 to this morning's plenary session entitled Collective Consciousness, Human Maturity, and the Challenge of Sustainability. So it's a very exciting panel and the topic for this morning's session came about through conversations with our civil society colleagues at the United Nations about the dire need for effective global governance. Global governance based upon human maturity which prioritizes the common good and right relationship with the earth, above nationalistic and economic interests. So it's a challenging subject but one we feel that the presenters today are capable of handling and we have a bit of a different format for you this morning which we hope you'll enjoy. I'm going to invite Peter Adriens up in a moment to do a presentation which will include a little devotional section and then Dr. Peter Brown who's written a book entitled The Right Relationship will speak and I'll introduce him further as well and then Arthur Dahl who you heard last night will give a response to the two presentations and then we'll open the floor for questions from you. So we look forward to a dynamic and interactive panel this morning and there will be a break in there. We'll let you know when the time is right for that. So let me now introduce Peter Adriens who's a dear friend and a close colleague who I've enjoyed working with the past few years. Peter will be speaking on the essential role of religion in fostering a sustainable world. Peter Adriens has served as non-governmental organization liaison for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States for since 1990 focusing primarily on issues of the environment and sustainable development. He's represented the Baha'i International community and the Baha'is of the US at numerous international and national fora. He also serves on the governing board of the International Environment Forum and in June of this year he received the Interfaith Bridge Builders Award from the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington DC for his passionate commitment to interreligious care for the earth. So please help me to welcome Peter Adriens. Well good morning friends so wonderful to be here with you this morning and I recognize several friends that came just for this morning. Guests of the conference here and I appreciate everyone coming to hear this talk and these talks this morning. We've been putting this panel together now for several months and I'm very excited about it. More about that later. We're going to start out this morning with spiritual foundations and I have a dear friend who's a Catholic nun who goes around the country teaching about sustainability and whenever she does that she says I never start without first bringing in the Holy Scriptures. She said when we begin with the scriptures everything else falls into place. So it's in that spirit that we're starting this session. What you're going to see are selections from various sacred scriptures as well as Native American reflections on our theme this morning. And I'm very pleased and honored that we have musicians with us and actual live readers that are going to help with this presentation. Well that's the spiritual foundation on which the rest of my talk is built. I hope you enjoyed it. I find that looking at the sacred scriptures of the various religions and these reflections from Native Americans and the excerpts from statements by the Baha'i International community really say a lot if not all of what we need to hear about this subject. The essential role of religion in fostering a sustainable world. But I'm going to speak some this morning about how faith communities have put into action these spiritual teachings. Baha'u'llah's injunction to us is to translate spiritual principles into actions for the betterment of the world. And this is clearly going on not only in the Baha'i community but of course in faith communities across the country. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the connection between science and religion because this is a very important topic. And it's one that's experienced some shifting in the last few years across the broad spectrum of faith groups and a recognition coming together between science and religion. Finally I'm going to conclude with some reflections on the Baha'i community and its approach. And I think that there are some unique features to that approach that I hope you'll appreciate when we get through this. But let's start out with this. The Baha'i International community back in 1991 was the first non-governmental organization to make a statement about a proposed document at the Earth Summit. It was called the Earth Charter. We spoke a little bit last night about that, made reference to that in Arthur's talk. But in the statement that they wrote, this is one thing that they said about the role of religion in fostering a sustainable world. The changes required to reorient the world toward a sustainable future imply degrees of sacrifice, social integration, selfless action, and unity of purpose rarely achieved in human history. These qualities have reached their highest degree of development through the power of religion. The world's religious communities have a major role to play in inspiring these qualities in their members, releasing latent capacities of the human spirit, and empowering individuals to act on behalf of the planet, its peoples, and future generations. So I'm going to take you through a few milestones in my career and working for the National Assembly on these issues. I started back in 1990 and it was when preparations were underway for the 92 Earth Summit. I remember going to that first meeting on actually a day one of my job and there were 120 organizations assembled to try and figure out how can we have a stronger collective impact on the Earth Summit by working together. And I met a woman there who was with the United Nations Association and when I introduced myself as a Baha'i, she said, as a Baha'i representative, she said, what are the Baha'is doing here? Back then, the notion of religion weighing in on a development or environment conference was a bit foreign, at least in her mind. So the answer that I managed to summon up on day one of my job, while I still went behind my ears, was that the Baha'is have a very strong interest and vision for the future of society on the planet. And it goes way into the distant future. And we see the environmental problem is really a spiritual problem and a human problem. And we're working for the advancement of civilization. That's what this conference is about. That seemed to satisfy her. And she and I have become steadfast friends over the years, but right from that very moment. Now, I have to say that this slide that's up here now with Gary Gardner at Worldwatch Institute represents another milestone