The Moral Imperative To Confront Climate Change
by Jeff Howard
Presented Nov. 3, 2013, at Unitarian Society of Hartford, Hartford, CT
Preface: The Green Sanctuary group at the Unitarian Society of Hartford sponsored a Sunday morning service dedicated to climate change. This homily was one of the elements of the service. Two explanations will help clarify references in the first paragraph: First, prior to the homily, members of the church’s youth group who had slept in boxes on the church lawn to raise money for the homeless community spoke briefly about their experience. Second, throughout the service a series of more than 100 photographs flowed across a large TV monitor. They depicted homes damaged by superstorm Sandy, glaciers melting, farmland parched, forests afire — as well as brilliantly colored autumn leaves, farmers markets, children playing, birds in flight.
The image of our young people spending the night in cardboard boxes is a bit disturbing, isn’t it? The image of any young people sleeping in boxes is jarring. The image of young people sleeping in boxes during the long night is one we could have added to the set of images playing on the screen beside me. It is a fitting one for this particular service. For just as the flip-side of wealth is poverty, the flip-side of our fossil fuel economy is global impoverishment — impoverishment of families, impoverishment of cities, impoverishment of peoples, impoverishment of ecosystems, impoverishment of the oceans, impoverishment of life on this planet.
My name is Jeff Howard. For two years now I’ve been a member of the Green Sanctuary group here at USH. I have somewhat dreaded speaking here today, because I knew that even here, among friends, it would be painful to speak aloud, in a public place, about matters so painful to contemplate.
Climate change is real. It is a consequence of how we have built our society and fueled our economy. The threat it poses has grown more immense month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Meanwhile, public cognizance of the magnitude of this threat is lagging dangerously.
You may have heard about an ignominious milestone earlier this year when the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, climbing inexorably since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, edged up to 400 parts per million. It reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. The last time the CO2 level was this high was 3 million years ago. Three million years ago. At that time, the Isthmus of Panama was forming and one of the prevailing hominids in Africa was Australopithicus.
To begin to get a grasp of what 400 parts per million of CO2 in the global atmosphere means, consider sea level. Public discussion about sea-level rise almost always fixates on the 3-6 feet of rise expected this century. A rise of 3-6 feet in sea level will bring tides once a month that are equivalent to the storm surge that superstorm Sandy produced; and it likely will spell calamity for Bangladesh and other low-lying, highly populous nations.
But 3-6 feet is just the beginning of the story, my friends. The last time Earth saw 400 parts per million of CO2, the seas were not merely 3-6 feet higher. They were as much as 65 feet higher — 65 feet! Beyond the end of this century, and over the course of a number of centuries, if atmospheric carbon dioxide remains at today’s level, we have every reason to expect sea levels high enough to drown thousands of square miles of Florida. High enough to bring the ocean to the doorstep of the White House. High enough to turn the modest Connecticut River into a vast estuary that, at Hartford, would be some 3 miles wide. High enough, perhaps, for the ocean to be lapping at the lower, eastern edge of what is now USH’s own parking lot. If sea level rise is a key indicator by which to gauge the implications of our greenhouse gas emissions, the standard must not merely be 3-6 feet this century. It must include the realization that we’ve already put enough carbon in the atmosphere to utterly remake the coastline our heirs will inherit in the centuries that follow.
Dire though that scenario might seem, realize that it is based on an unrealistic assumption: that CO2 levels won’t climb past 400 parts per million. No policy now in place, no trajectory of fossil fuel production now visible, no emissions scenario explored in climate models at MIT or NASA predict that CO2 levels won’t continue rising well past 400 parts per million. The most optimistic scenarios have them rising to 450 or 500; others envision 700, 800, or higher. And the dynamics of atmospheric carbon — not to mention the dynamics of our economy and our politics — are such that getting back below 400 is unlikely in the foreseeable future, if ever.
Sixty-five feet of sea level rise is part of the historical vision that climate change forces upon us. Another part of that historical vision, equally important, is looking back — looking back to understand how climate change is rooted in the structure of our civilization and the structure of our own minds.
I see no honest way to avoid the conclusion that climate change is intimately related to deep defects in the way we have defined prosperity; the way we have conceptualized standard of living; the way we have understood power; the way we have thought about accomplishment and legacy; the way we have framed development and growth; and, perhaps above all, the way we have conceptualized capital and profit. Climate change is not merely the result of mistakes, inadvertence, good intentions gone awry. Climate change is the result of systemic flaws in our civilizational intelligence, our civilizational values, our civilizational self-conception.
