipped with heating systems.

“The demoniac believe that to gratify the senses unto the end of life is the prime necessity of human civilization. Thus there is no end to their anxiety.” (Lord Krishna, Bg. 16.11-12)

People may ask why anyone would advance the global warming theory simply for political purposes. The reason is that in any society you will find a subsection of people who don’t believe in spirit, and thus choose to associate exclusively with matter. A gross materialist is someone who doesn’t believe in God or in a soul. They take their current life to be the beginning and end of everything. Thinking along these lines, they conclude that the aim of life is to enjoy as much as possible. Since other people are similarly enjoying, the gross materialists tend to ascribe more importance to their own enjoyment than they do to the enjoyment of others. This is the true sign of miserly behavior. If we enjoy material life ourselves, why shouldn’t others be afforded the same right to enjoy?

Wanting to hoard material wealth and possessions to themselves, the gross materialists look for any way possible to shut others out of access to resources. Essentially the atheistic global warming leaders think along these lines: “Who are these people burning all these fossil fuels? They are simply destroying the planet. If that happens, what will be left for me and my children? We must use the power of government to impose regulations and limits on the consumption of gasoline so that we can make sure these resources remain for us to use.” Some of the most vocal proponents for government intervention to combat global warming are extremely wealthy businessmen and celebrities who fly around in corporate jets and enjoy all the excesses of life. None of the government regulations they support would ever affect their way of life. In fact, these people don’t even curb their own use of fossil fuels, but rather engage in ponzi schemes such as purchasing carbon offsets. The current Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a big believer in this scheme which involves buying shares in companies that promise to cancel out a person’s carbon footprint by finding ways to save energy elsewhere. It’s akin to going on diet by asking others to lower their caloric intake, while you continue to eat as much as you want.

The other side of the global warming issue is represented by those who believe in material advancement and progress. “Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom. The burning of fossil fuels is required for our advanced lifestyle; a lifestyle which only seeks to make life better. The global warming people simply seek to punish others. There’s nothing wrong with searching after a better life, i.e. progress.” On the surface, these claims seem valid. Buying a car and driving it to get to work or school seems innocent enough. Almost all of us today rely on the great inventions of the past one hundred years such as the automobile, cellular telephone, television, DVD player, and computer. Yet the Vedas tell us that such technological advancement doesn’t represent any progress at all as it relates to the plight of the living entity.

How can this be true? In order to understand this, we must first know how to identify ourselves. The Vedas tell us that our true identity comes from the spirit soul and not the gross body. Actually we don’t need to learn this from the Vedas, for we can simply study our own life and the lives of others to realize this fact. As soon as a person dies, people become sad because the person who occupied that body has now left. Where have they gone? More specifically, what is it that has departed? The body remains standing right before us. It is lifeless, however, and it is this way because the soul has left the body. Therefore any sane person would conclude that it is the soul that defines life and not the attributes of a person’s body, a body which is subject to creation and destruction. Since the soul represents our real identity, the Vedas tell us that the aim of life is to search after progress for the soul and not the body.

How does the soul progress? Similar to the theory of evolution, the soul actually transmigrates from species to species over the course of millions of lifetimes. So many different species exist, up to 8,400,000 varieties, due to the influences of karma and guna. Karma is fruitive activity, or work, and guna is a material quality. The three material qualities are goodness, passion, and ignorance. Combine these qualities in varying proportions and you get all the different species. Yet we see there is a major difference between human beings and any other species. The key distinction lies in the area of intelligence. Human beings are much smarter than any other species, for they are even smart enough to know they are going to die.

This is the key point. If we human beings know that we are going to die, shouldn’t we try to understand where we will go after death, or even try to find out where we were before our birth? It is for this very reason that God gave us religion. One of the most famous religious treatises is the Vedanta-sutras, written by Vyasadeva, an incarnation of Lord Krishna. The Vedanta-sutras open with the aphorism, athato-brahma-jijnasa, which means “Now is the time for inquiring about Brahman.” Brahman is God’s feature as the all-pervading impersonal effulgence. Everything, including matter and spirit, is Brahman. Thus human life is meant for inquiring about all of matter and spirit, finding out why we are here, and then using that knowledge to achieve spiritual perfection.