for me in my career. And my kind of connecting the dots on religion and sustainability. Gary Gardner back in 2002, wrote invoking the spirit religion and spirituality in the quest for a sustainable world. And he talked in there about the divide between environmental and religious groups, the classic divide. But he pointed to several assets that religious communities had. And he advised environmental groups to take a closer look at religion and religious groups to take a closer look at environmental groups and to see how to get together. That paper became a chapter in state of the world 2003, the annual publication of Worldwatch Institute. And interestingly, Worldwatch had not written about religion in its 25 year history. This was the first time that they did that. It turned out to be the most popular chapter in that publication. And Gary traveled the world talking about this theme. It resulted in the third publication you see here inspiring progress religions contributions to sustainable development. It's a book. And I'll talk about that in just a second. First, the religious assets for building a sustainable world, according to Gary Gardner. Religions have the capacity to shape worldviews. That's what they do. They bring us an understanding of the cosmos and our orientation to each other, to God, and to all of creation. They also have moral authority. Religions are very powerful source for guiding us in the right direction. And religions have played a very important role in major advances in civil society and understanding. The civil rights era, religions pay to roll the abolition of slavery, so forth. Thirdly, religions have numbers. I don't have specific statistics, but the vast majority of the world's peoples are religious and have a religious orientation. So there are millions upon millions of people that look to religion for guidance. And they collectively have tremendous power. Also, there are significant material resources in the religions. And religions have a tremendous community building capacity. So these are things that Gary pointed to in that first piece, and it were echoed through his other publications about some of the things that religion brings to the table. Now, the story of Tony Deemer is the way that Gary starts out his book, Inspiring Progress. I want to just read a little bit of an excerpt from the introduction to that book. He says, Tony Deemer is an entrepreneur, inventor, and civic leader, a dynamo of progress in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the South Pacific. He runs a car dealership, an air charter service in the capital city of Port Vila, with 18 employees between the two businesses. He's developing a new kind of fuel to power the cars of Vanuatu. And he serves on the board of a local Baha'i school. And as president of the National Red Cross, Deemer cuts a familiar profile, millions of gogetters like him worldwide, provided the financial capital, technological innovation and civic leadership that generated unprecedented social advances in the 20th century. But look closer, and it's clear Deemer's activities have an added 21st century twist. His innovative island fuel, and I think I know his innovative island fuel, which is made from coconut oil and burns more clearly cleanly than petroleum. A reflection of his desire to leave something behind for my kids, some hope of a greener future. He believes in making an honest profit, but has no plans to patent the fuel, even after years of trial and error experimentation and the hope that it can be made widely available and affordable. And his businesses employ as many women as men, including as mechanics. So he goes on later, he says the ethical dimensions of Deemer's vision come from his Baha'i faith, his spiritual home for 41 years, and he goes into some of the Baha'i beliefs. And then this is, I think, very interesting. He said Deemer's life story embodies both a challenge and a hope for advancement in the 21st century. The challenge is to redefine progress, to revamp economies, to work in harmony with a natural environment and serve all people. That's our challenge when we're talking about sustainability. And Tony Deemer is addressing that challenge in his own way in his spheres of influence. The hope is that religious leaders and communities will recognize the powerful contribution they can make and lend their considerable influence to it. So that's how he opens his book, Inspiring Progress. Then there was a Yale conference report called toward a new consciousness values to sustain human and natural communities. This came out in 2007. In there it says the changes needed to sustain human and natural communities can only be achieved in the context of the rise of a new consciousness, a spiritual awakening, a transformation of the human heart. This is coming from an academic institution, but they gathered together leaders of thought in various disciplines. Religions played key roles in ending slavery in the civil rights movement and overcoming apartheid in South Africa, and they're now turning attention with increasing strength to the environment. So those are the words of Gus Speth, who's head of the School of Forestry at Yale, and has recently moved on to be connected with Vermont Law School. Another very important figure in the religion and ecology movement is Mary Evelyn Tucker. She and her husband, John Grimm, are friends of mine. I met them in 97 at Rio plus five. And we were working together on the earth charter. She was at this conference that Yale held. She said no other group of institutions can wield the power of the particular moral authority of the religions. And she should know. She and her husband started a series of conferences at Harvard in the mid nineties. Some of you may be familiar with on religion and ecology. And they studied 10 religious persuasions. Scholars from all of these areas convened at Harvard. And a series of publications came out of that on religion and ecology. It was a groundbreaking effort. And it resulted in something called the forum on religion and ecology, which is based now at Yale, and headed by Mary Evelyn. In 2008, the Sierra Club published its first ever national report on environmental engagement of faith communities. And in there they have one example from every state in the United States of how religions are getting engaged. And it's a very broad cross section and sampling of ways for religions that religions are actually being active. It says in the introduction, we recognize that lasting social change rarely takes place without the active engagement of communities of faith. For two decades, religious leaders have been linking core religious values such as stewardship, justice, and concern for future generations with environmental concerns. So this is another kind of milestone to have