To achieve compassion we do not need to become religious or ideological. The quality of our actions depends on our motivation. From my Buddhist viewpoint all things originate in the mind. A real sense of appreciation of humanity, compassion and love are the key. By focusing on wealth creation we are failing to protect what we have, says John Gray, professor of marine biology at the University of Oslo, Norway.
Politicians pay lip service to environmental problems at international conferences.
The agreements reached do little to slow global climate change and lead merely to endless discussions rather than action to save the world's biodiversity. Increasingly I am coming to believe that protecting the environmental riches we already have is, in economic terms, far more important than seeking growth and creating industries. For governments at least it seems that finding out more about the world we live in is worth doing only if it generates wealth. One side effect of the infotech and communications revolution is the rapid disappearance of minority languages around the world, since only a few majority languages are viable in a globalized, information-based economy. Many linguists predict that at least half of the world's 6,000 or so languages now spoken will be dead or dying by the year 2050.