Earth Circles are designed to take advantage of the power of mutual support and they have the potential to strengthen the social movement for climate action.  By providing a safe place in which to acknowledge our feelings about what is happening in the world, we can help each other take steps that will reverberate locally, regionally and globally.  Earth Circles can also help us foresee and cope with the dramatic changes that lie ahead.

We offer the following Guiding Principles for framing the work of Earth Circles:

• To address climate change, we need to embrace our responsibility to one another, to future generations, and to the whole web of life on which our survival depends.
• Climate change, like many other complex issues, has scientific, political, economic, psychological, cultural, ethical and spiritual dimensions, all of which need to be addressed in order to develop and carry out effective, lasting transformation. The moral, ethical and spiritual bankruptcy of consumerist society is laid bare in this crisis and must be addressed if we are to survive. 
• It is time to think deeply about the root causes of our predicament and to move to action informed by the best that collective human wisdom can offer us. The urgency is real. So too is the need to call on our moral imagination, guided more by our love of life in all its forms than by our fear of disaster. 
• An underlying cause of climate change is that often we forget that all of life is connected; that we are not separate from the natural world; and that everything we do affects the planet, and with it, our fellow human beings. This means that we are all part of the problem and we can all be part of the solution. Remembering and experiencing our connection to all of life is a key to our work.
• To be effective, our actions on climate change need to be based on understanding the dignity and equal deservedness/worth of every person and all of creation. A sustainable world will need to include respect for universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace. This is part of the work we must support.
• Effective action is possible when individuals come together in sustained communities designed to tap their deepest emotional, intellectual, spiritual and political potential.

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