National Preach-In on Global Warming
February 10, 2013
Dear friends, grace and peace to you from God our Creator, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Imagine…
A man is sitting at the desk in his home office.
It is in the late evening.
He is sifting through and paying some of the household bills.
Suddenly there is a loud noise…
He raises his head…
Then a crash, and yelling and screams.
The man recognizes the voices of his wife and kids.
The man shifts in his chair a bit, and comments - to himself…
“As soon as I finish these bills, I’m going to get up and see what’s going on.”
Hmmm… what are we going to say about this fellow?
Well… there is something extraordinarily wrong with him, isn’t there.
His reaction… is not normal.
As commitments and values go, paying your bills is a good thing to do.
However… in the face of an existential threat to one’s family…
paying the bills should drop down quite a bit on the ladder of priorities.
In this situation…
for a “normal” human being…
any value other than the safety of one’s family…
should become secondary, at best.
We…
as a community, as a country, as a planet…
have been hearing the noise of records being broken in the house lately.
The drought of 2012 broke records.
Hurricane Sandy on the east coast… broke records.
There are people on Staten Island who are still in tents…
following the noise of Sandy…
as winter storm Nemo came through…
and broke some records of its own.
Typhoon Bopha followed Sandy by a few days and broke records in the Philippines.
Lake Michigan set an all-time low water mark in late January.
The list grows long…
and the noise of records being broken is getting rather loud, we’d have to say.
And… we might wonder – as a global society - if we shouldn’t stop doing certain other things…
and get up and see what’s going on…
what needs to be done.
I found this the other day… a bumper sticker slogan…
It goes…
Global Warming? / Stop Worrying. / Start Panicking!
Actually… if one can panic and keep one’s head at the same time…
It may be exactly what we should be doing.
Global warming…
and all of its consequences…
including drastic climate change…
is an existential threat to the human family…
We – the people on this planet of the last 60 years…
have discovered a kind of danger that those who lived before us through all of earlier history…
could not have known..
It is that we have gained the power - through our own ingenuity - to threaten the very fabric of the world that makes human life possible.
The first such threat, of course, that we created…
and still face…
is the threat of nuclear war and annihilation.
Jonathan Schell… wrote poignantly about this possibility 30 years ago in his powerful and thoughtful book…
The Fate of the Earth.
Jonathan Schell became our “elder statesman” on the subject through his sober reasoning.
How can you defend your values…
and all that you care about…
with a threat that, if you carried it out, would destroy all the values that you claim…
and all the persons whom you care about?
The absurdity dawns upon you, when you realize that no human value would survive such a “defense”.
Annihilation means the end of any and all human values…
imagined, real, or potential…
including your favorite ones.
We just observed the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis in October.
When I say “we”, I mean “the world”.
It was a kind of celebration because… we’re still here!
I was 9 years old at the time.
I can remember it a bit.
Others here certainly felt the tension of those days at a deeper level than I…
and probably remember feeling that we were lucky back in 1962…
We were lucky to have come through that crisis…
without the unthinkable having happened.
Yet, as more facts surrounding that crisis have come to light …
especially with the declassification of additional documents.
we discover…
we were even luckier than we’ve thought.
Human beings are clever.
We know now that we are smart enough and inventive enough…
and “successful” enough…
to off ourselves from the planet in a number of creative ways.
We are plenty clever.
The crucial question is…
Will we be wise enough to survive our smarts?
There is a worldwide community of scientists who focus on our climate and related issues.
I want to say something about it.
A debate has been going on within the scientific community.
Recently it has become more intense and anxious.
It is not about the physics or other essentials of global warming
There is 98 percent agreement among the scientists on these matters.
The debate is over this disturbing question…
Can we avoid the collapse of global civilization – as a consequence of global warming and climate disruption?
Most climate scientists agree that a rise in the earth’s temperature of 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 Fahrenheit) or more…
would be “incompatible” with industrial civilization as we know it.
Yet the picture crystallizes rapidly that our current global trajectory…
if not altered dramatically…
will take us past that boundary…
perhaps as early as mid-century…
perhaps even by the year 2040.
The international, intergovernmental climate conferences that have been going on…
Rio, Copenhagen, Doha…
have done not much but put a little paint over the status quo…
Everyone says, and we hear…
“We must ensure that we don’t go past 2 degrees of warming…
because that’s where we think the boundary between manageable and dangerous climate change is.”
But, everyone knows that we are going to pass 2 degrees of warming…
Even if everyone dismantled their cars today, and didn’t touch them again, we will pass that mark…
based on our emissions record.
In addition, everyone also knows…
that a 2 degrees warmer world…
does not look now to be a world of “acceptable” climate change…
That will be a world of dangerous climate disruptions.
No one really needs a degree in science to understand this, really.
Only a modicum of observation.
As of the end of last year, the 12 hottest years on record…
globally…
had all occurred since 1997.
Imagine now, if we find ourselves saying the same thing in 2025…
If we will say then that the hottest 12 years on record have all occurred since 2012.
Where will the southwest of our country be?
Where will the grain-producing bread basket of the world…
as I learned to consider it from the Weekly Reader in grade school…
the great plains states of our nation…
where will that be?
1 degree of planetary warming…
which is where we are right now…
is giving us more trouble than was anticipated.
We are “surprised”.
