Watching the News out of Copenhagen: One Family One Home

I've been following all the news that comes out of Copenhagen anxiously: the youth protests, the tiny islands lobbying for their existence, the endless science debates, the leaked agreements from behind closed doors, the political interest lobbying. For the most part, the news is discouraging. The countries must agree to a fair, ambitious, and binding deal in order to avert widespread catastrophe. We don't have a lot of practice agreeing as a world community.

But when I step back, and take a moment to think about what is really happening, I am amazed. A large percentage of world leaders are coming together with the realization that our futures are inextricably linked together. We differ in politics, economics, religion, and world view, but we share one home. We are all responsible for what happens to the most vulnerable of us. What happens in America or Europe has a direct impact on the fate of Bangladesh and Tuvalu.

Not only are leaders meeting together, but the people of the world are speaking. We are looking at the science and thinking about what might happen to our fellow world citizens, to our children, to their children. We understand the fragility and interconnectedness of our planet. We realize our individual actions impact the whole world, and we can't bear to let children go hungry or families to lose homes.

We might witness a lot of politics as usual coming out of Copenhagen. Special interests will impact negotiations. But let's not lose hope. We are witnessing perhaps the first time the whole world is coming together and talking about how we can take care of one another. We might make mistakes, we might even fail in major ways, but we are having the conversation and we are creating the vision and we are thinking about ourselves as one family sharing a common home.