So we must ask ourselves if all of our material advancements help us to better understand God, or do they take us further away from Him? The answer to this question is fairly obvious. Technological advancements are aimed at increasing sense pleasure. People want a better way of life, which means a better form of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. If we study all the sybaritic pursuits of man, we’ll see that each one of them can be classified into one of these four activities. One may ask what is wrong with eating or sleeping. Nothing really, for we certainly require these activities in order to remain alive. However, we see that the animal kingdom already enjoys eating, sleeping, and mating. Some species, such as the dogs and monkeys, have no problem finding sexual partners. The hogs have no problem eating their own stool.

Human beings are supposed to be smarter than the animals. Yet if we spend all our time figuring out ways to find more comfortable living arrangements, more palatable food, or more beautiful sex partners, we aren’t really using our intelligence to our advantage. The animals already engage in these activities, without any of the hassles. Being a human being means not only having an advanced level of intelligence, but also having to suffer through hankering and lamenting. The human mind is always hankering after things it wants, and lamenting over things it is missing out on. The animals don’t have these worries. They simply live off their animalist tendencies.

So how do material pursuits take us away from God? The Lord is very kind to us. He essentially gives us what we want. If we want to remain in this material world, acting out our desires, He won’t stand in our way. The laws of karma state that one must suffer or enjoy the reactions of their work. This means that if we are pious, we ascend to a higher form of life in our next birth, and if we are sinful, we get demoted to a lower species. Either way, we remain in the material world, forced to repeat the cycle of birth and death. Those people, however, who want to return to God’s spiritual world never have to take birth again after their current life is over.

“Those who worship the demigods will take birth among the demigods; those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings; those who worship ancestors go to the ancestors; and those who worship Me will live with Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bg. 9.25)

Wanting to return to Krishna’s spiritual world is one thing, but how do we make this dream a reality? The great Vedic saints tell us that there is only one way to achieve spiritual perfection, and that is through the practice of bhakti yoga, or devotional service. Bhakti means love and yoga means linking our consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness. Our consciousness is determined by the activities of our spirit soul, jivatma, combined with our material body. The Supreme Consciousness belongs to God. Since He is the Supreme Lord, He expands Himself as the Supersoul, or Paramatma, which resides within the heart of every living entity. God is already inside us, we just need to connect with Him.

This connection is called yoga. There are various types of yoga, but only the yoga of love and devotion will guarantee us a return trip back to the spiritual world in the afterlife. Devotional service involves nine different processes but the one most recommended for this age is the chanting of the holy names of God. God has many different names based on His activities and spiritual qualities, but the Vedas tell us that two of His most important names are Krishna and Rama. When we combine these names together with Hara, or the name of God’s pleasure potency, we get what is known as the maha-mantra: “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”. This mantra is so beautiful because anyone can chant it, regardless of their religious faith or personal disposition. This mantra is free of any defects, for it doesn’t aim to provide any type of material advancement, but rather guarantees the greatest progress for the soul.

“When one is not attached to anything, but at the same time accepts everything in relation to Krishna, one is rightly situated above possessiveness. On the other hand, one who rejects everything without knowledge of its relationship to Krishna is not as complete in his renunciation." (Shrila Rupa Gosvami, Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu 2.255-256)

The great saints following in the line of Lord Chaitanya advise that we should accept those things in life which are favorable towards the execution of devotional service and, at the same time, reject those things which are unfavorable. In this regard, we can take advantage of modern technology by using it to help us serve Krishna. Computers and the internet can be used to learn more about the Vedas and also to disseminate Vedic information to others. We can use cars and airplanes to travel to different holy places, or even just to attend our local temples. The possibilities are endless. Human life is auspicious, for it represents the best chance for the spirit soul to reconnect with God. Rekindling our forgotten loving relationship with the Supreme Lord represents the height of progress.