But these “surprises” are what happens when governments and economists put constant pressure on scientists…
to downplay the alarming possibilities…
and to fudge their studies by using the most optimistic assumptions.
The science community thinks that it is fairly certain that we will surpass 2 degrees.
2 degrees, say the physics, means that the Greenland ice cap will go.
And the oceans will rise by 23 feet…
Again, the trajectory of today…
if unaltered dramatically…
suggests that we will see 6 degrees of warming by the end of this century.
That’s about 11 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mammals cannot live in that world.
Scientists say that at those temperatures mammalian sweat glands are not able to cool the body sufficiently to keep it going.
Two distinguished members of the scientific community were talking recently.
One is Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who is widely known and respected, and the author of dozens of books along with is fellow-scientist wife, Anne Ehrlich.
Some of you may remember that his book The Population Bomb, which made quite a splash in 1968.
The other is Dr. Jim Brown, who is considered by many to be the world’s foremost bio-geographer...
This question came up…Will we avoid the collapse of civilization?
Ehrlich offered to his friend…
“I think the chances of civilization surviving are about 10 percent, but I’m willing to work hard to change it to 11 percent, because I care a lot about my child and about my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren.”
Brown replied, “Paul, you’re crazy. I think the chances are only about 1 percent, but, of course, I’m willing to work to try and make it 1.1 percent.”
Now, that’s anecdotal.
That is just what two, albeit distinguished, scientists said… in a non-formal discussion.
I don’t think we really know what the chances are…
I’m sure that is to a great degree an intuitive call.
But the fact that this is being discussed hotly in the scientific community…
should alarm us.
Dr. Ehrlich, when asked if he thinks it’s possible to prevent the collapse of civilization…
Says, yes, he’s optimistic it is possible.
But… we will have to go on a crash program…
similar in scale to the program this country went on at the outset of World War II…
And we can’t wait ten years to begin doing the things that we know need to be done.
We have to start right now.
The question, Ehrlich says, isn’t “Can we?”
The question is “Will we?”
It’s sometimes said…
“Don’t use fear… because it doesn’t motivate people.”
I agree… that fear is often used when it shouldn’t be.
Fear is often used by leaders to manipulate people.
But it is certainly not true that fear doesn’t motivate people.
That is why it is such a quick “turn to” for manipulators.
Our lives are constantly shaped by things that we have learned to fear…
And, if we think about it, that shaping is predominantly for the better.
It can be for the worse.
But…
you learn not to put your hand into the flame, or on the hot oven element…
because it burns, and it hurts, and you are afraid of the pain that results.
That fear is a gift.
That fear is appropriate… and it preserves your health and your life.
Without that kind of fear it’s impossible to imagine that human beings would have survived.
Consequently… to minimize or ignore legitimate threats…
becomes the opposite of helpful.
Inappropriate denial… is itself a threat.
I am not afraid that we will be afraid.
But I am afraid that we will not… not existentially, not seriously… in time.
Appropriate fear is a powerful motivator.
On Monday, an Oklahoma woman… Elizabeth Leja…
locked her neck to equipment that is being used to construct the Keystone XL “Tar Sands” pipeline..
Her actions halted construction at that site… for a day.
She cited her concerns for Oklahoma’s waterways.
She is afraid that spills…
like the dilbit spill into the Kalamazoo River,
and many, many other spills of these tar sands pipelines…
may harm those waterways, and damage the health of future generations.
I consider her actions… a brave, and prophetic, and appropriate response… to her fears.
Of course, it could be said that her fears… are the flip side of her loving concern.
The prophet Jeremiah feared greatly…
and called his people to change what they were doing…
because he loved his people greatly.
Love… and protective fear… go hand in hand.
My imaginary scenario at the beginning…
That man did not experience appropriate fear, did he?
Therefore he did not spring into action to do what he could do to perhaps avoid catastrophe.
Somehow, we’d have to conclude that he also lacked appropriate love.
What do I see happening?
My mind speaking, not my hopes, says that we…
as a planetary family…
will respond, but not rapidly enough to forestall a clear march towards catastrophic warming.
We will see this, and because the outcome of it will be unacceptable, we will have to turn to geo-engineering…
as the only hope to hang on to a “live-able” environment.
No one knows what the outcome of that may be.
That is a bit… like the compulsive gambler’s solution… being one more roll of the dice
That point will be the result of moral failure…
The failure of imagination…
The failure of clarity…
The failure to be wise, not merely smart.
And beyond that, I cannot go.
Let me share one more thing that I heard Dr. Ehrlich say recently…
And I’ve heard many other concerned scientists say something similar…
Like Dr. James Hanson, who has written a book called “The Storms of My Grandchildren”…
Paul Ehrlich said…
“Everybody ought to be talking about how do we get out of this miserable situation and give our kids and grandkids a decent life.”
The word of the Lord?
We should all know it.
It isn’t new, it is ancient.
We have heard it time and time again… though perhaps we have not fully trusted to it.
The biblical word describing the human being…
with respect to the earth, the planet, the garden, the biosphere…
“dominion”…
was accompanied with a command and a “shape”….
“to till the earth, and to keep it.”
Long before human beings would set a foot on Earth’s neighbor, the moon…
long before those created from the dust of the Earth could remove mountaintops…
long before we who came out of her ocean waters could return to those depths to scratch and drill…
we knew…
we heard…
it was to be a caring dominion.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