the Sierra Club now recognizing this important role that religions are playing. Another very interesting example, Sally Bingham, Episcopal priest California, saw the issues of climate change and knew that something had to change and felt that the church was a place that this change could take place and could begin to inspire others. She founded an organization called Episcopal Power and Light to educate religious congregations in her own church about the importance of reducing their carbon impact and increasing their energy efficiency. That very quickly became Interfaith Power and Light because the idea just took off and the renewal project. It's a video that's available online. Tells stories from America's religious environmental movement. As a result of a lot of it, the work that Reverend Sally Bingham has done. This book Love God and Heal Earth is another example. It's testimonies from all the various religious people that have been involved in this interfaith power and light project. The green sanctuary program of the Unitarian Universalist Ministry for the Earth is another example of translating spiritual principles into action. It's a wonderful guide towards making religious buildings true environmental sanctuaries and by reducing their carbon footprint and really putting into action faith teachings. They say in that publication, these environmental crises may be the greatest moral challenge facing humankind in the 21st century. Religions may be the only human institution still able to respond to the challenge. A different level of awareness, a spiritual awareness is critical. How many Jews is it to take to change a light bulb? This is not my joke. This is the joke that led the campaign called a light among nations that was launched by Kojal, the coalition on the environment and Jewish life. They were able to educate people through this campaign about the importance of just switching a light bulb from incandescent to CFL, but then to tell them the much bigger story of how many more things we can do. They even had a program Take a Scientist to Synagogue. It was a symbol of how science and religion is beginning to really work together. I'm also deeply involved with this organization, U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. It's an organization that was born out of the desire to respond to the U.N. decade of education for sustainable development here in the United States. It now comprises over 300 organizations that are doing extraordinarily wonderful work in education for sustainable development. It's broken into various concentration areas that we call sectors. The faith sector is one that I've been most deeply involved with, compiling resources across the faith communities, both from a specific denominational standpoint and from interfaith perspectives. The partnership, and if you go to their website, uspartnership.org, you can see that there are a lot of resources that have been compiled. If any of you are school teachers, K through 12, there's a whole set of standards for education for sustainable development that has been developed by the K through 12 sector. And higher education is another area that is being addressed. There's a lot going on in the colleges and universities. I believe it was mentioned yesterday also by Arthur that the alliance of religions and conservations has launched an initiative to engage religions in seven-year plans for generational change, environmental action plans. And this is brought on mostly by the awareness of the importance of responding to the climate crisis. So many different religions are going to be launching their plans later this year. I believe in November. And the Bahá'í international community is also playing a part in that. And then of course, as Duncan would say, a shameless plug for our own organization, the International Environment Forum, which is integrating its conference into the ABS conference this year. And every year has held annual conferences to raise awareness in the Bahá'í community and beyond because our membership is open to anyone with an interest in the Bahá'í teachings and the environment and sustainable development. The pictures you see are from Oxford and from Canada, where two different conferences were held. The Canadian conference, I was able to attend. Both of them were on climate change. And they were really wonderful and extraordinary gatherings. And the Canadian one, I have to say, had some wonderful outputs because the National Assembly of Canada wrote to the Canadian Bahá'í community across the country after the conference and told them about it and encouraged them to integrate environmental considerations into their everyday activities to blend environmental awareness and action with the rhythm of life in the community. That inspired a lot of very interesting responses from the community, which I'm not going to go into this morning. I also could go down a long list. You see the et cetera at the end. This is just to give you a sense of the kind of things that are happening. The National Religious Partnership for the Environment was formed several years ago. It's mainline Protestants, evangelicals, the Jewish religion and Catholic. We have in the audience Jerry Lawson from the EPA Energy Star for Congregations. He and I are friends from working together and collaborating over the years. Energy Star for Congregations was set up by the Environmental Protection Agency to help churches and religious institutions to reduce their emissions and to become more environmentally sustainable. And the House of Worship in Chicago, the Baha'i House of Worship, was a participant in them, helping them to fine-tune and develop their program to measure the impact of energy used in various congregations. And that's just been launched in a new release. And it's a tool that any church, any large religious building can plug into to measure their impact and the progress in reducing their energy consumption. FCNL is the Friends Committee on National Legislation. They have a headquarters here in Washington. And a few years ago, they took an old building, which was their office, and they completely greened it to the point of putting in new geothermal heat, solar features, environmentally friendly features. And they use that as a teaching tool for members of Congress and other national leaders that visit their offices. And it's quite inspirational. They've done a beautiful job of taking advantage of the teachable moment where you go into the building and you see their small signs around the building that give hints of why we did this and why we did that. It's very tastefully done, but it's very educational. The Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boise is another one I wanted to mention because I was inspired when I learned of this story. It's a