The Creator

“The highly renowned Rama rages into a fury against those who dare brave against Him. He is extremely powerful, for He can completely stop the onset of a pulsing river simply by using His arrows. Shriman Rama can bring down all the stars, planets, and the sky itself by use of His arrows. He is even capable of saving the earth if it should collapse. The illustrious Rama, if He wanted to, could deluge the whole world by breaking apart the shorelines of the seas. With His arrows, He can resist the onset of the oceans and the wind. After withdrawing the whole world into Himself, that highly renowned best of mnn, by virtue of His powers, is capable of again creating the whole world with all its creatures.” (Akampana speaking to Ravana, Valmiki Ramayana, Aranya Kand, 31.23-26)

During every election cycle in America, and especially when the presidency is up for grabs, we see politicians make many promises on how they will fix the problems that exist in a particular city, state, or country. Voters like to hear such things because they inherently know that people are suffering in the world and that they need to be helped. Some politicians make more grandiose promises than others, but the themes are generally the same. “I will end your suffering. I will bring jobs back. I will end war. I will clean up the environment.” They are essentially saying that they will make people happy. Sadly, the policies instituted by these politicians rarely succeed, for if they did, there would be no need to keep making new promises.

Followers of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India, know that the underlying problem for man is his forgetfulness of God. Not only should we understand who God is, but we should then use that knowledge to love Him and take to His service. This simple shift in mindset leads to a trickle-down effect whereby everyone in society can be happy. Yet we see that the solutions proposed by politicians never have anything to do with God. In fact, if politicians mention religion at all, they get criticized for imposing their values upon others. People generally take religion to be a kind of faith, something that is not universal to everyone. For this reason, they choose to elect leaders who avoid the issue of faith completely and who look for other ways to solve problems.

One of the more notable issues in the news lately is climate change. Scientists for centuries have made wild predictions about the future of the earth, and the situation is no different today. No less than thirty years ago, the scientific consensus was that the earth was headed for a major cooling period. People were worried if we would have enough food to sustain the population going forward. Only a few years later, these predictions reversed to the point where scientists began claiming there was global warming, which was caused primarily by human activity. Politicians love hearing these predictions because it means they can impose policies that restrict human activity. In essence, they get to form their own religion, anointing themselves as God. Many politicians today openly declare that they will stop the oceans from rising and the temperatures from increasing.

In previous ages, such claims would get you labeled as insane. How can a human being control the weather? If anything, the climate is the one thing that even staunch atheists never thought man could control. Sadly, that is not the case today. The theory of man-made global warming is just that, a theory. There is no scientific evidence to support it. The proponents point to the fact that a consensus of scientists now believes in man-made global warming. Yet this is not how science is supposed to work. It is never meant to be put up to a vote. It was also recently discovered through leaked emails that some of the leading scientists in favor of the global warming theory were lying and hiding their scientific data from the general public. The computer models used by these scientists were also leaked, and as a result, many computer scientists have scrutinized them to find out that the models were flawed. In many instances, the models themselves were bound to the raw data that was inputted; i.e. constant values were hard-coded into the programming routines. This actually violates the central rule when writing computer programs that do modeling. The data and the model itself must be completely isolated; otherwise the conclusions start to favor the data that is inputted. In essence, these scientists were fudging their data in hopes of reaching the conclusions they wanted.

“The whole cosmic order is under Me. By My will it is manifested again and again, and by My will it is annihilated at the end.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.8)

Such revelations are not very surprising to devotees of God. The scriptures tell us that God is the Creator, meaning He creates, maintains, and destroys all by Himself. The Vedas give us even more detail regarding creation. Lord Vishnu, the chief expansion of Lord Krishna, simply breathes out once and innumerable universes are created. When He breathes in, the same universes are destroyed. Within each creation, there are other expansions of God which manage the affairs of the world. Krishna’s three guna-avataras, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, are in charge of the material creation in each universe. Brahma creates, Vishnu maintains, and Shiva destroys.

