Discuss: Snap into Action for the Climate

The writer makes the usually rare point in environmental arguments that to confront this problem would mean that humans would have had to pass through a spiritual catharsis.  This suggests that the problem in not just physical/technological, that somehow our spiritual “wrong-headedness” is at the root of the problem.  “Spiritual” suggests concerns not just for physical survival, our “means,” but also the “ends,” i.e. identifying a purpose for life once our physical needs have been met.  But we have been functioning under an extreme consumerist model that holds as its rewards such concepts as “luxury” or “the American Dream”... in other words, in lieu of identifying any purpose beyond physical comfort and pleasure, we have asked double-duty of our means, that they also function as life-goals (e.g. bigger house, faster or more comfortable car, etc… a pattern with no end in sight).

How does this comment help with the problem?  Maybe it doesn’t, since we seem to be at such a desparate point.  But at least let’s not kid ourselves that spraying the atmosphere with sulfer, or painting everything white, is anything more than treating symptoms.  If we could somehow solve the problem with giant mirrors only to support more gluttonous consumption, that’s precisely the type of unenlightened society not worth saving.  So let’s hope that what the writer implies will come to pass: as we save the planet, we find (and save) ourselves.

David

Good post!

Paco and others:

News today: WASHINGTON (AP) - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction some 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

NOTE: So if we got down to 2000 once before, due to climate conditions, it could happen again, just 5000 people maybe, but they can bounce back, too. IF we make plans NOW. (Even if we don’t make plans, they will bounce back anyways…...SMILE…...Human beings are resilient, they don’t need polar cities plans at all. They can do it and will do it by themselves, by hook or by crook…..but planning doesn’t hurt)

Three years ago, as a botanist, I noticed my native plant communities dying. I thus looked up the NOAA weather station at our local airport in Ellensburg. The graphs from the mid 1900’s showed temperatures commonly reaching 20 to even 30 below zero. Temperatures we never even heard of today. The call this winter a cold winter but we never even hit zero. People are so short sighted. I talked to a friend Dr Haard at Fourth Corner Nurseries and he wrote an article on our data. You can google the nursery and go to the articles section. There are two articles on global warming. And we reported SERIOUS 20 degree change ALREADY!

Nobody would listen to us.

At the time, everyone was saying 10 degrees of warming over the next 100 years. I was screaming “WE HAVE 20 DEGREES OF WARMING NOW!”.

It is clear in the NOAA data for most inland areas. The last 20 years we have gone up 20 degrees. And the data shows we are getting hotter faster.

I think it is too late. I am an ecologist and I look at the extinction of the dinosaurs which we believe was the result of castrophic climate change (asteroid strike). We are faced with about the same thing as our plants cannot move north fast enough with the warming temperatures. If we want to even hope of saving the earth, we should be shipping thousands of pounds of palm tree seeds north to Alaska. I am NOT kidding. The plants cannot adapt this fast.

During the ice ages, temperatures changed 10 or 20 degrees over thousands of years. Now we have 20 degrees in 10 or 20 years.

The plants will not live through that and only very primitive algae that can transport long distance on currents or the wind will survive… if anything will be able to survive at all.

It is my professional opinion that we have already screwed the pouch. ANd the elite know it. That is why they are ripping off the American people. They are all gathering wealth for the big move north buying properties like mad.

All you have to do is look at the property records for the last 10 years in northern Canada. Look who has been buying the land up…

Quite frankly, those people are the same ones that caused this problem and profitted off it both then and now. And I hope the native people hunt them down as they move north like the invasive species and the worst of humanity that they are.

It would be better if that gene pool of expressed greed did not survive (if humanity will survive at all).

Ken Boettger
Ellensburg, WA

I really regret my last comment in the post above. My apologies.

Not very Christian like. If we are to survive, we have to learn to love and deny our inner selves (greed, selfishness, etc). And I guess I will make the first step in that direction by apologizing here…

-Ken

Hi Danny,

Thanks for the reply. Your example—that the human population may have shrunk to 5000 or so people 70,000 years ago, but we bounced back BECAUSE WE’RE SO RESOURCEFUL—gives me scant comfort. Compare the circumstances now with then. A reduction in the human presence on the planet, from our current six and a half billion to a few thousand, or even a few million, would amount to a catastrophe beyond our imagining. Call it “the end of civilization,” if you will. I understand that, from a biological standpoint, the human presence on earth has recently reached a level of toxicity—- for other forms of life as well as ourselves—without parallel in the history of the planet.

I’m probably hopelessly romantic for thinking that there is some cosmic purpose implicit in our presence in the universe. It has something to do with the advent of reflective consciousness and the creative imagination. I can’t help believing that there is something more that we are meant to become, besides ragged scavengers on a dying planet.

You seem remarkably at ease with that possibility. Or am I misreading your position?