Lutheran, evangelical church in Boise, Idaho, led by a minister, Trie Robinson, who was environmentally oriented from his earliest days. But because of the divide between environment and religion, never brought it up with his congregation over 25 years. But his awareness of the environmental crisis really inspired him one day to make a sermon on this. And it took a lot of courage on his part. He tells about it. He didn't know whether that would be the beginning of his demise as the pastor of that church. But he was so convinced and the sermon was so powerful that he got a standing ovation after the sermon, which had never happened in his 25 years as a minister. So that was a confirmation. Anyway, I think I'm running beyond my time, so I'm going to jump ahead. We're going to science and religion now. And of course, the Baha'i audience here will be familiar with so many references to science and religion being complimentary in the Baha'i teachings. This is a quote from Ado Baha, one which I could have picked out of many. Science and religion should go forward together. Indeed, they should be like two fingers of one hand. Gus Speth again, 30 years ago, I thought that with enough good science, we would be able to solve the environmental crisis. I was wrong. I used to think that the greatest problems threatening the planet were pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. I was wrong there, too. I now believe that the greatest problems are pride, apathy, and greed, because that's what's keeping us from solving the environmental problem. For that, I now see that we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we in the scientific community don't know how to do that. But you in the faith community, in this case he was speaking to evangelicals, you do. We need your help. So this is beautiful. This is the scientific community reaching out. And I have a story of my own about that. I was invited to organize a workshop called People of Faith Respond to Climate Change with Concrete Actions. This is a workshop at the National Conference on Science Policy and the Environment, in effect a gathering of 1,200 scientists. They wanted faith communities to come. And they wanted to get into dialogue with faith communities. What came out of that, we had a Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, evangelical, and other participants, but also many in the science community. And I found it tremendously reinforcing how the scientists there really asked the faith community to do its part and to establish a partnership working together because science can tell us what's going on. Religion really tells us why we should respond and it provides the motivation. We need both. Finally, E.O. Wilson, famous naturalist and the world's top scholar on ants, wrote the creation and appealed to save life on earth. And he was really appealing to people of faith. He said science and religion are two of the most potent forces on earth and they should come together to save the creation. And that was not just a flip-comment. He's deeply concerned about the future of the planet and recognizes the role that religion can play. Finally, Richard Seizek, evangelical leader, got together with Eric Chivian, a scientist. And in a meeting in 2005, Richard Seizek had an epiphany about the role of faith communities in responding to the environmental crisis. And together they wrote an article and they said this, we left. This was after a meeting of evangelical leaders and scientists. We left changed people, more convinced than ever that scientists and evangelicals had to speak with one voice and do everything in their power to say this indescribably beautiful and precious gift we've all been given. Okay, I'm going to conclude now with a few reflections and excerpts from statements from the Baha'i institutions on this subject. And I'm drawing first from the Rizwan message of 1996, because it was a very important message. Rizwan is a period, for those of you that aren't Baha'is, it's a period of the year where we celebrate Baha'u'llah's station as a manifestation of God. And it's a very sacred time of year and the House of Justice usually sends a message to the Baha'is. They said in 1996, the next four years will represent an extraordinary period in the history of our faith, a turning point of epical magnitude. What the friends throughout the world are now being asked to do is to commit themselves, their material resources, their abilities, and their time to the development of a network of training institutes on a scale never before attempted. This is the focus of the Baha'i community. Since 1996, it's going to be the focus for the next decade, because we are laying the foundation in our own community and understanding and reaching out to the community at large on the importance of people coming together. This plan is set at one of the most critical times in the life of the planet. They also said in that letter, it is meant to prepare our community to cope with the accelerating changes occurring in the world. We know many of those changes now more directly than we did back then. And to place the community in a position both to withstand the weight of the accompanying tests and challenges and to make more visible a pattern of functioning to which the world can turn for aid and example in the wake of a tumultuous transition. The world's crying need for the divine prescriptions, they said later in 2001, is made plain by the ills of flicking society at every level in all parts of the planet. We must be swift in ministering to this need. Finally, humanity's crying need will not be met by a struggle among competing ambitions or by protest of the countless wrongs afflicting a desperate age. It calls rather for a fundamental change of consciousness that the time has come when each human being on earth must learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human community. And this is the vision that I'm going to leave you with. We are in this plenary this morning about our collective consciousness and human maturity and sustainability. And I think this is a good note to close on. The Baha'i efforts really are focused on bringing the human race forward and working towards an ever advancing civilization. Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter, for that inspiring overview of the role of religion and sustainability and for all your hard work in representing the Baha'i community in this work in the U.S. I really appreciate it. And for those of you who may have questions, there's going to be some ushers circulating with pieces of paper and pens. And you can just put up your hand and they'll hand those to you and then they'll collect the questions and we'll have a chance at the end for all the speakers to address your questions. So please do write them