When Cameron meets Obama...

Prime Minister David Cameron is to meet with President Obama today in Washington. Difficult items on the agenda - Afghanistan, BP and the economy. What have previous relationships between prime ministers and presidents been like and what is the nature of the special relationship? These will be the questions being asked by the media over the next few days and the BBC have created a short clip of video on the history of some of those relationships. The Telegraph also discussed the likelihood of Obama and Cameron getting on last year. However, the trip, and the history of the relationship, is due to be overshadowed by the ongoing concern over the release of Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi to Libya and what that had to do with BP. Cameron has now bowed to pressure to meet with four US senators to answer questions about the controversy. The Guardian discusses the issue.

Green Buddhism.

Our environment is the ultimate middle-path. In order for life to exist and thrive upon Earth the environmental conditions must be perfectly balanced for optimum benefit. It is because of the importance of this delicate balance that, as a Buddhist, I am also a committed environmentalist.

So, as you can imagine I've been watching with horror like everyone else the volcano of oil gushing night and day from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Ultimately this BP disaster has come about from our collective greed for cheap fuel at the expense of our greater environment to power our excessive lifestyles.

Part of this lifestyle comes from a long human tradition of the ignorance that nature plays in our lives. Humanity has for centuries seen nature as an impediment to its happiness and material success. Because of its ease of exploitation nature was seen not as an equal but merely as a means to an end.

So, we sought to "tame" it to further our desires for material wealth and success. We ignorantly assumed that since we were the "smartest beings" on the planet that we didn't have to live within the limits of nature. We saw ourselves as not only independent from everything else but superior. Thus, nature was there to satisfy our insatiable greed. This was especially embraced by the monotheistic cultures who saw themselves as divine offspring and Earth their property to do with it whatever they pleased. Since in ignorance these cultures believed that they weren't interconnected with other beings, (which would have required them to live in greater harmony) and had been given dominion over all other living things then surely (they thought) pursuing such a individualistic destiny couldn't hurt us.

In Europe, they chopped down tree after tree. They couldn't tear the trees down fast enough to keep up with the insatiable fires of industry. The race to industrial wealth and easy living was so ferocious that soon Europe was nearly completely nude of trees. Yet no matter how much steel was turned into new machines to make our lives easier it wasn't enough for our greed, and so industry accelerated further and further. Once the trees were gone we began burning dirty, toxic materials such as coal and oil. Raw sewage and toxic byproducts from production were pumped mercilessly into pristine rivers, lakes and seas. The cities were dirty and the air hazy and acrid from pollution causing much sickness. Yet our lust for the easy life grew unabated.

Today we humans are waking up one by one from our egotistical binge to one nasty hangover. It is clear now that our actions aren't independent of everything else, and that our greed has sped up our own destruction. Yet still this greed has a strong hold over many people, and like an addict who knows the drug is poison, we continue to use deadly energy regardless of the consequences. Why? Because no one wants to give up living the easy life of cheap energy that enables us to spend that money on pleasure pursuits.

In order to make the right sacrifices to bring humanity more in-line with nature and the middle-path we have to realize that we are all interdependent upon one another. And none more so than Earth herself. Our past actions of environmental rape through excessive industry are already coming back to cause us suffering via climate change--in my belief, that's societal karma bearing fruit. And just like pain is the bodies way of warning us to stop what you're doing, so to is the suffering we experience now from environmental degradation an alert to change our behavior. As we know, karma has an energy of its own, which could be seen in the very real possibility of environmental destruction getting too far gone to reverse course. I fear that could happen soon if we don't take immediate action. This BP spill is one of those pains that should serve as a warning sign. Buddhism demands that we care for nature as much as we care for ourselves.

~Peace to all beings~

Obama's oil problem

Obama is increasingly under fire to stop oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. He can only really put pressure on BP as the federal government has no equipment to deal with this disaster itself, but the President and his administration are worried that this could turn out to be a Hurricane Katrina moment for his presidency. Mark Mardell has been following the story and writing some excellent analysis of what it means. Here is some footage of how BP's latest attempt to plug the leak is going. Obama is to head down to Louisiana for the second time today to see the real damage that it is already causing. How much longer can the administration wait before intervening or can they intervene? What does this mean for the administration's energy policy and the administration itself?