Best wishes,

Paco

My response, a debate, for Mr. Mike Tidwell, by Jenni M. Wenhold.
Mr. Tidwell’s article entitled “Snap Into Action for the Climate,” reminds me of the Apocolypse watchers who predict exact dates when Jesus will return.  They look for signs and seasons all over the world and give dates as to when things are likely to happen.  They look at the middle east.  They look at Russia.  They look at the fight for Jerusalem.  They read the Bible over and over looking for clues.  They talk about what is going to happen next and timelines.  They are, for the most part, entirely wrong.  The timing of Christ’s return is in God’s hands.  And so, I would say the same about our Earth and climate change.
Climate change and the “snap” of Earth’s demise is in the hands of God, not in human hands.  I believe it is biblical for God to care for our land and sky and it was given to human hands to care for animals and their needs (see the first 3 chapters of Genesis).  God clothes the lilies of the field (Matthew 6).  I am not saying that we cannot or should not take care of the earth that God has given us.  After sin occured, by man in the garden of Eden, God put the oness on man to care for and eat from the land.  As God said to Adam, “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it [the ground] all the days of thy life.”  Next Earth day, plant a tree.  Cultivate a garden.  Pick up trash and recycle everyday. 
Speaking of climate change though, Mr. Tidwell’s article states, “But first, if there’s any good news surrounding the sudden and unexpected speed of global warming it is this: it’s nobody’s fault.”  He is wrong.  It is our fault totally… and I’m not talking about the release of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past 100 years.  This goes back over 10,000 years.  Unfortunately, from the day Adam and Eve sinned, the ground was “cursed” (Genesis 3:17).  To this day “the creation groans” (Romans 8) waiting to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption.”  Global warming is REAL and is the climax of the symptoms that have been developing since the fall of man in Genesis.
So then, the real question I have for Mr. Mike Tidwell is this:  What if it isn’t our job to stop global warming?
Environmentalists must have considered my next point… this is just the cycle of the earth.  We cannot stop it.  There has been an age, a time, for everything.  Everyone knows the song… it’s from Ecclesiastes 3:
A time to be born and a time to die a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted
A time to kill and a time to heal a time to break down and a time to build up
A time to weep and a time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing
A time to get and a time to lose a time to keep and a time to cast away
A time to rend and a time to sew a time to keep silence and a time to speak
A time to love and a time to hate a time of war, and a time of peace.
I’ll relate this point to what Christ said about his coming back… a simile… like the “pains of a woman in travail.”  Once it starts (and I can attest to this), it doesn’t stop (without a doctor’s intervention) until the baby is born.  Just a thought coming to me just now, even when a doctor stops the contractions, you know they will eventually start up again.  So, even if we were to have a “near-total abandonment of fossil fuels” or make a “life-saving atmospheric shield,” it’s not going to stop what’s coming, only slow the process down.

Going back to an age and time for everything.  There was a Triassic age, and all those other ages in times past.  This is the Present time/age.  Job of the Bible asks “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?”  Have any of the scientists considered that the humans’ days are numbered?  Perhaps it is time for us to no longer be on the Earth.  So, instead of finding ways to “engineer the climate,” why don’t we just let it be and let what is to come, come!  Paul McCartney sang it best “speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
A few sentences from the end of Mr. Tidwell’s article before I go on [underlining intentionally done by me], “I can see my son coming of age in a world where the multiplier benefits of clean energy go far beyond preserving a stable climate… Best of all, I see spiritual transformation ahead. We simply cannot make the necessary changes without being changed ourselves… We will know, finally, that to live in permanent peace and prosperity we must live in a particular way, adhering to a particular set of truths about ourselves and our planet.”
So then, people say “leave the world a better place for your children.”  Am I worried about my children or my children’s children?  Yes, but only in a spiritual sense.  As long as my children are raised believing there is a better way and God has provided that way, then I am in perfect peace about the environment and global warming.  In Romans 8 Paul of the Bible is speaking to Christian believers,  “Because the creature [or, creation] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.  For we are saved by hope…”  The hope is what John of the Bible writes about in Revelation “and I saw a new heaven and a new earth…”  A New Earth?  And he also writes in the next chapter “and there shall be no more curse.”  BUT how do we partake of this new earth with no curse.  In Romans 10 it says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”  That is all God asks for us to be a part of this new heaven and earth.  Everyone wonders why John 3:16 is so important.  You see John 3:16 written on shirts, billboards, tattooed onto people’s skin.  John 3:16 has everything to do with climate change, global warming, and the eventual change of the earth as we now know it… “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  The truth is, we will not perish with the rest of the world in global warming.  Instead we shall rise.  We shall overcome!  But, we MUST believe!  God does love us and this world.  His only joy is to see our complete happiness with Him, living in a world that is not corrupted by sin and destruction.  A world that only He can provide for us.
“Snap into action for the climate,” if you must.  I instead will wait patiently for the redemption of this world.  I will endure painfully with the sin that is continuing this world’s demise, until the return of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Thank you for your consideration.

Paco
I am enjoying our conversation here, I find it instructive and useful, and I hope others here do, too.

To answer your question re:

YOU WROTE: “...I can’t help believing that there is something more that we are meant to become, besides ragged scavengers on a dying planet…..You seem remarkably at ease with that possibility. Or am I misreading your position?”

DANNY ANSWERS: You read my position very clearly. Yes, although I am also a romantic about life here on Earth [cue the music], I do not believe in any supernatural God or gods or any cosmic reason for our being here. Other than pure cosmic evolution and DNA genepools, pure random chance, the dance of the cosmos, and we are stardust, yes, and yes, Paco, I do believe we have more “evolving” to do in the far distant future, not so much growing a third eye or a six arms, but in terms of our conciouness of life and the cosmos, yes, I do believe we have more evolving to do mentally and spiritually, and maybe all this today—the global warming problems we are facing—is part of that mental, intellectual and spiritual evolution. And because I believe in this future evolution of the mind, I care deeply about trying to find ways to keep this human species going on Planet Earth.

I am comfortable with the notion that we might be ragged scavengers on a dying Earth for a while, in year 2500 or so, and this period might last for a 1000 years or more, but I have faith that we will bounce back once again to becoming civilized again, and perhaps that new chapter will indeed be glorious, far more glorious than where we are now: nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and all.

So yes, you read my feeling correctly, I am at ease with the Mad Max scenario coming down the pike, but I posit “polar cities” as lifeboats that can save us from utter utter raggedness. Cross our fingers, hope to God.

Do I contradict myself? Maybe.