“O son of Kunti, at the end of the millennium every material manifestation enters into My nature, and at the beginning of another millennium, by My potency I again create.” (Lord Krishna, Bg., 9.7)

These facts are all very simple to understand, but atheists don’t believe in the authoritative statements of the Vedas. Since they have never seen anyone with the power to create in person, they believe that the world was created through a combination of chemicals. If so, where did these chemicals come from? This they can’t answer. Dismissing the Vedas as mere mythology, scientists and politicians take up the quest to figure out how to understand and control nature. This kind of thinking represents the biggest hurdle to spiritual advancement. In fact, it is the main reason for our being in this material world. Thinking ourselves to be God, the Lord allowed us to take birth here, where we could play all day and pretend to be God. Of course we can never become God, even though many pseudo-religionists claim that they are already God. No amount of meditation, renunciation, or fruitive activity can make us the richest, wisest, most beautiful, most famous, most renounced, and strongest person. These attributes can only simultaneously be possessed by Krishna, or God. Therefore He is also known as Bhagavan.

The only possible way a person could believe that man can control the weather is if they don’t believe in God. Religion and atheistic science are diametrically opposed. As mentioned before, God creates everything. One simply has to accept the authoritative statements of Vedas and the great acharyas who follow its teachings. But breaking free of our desire to be like God is not easy. Therefore the Lord personally descends to earth from time to time to remind us of His greatness. This was the case during the Treta Yuga, the second time period of creation. As Lord Rama, God appeared in the guise of a kshatriya prince, famous throughout the world for His dedication to dharma and His fighting ability.

While staying in the forest of Janasthana with His brother, Lakshmana, and His wife, Sita Devi, Rama was attacked by 14,000 Rakshasas sent by their leader Ravana. The Lord single-handedly killed all of them. Akampana, one of the Rakshasas, managed to escape alive. He returned to Lanka and described the events to Ravana. Ravana was a committed atheist who believed that he was the strongest person in the world. Having defeated all the demigods, Ravana thought there was no one in the world who could conquer him. In essence, he thought he was God. Upon hearing what had happened in Janasthana, Ravana couldn’t believe it. He thought for sure that Rama must have had people helping him. Akampana made it emphatically clear that Rama had no help, for Lakshmana was away guarding Sita.

Ravana wanted to retaliate and attack Rama himself. In the above referenced statement, Akampana is trying to discourage Ravana from doing so. “Rama will easily kill you. No one can defeat Him in battle. In fact, He is not human at all.” The descriptions given by Akampana also serve as a way of revealing Rama’s divinity. The scriptures give us vivid descriptions of the Lord’s various incarnations, but God Himself doesn’t disclose His identity to everyone. There would be no purpose to this, for He doesn’t want people to be devoted to Him out of fear. The Lord knows full well that we would be happier serving Him, but He never gets in the way of our independence and free will. Just as we can never force another man or woman to love us, the choice is ours as to whether or not we want to love God.

Akampana clearly states that Rama could easily destroy the entire world and then immediately recreate it. This power belongs exclusively to God. We shouldn’t try to be like Ravana and fight God. That will only lead to our demise. Instead, if we sincerely take up devotional service to the Lord, we can have all the peace and prosperity that the politicians always promise. We don’t need higher taxes, more government regulations, or scientific computer models to make us happy, just more sincere devotion to God.

Go Krishna

“O Arjuna, I control heat, the rain and the drought. I am immortality, and I am also death personified. Both being and nonbeing are in Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.19)

“Go Green” is the latest slogan of the global warming movement, encouraging others to be environmentally conscious so as to help keep the earth’s ecosystem in balance. Global warming is a theory that the earth as a planet is steadily becoming warmer due to the activities of humans, namely the burning of fossil fuels by automobiles and factories. The central belief is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that increased levels of it cause the general climate of the earth to be affected. The idea was first proposed by a few scientists through their studies and has since gained in popularity amongst the scientific community.