The flip side of our idea of The Good Life, it turns out, is killer heat waves, freak blizzards, and melting of the Arctic ice cap. The flip side of our idea of control is oceans becoming acidic and rising higher than they have been in all of human experience. The flip side of our idea of wealth is the collapse of ecosystems, along with drought and famine on an unprecedented scale. The flip side of our idea of investment is killer superstorms and tropical diseases moving into what we have thought of as temperate latitudes. The flip side of our idea of energy is millions of “climate refugees” fleeing the sea, fleeing famine, fleeing social disarray. The flip side of our idea of growth is extinction of many species and methane bubbling up from lake beds and sea floor.
Recalibrating, rethinking, reimagining, reinhabiting these ideas — here lies hope. Revising, reforming, revolutionizing the material enactment of these ideas — here lies hope. Taking responsibility for leading this process — here lies a moral response to climate change.
We will not get out of this predicament quickly or easily. It will take generations of struggle. It will take generations of struggle, with each step as painful as ending slavery in the American South, each step as challenging as ending apartheid in South Africa, each step as tumultuous as ending the Vietnam war and securing the right of blacks and women to vote and own property. Taking responsibility for leading this process — here lies a moral response to climate change.
On Thursday of this week, scores of people from a wide range of religious traditions will gather in Hartford for what is being billed as the Climate Stewardship Summit. The idea for the event was spawned in this very building. In March of this year, the Green Sanctuary group hosted a meeting of people from the Hartford area who are concerned about climate and ready to act. About half of us at the meeting resolved to mount a statewide summit. Organizing is being done by an interfaith nonprofit organization, IREJN, with a steering committee consisting of members of this congregation and numerous others. The Green Sanctuary group is one of about a dozen organizations sponsoring the summit. The theme of the event is “Climate action as a moral imperative for Connecticut communities of faith.”
Across the state and across the country, religious communities of many shapes, sizes, and colors — UU, Episcopal, Baptist, Catholic, Muslim, Quaker, Jewish, and others — are stepping forward to lead. They’re installing photovoltaic systems and geothermal systems, and they’re buying electricity from wind farms. They’re upgrading their buildings to make them more efficient. They’re publishing op-ed pieces in their local newspapers confronting climate change denialists. They’re setting up carpools and putting biodiesel in the tanks of their buses. They’re holding special services on climate change, like this one. They’re challenging their members to do household energy audits, use mass transit, and cut down on meat consumption. They’re designing Sunday School lessons around climate change. They’re sending delegations to statehouses to lobby for clean-energy laws. They’re building up their food pantries and crisis-response teams to prepare for the next superstorm. They’re holding climate change summits and adopting statements of conscience. And they’re participating in a nationwide movement to purge fossil fuel industry investments from their endowment portfolios — an idea that the Green Sanctuary group is preparing to broach with USH’s Endowment Committee. In short, across the country, even those who are not UUs are, in effect, following the UU principle “service is our prayer.” Here lies hope. Here lies a moral response to climate change.
Climate change is happening too fast — and our civilization’s engagement of the problem has been too slow — for the world’s people and ecosystems to avoid pain and suffering on a very large scale. But I’m heartened because I know that even now, we can significantly blunt the damage and suffering. I’m heartened because I know that even at this late date, we can still bring the politically powerful fossil fuel industry to heel. I’m heartened because I know that even at this eleventh hour, with colossal changes in natural systems already set in motion, we can learn from our mistakes and begin making the changes in human systems that will allow us to stop compounding the damage and misery. I’m heartened because I know that we can still learn to inhabit this blue planet sustainably.
I’m also heartened by the prospect that we can harness this painful experience to make a better civilization — a citizenry more clear-eyed and more fully human; governments and economies and businesses more humane and just. This better civilization won’t magically appear; we will have to coax it out of a dire situation. We must make the deeply humbling, tragic experience of climate change count for something essential.
May it be so.
“Rising seas,” National Geographic, Sept. 2013 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/folger-text
“When crocodiles roamed the poles,” CNN, June 25, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/opinion/pagani-climate-change/index.html
Map depicting various levels of sea level rise (for 65’ of rise, select +20 meters from the menu at top left) http://flood.firetree.net/
Climate Stewardship Summit, Hartford, CT, Nov. 3, 2013
http://www.irejn.org/what-we-do/climate-stewardship-summit/
Unitarian Society of Hartford service on climate change, Hartford, CT, Nov. 7, 2013
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6MzgUwmPFW_bWFTb3FqbUFsWms/edit?usp=sharing
Unitarian-Universalist Association
www.uua.org
