US states and cities sue over Trump EPA’s repeal of emissions rules as reflected on by Sensei Michael Jinpa
Early this morning, fog hung thick over Harborview Point. You could not tell where the saltwater ended and the grey sky began. Our coastal home reminds us daily of this absence of separation. The tide does not stop at the pier. The air does not belong to any single harbor. We heard news that twenty-one states and major cities have filed suit against the federal power plant EPA emissions repeal. This inescapable intimacy came sharply into view once more.
The legal challenge speaks of economic timelines and statutory authority. It addresses the rollback of essential safeguards. Yet, a fundamental spiritual distortion lies beneath these dry court filings. This distortion is the illusion of isolation. In Zen practice, we constantly return to the truth of pratityasamutpada, or dependent origination. Nothing exists on its own terms. Coal and gas burned in distant inland valleys do not vanish when their smoke climbs into the atmosphere. That carbon returns as rising sea levels along our wooden bulkheads. It warms currents that displace local kelp forests. It also brings increasingly violent autumn gales.
Confronting the EPA Emissions Repeal: A Spiritual Lens
During my years as a hospice chaplain, I sat with many people facing their final days. The most acute suffering rarely came from physical decay alone. Often, it stemmed from a stubborn denial of reality until the eleventh hour. We practice a collective form of terminal denial when we pretend our actions carry no consequence. Similarly, we deny reality when an economy thrives while devouring its own biological conditions. Repealing protections on greenhouse gas emissions attempts to evade the ledger of cause and effect. However, karma never honors such evasion.
Litigation, in this light, becomes an act of collective friction. Governors, mayors, and attorneys general step into court. They are not merely engaged in partisan maneuvering. Instead, they attempt to install a legal brake against deliberate blindness. From a contemplative stance, confronting structural harm is not hostile. It is a necessary expression of care. Radical compassion is not passive gentleness. In the Mahayana tradition, compassion holds the edge of a sword. It cuts through delusion to protect life from reckless self-destruction.
Interdependence and Our Shared Breath
Legal remedies alone cannot heal the spiritual roots of this crisis. A lawsuit may preserve a regulation. However, it cannot mandate reverence for the earth. The urge to dismantle protections stems from an ancient, insatiable craving for short-term gain. This craving remains heedless of the debt left to our children and other living beings. We will continue to wage an exhausting, piecemeal war in courtroom corridors so long as we treat energy production as a balance sheet detached from the web of life.
In our arts and fishing enclave, neighbors frequently gather. They mend torn nets and steady old docks. We know that if one piling rots, the entire slip weakens under the winter surge. We must cultivate that same plain, grounded sanity in our national consciousness. True security does not come from burning through our common inheritance at top speed. It comes from aligning our shared life with the reality of our interdependence.
Tonight, the sanctuary bell sounds across the salt air. We sit quietly with the breath. Each inhalation draws in the atmosphere shaped by countless engines, forests, and oceans across the globe. Each exhalation sends our own small measure back into the world. To breathe consciously is to acknowledge that no outside territory exists where we can safely cast our waste. May those pursuing accountability against the EPA emissions repeal remain steadfast. May the rest of us awaken to the sacred responsibility of every breath we share.
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