The global warming movement itself is a group of individuals who, subscribing to the theory of global warming, lobby the public and private sectors to change their policies in hopes of stopping climate change. They believe that by taking various measures to curb carbon emissions, the environment will be protected. The movement is gaining popularity around the world and has members from all divisions of society. Very popular amongst political leaders, the movement also has strong grassroots support amongst college-age adults. According to Vedic philosophy, this material world is made up of three modes: goodness, passion, and ignorance. Everyone possesses these qualities to varying degrees. The mode of goodness is represented by our works of charity, kindness, and virtue. The global warming movement capitalizes on this quality in people to get them to become supporters of the cause.

Not everyone believes in global warming, for there are many detractors, including many scientists who don’t see any evidence of man-made global warming. The crux of the global warming movement lies in the idea that the earth’s average temperature has gradually increased in the last seventy years. However, 2007 was one of the coldest years on record, and many scientists use this to buttress their argument that the earth has always gone through warming and cooling spurts. In fact, in the 1970s, the scientific community was worried about global cooling and an impending ice age.

"…The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic."  (The Cooling World, Newsweek Magazine, April 28, 1975)

These dire predictions turned out to be completely wrong.  The same predictions are being made again today, but in the reverse direction.

The global warming movement may seem very innocent and harmless, but it in fact represents a great danger to devotees of God around the world. The central belief of the movement is that human beings are responsible for the weather. In one sense they are, but not in the way that we think. Predicaments in the material world are managed by karma, which is something created by God and His deputies. Karma is fruitive work which has positive and negative material reactions associated with it. Though human beings are responsible for their karma, God is actually responsible for creating, maintaining, and dissolving this world. As soon as we turn that responsibility over to human beings, then we stop believing in God. This thinking is, in essence, its own form of religion.

Every religion has its core components, such as scriptures, doctrines, penances, and a worshipable deity. The global warming movement is no different. Its scriptures are the scientific journals and the various books by pseudo-scientists such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Their doctrines are very well defined; the earth and its environment are the beginning and end of everything. Having a pristine wildlife with plenty of trees is the ultimate goal of life. Their penances involve driving hybrid cars, using fluorescent light bulbs, and recycling, all intended to stop carbon emissions. Their deity of worship is the government. The government is the only entity that can use force to stop the activities of the common man. Government is the only hope, since it can levy heavy taxes on so-called polluters and people with high carbon footprints.

Such a religion is actually very dangerous because it worships man instead of God. Man is subject to four defects from birth, namely the propensity to be illusioned, to commit mistakes, to have imperfect senses, and to cheat. Also, many of these leaders actually don’t subscribe to the beliefs of their movement. It was recently discovered that Al Gore, the movement’s chief spokesperson, consumes a large amount of electricity on a monthly basis. In response, Gore said he was renovating his house to include more solar panels and that he was doing all he could to limit his consumption. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger produces a huge carbon footprint by regularly travelling in his private airplane. In response to criticism, the governor says he is investing in “carbon offsets”. These carbon offsets are sold by companies that claim they will negate whatever carbon footprint you have by finding other areas where emissions can be reduced. The chief proponents of the global warming movement don’t even practice what they preach, and after being called out, they resort to buying their way out of hypocrisy.

The chief manifesto of the global warming movement is the Kyoto Protocol. Formed in 1992, the treaty sets limits on carbon emissions for countries around the world. Notably exempt from the treaty are China and India, two of the biggest polluters according to the movement’s definition. Such inconsistencies should be enough to discredit the movement, but it still pushes on. Their latest mantra is that a consensus of scientists now believes in man-made global warming, thus we should all hop on board. Science has never been decided by votes, but the leaders of the movement understand that they are losing credibility on the issue.

“By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane – a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide – India’s livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct.” (Cows with Gas: India’s Global-Warming Problem)

According to Vedic philosophy, cows are the most sacred of animals since they freely provide milk. They are to be held in the same regard as one’s own mother. The cow population is very large in India due to the protected status they receive. A cow is a representation of real wealth since one can live off the milk that it gives, which also provides a solution to the greatest economic problem, that of procuring food. God can provide for an unlimited population of cows; the more cows the better. Where the cow is protected, Lord Vishnu is worshiped, and all is well spiritually.

The global warming crisis isn’t actually a new phenomenon. At their core, the proponents of global warming legislation suffer from the material disease of identifying with one’s own body. The Vedas teach us that we are not this body, aham brahmasmi, “I am a spirit soul.” Once we start identifying with the body, we forget that everyone else is a spirit soul as well. Global warming activists think they are righteous and that everyone else is unrighteous due to their consumption habits. With this belief in mind, they elect leaders who are fit to decide who is worthy of using fossil fuels and who isn’t. These leaders also decide who will live and who will die, for they feel overpopulation is a burden on the environment as well. They gladly support the idea of abortion as a means of controlling the population and climate.

“Material advancement of civilization means advancement of the reactions of the threefold miseries due to celestial influence, earthly reactions and bodily or mental pains. By the celestial influence of the stars there are many calamities like excessive heat, cold, rains or no rains, and the aftereffects are famine, disease and epidemic. The aggregate result is agony of the body and the mind. Man-made material science cannot do anything to counteract these threefold miseries. They are all punishments from the superior energy of maya under the direction of the Supreme Lord. Therefore our constant touch with the Lord by devotional service can give us relief without our being disturbed in the discharge of our human duties. The asuras, however, who do not believe in the existence of God, make their own plans to counteract all these threefold miseries, and so they meet with failures every time.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 1.14.10 Purport)

The fact is that God takes care of everything with regards to the environment and the climate. Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is capable of maintaining innumerable amounts of people and cows, and whatever else is on this planet. When the Lord personally appeared some five thousand years ago, as a child He held up a mighty hill named Govardhana by His one finger for a fortnight. The citizens of Vrindavana standing underneath the hill were provided protection from the torrential rains. This is one of many examples illustrating our need to connect with Krishna. That is our real problem. The problems of gas-guzzling SUVS, private airplanes, and oil drilling are more spiritual than they are environmental. Being bound up in fruitive activity, we constantly need more and more material sense gratification. Attachment to such activity causes us to accept a new body after this life is finished, and thus the whole cycle of birth, old age, disease, and death is repeated.

“Unnecessarily cutting trees without consideration is another example of human debauchery. The paper industry cuts many hundreds and thousands of trees for its mills, and with the paper so much rubbish literature is published for the whimsical satisfaction of human society. Unfortunately, although these industrialists are now happy in this life by dint of their industrial development, they do not know that they will incur the responsibility for killing these living entities who are in the forms of trees.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Chaitanya Charitamrita, Adi 9.46 Purport)

In the Vedic tradition, Mother Earth is referred to as Bhumi Devi. Being worthy of our love and respect, she shouldn’t be unnecessarily burdened. In this sense, one can see the validity in wanting to curb pollution and other unnecessary activity. Genuine environmental causes are certainly very noble, as are other causes such as stopping domestic violence, researching cures for cancer and other diseases, and feeding the poor. Yet these activities are still on the material platform, part of the mode of goodness. Human life is meant for elevation to pure goodness through service to God. By becoming a sincere devotee, all our problems can be solved. For example, the high polluting cars and airplanes didn’t exist one hundred years ago, but were people any better off back then? Just because we have a clean environment doesn’t mean that we’ve achieved the aim of human life. Whether one rides around in a large car or on a small bicycle, if they still view material sense gratification as the ultimate aim of life, they will always remain in a precarious condition.

The solution to these problems is to take to the process of devotional service. By being dedicated to Krishna and always thinking about Him, we gradually lose our desire for material advancements. We undergo a spiritual awakening. With this revival in consciousness, we automatically become better stewards of the environment. If gasoline and other fossil fuels are used to serve Krishna, then we incur no sin whatsoever. Driving to temples, travelling to places of pilgrimages, using machinery to produce books about Krishna, driving to work so we can provide for food to be offered to Krishna…these are all ways we can utilize fossil fuels for Krishna’s benefit. If we constantly remember God and serve Him lovingly, then we can survive in any environmental condition.