Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaraet Swedish:

The juxtaposition of news items the other day certainly brought the moral question of our ecological crisis starkly before us — the reality of human-caused destruction of our biosphere and the attempts to cover up or officially deny that reality.

Why is this a moral issue? Because the decisions made, or not made, will affect the life or death situation for hundreds of millions of people and other life forms — and that’s just for starters.

So let’s try to put this in perspective, shall we?

Story one (still unfolding as we write): News reports indicate the extent of the overwhelming consensus on the part of thousands of scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gathered in Paris to hammer out the final version of their 1,600-page study on global warming and climate change. Humans are warming the Earth. And, as the NY Times reported it:

The report…will describe a growing body of evidence that warming is likely to cause a profound transformation of the planet.

Why this wasn’t a screaming headline on the front page is beyond my understanding, but there it is. You can read the rest and see where the remaining debate lies, uncertainties like how much ocean levels will rise, the exact degree of rising temperatures through the rest of the century, etc. — but not on the phenomenon itself.

Imagine the Alps without snow and the Mediterranean coast uninhabitable because of the heat. Imagine the people of the northwest US breathing the dust from China’s sandstorms — oops, you don’t have to imagine it, you can experience that one already. Imagine bigger more destructive and ferocious wildfires in the US west — oops, been there. Imagine ocean waters creeping into Manhattan and Ground Zero, and wiping out Miami. Imagine having to take a boat to the high-rise hotels built with utter disregard for nature on the ocean side of the sand dunes in Ocean City, Maryland.

Okay, that was story one. The next day came this story, that scientists have been pressured by the Bush administration to not report their findings on global warming,and have had their reports altered by political hacks to weaken the language on climate change.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is conducting the hearings, said that there is evidence that Bush administration officials sought “to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming.” Among the evidence is the administration’s refusal to release to the committee documents regarding its policies on climate change.

This feels so nuts to me. What is the point of denying this thing that we are all beginning to experience in our own lives all across the globe?

Well, just what is the problem? Why not take leadership on this and perhaps offer some substance to a discredited presidency? Maybe the answer has to do with this other story just out today — Exxon Mobil just announced an annual profit that shatters all records in US corporate history — just shy of $40 billion, that is, $40 billion!

Guess who provided that nice profit for them, all of us paying $3 per gallon last year?

Now, just to put this eyepopping profit in perspective, Exxon Mobil is resisting making the $2.5 billion dollar payment to compensate the people of Alaska harmed by the 1989 Valdez oil tanker spill. You remember that disaster? 1,500 miles of pristine waters off Alaska’s coastline damaged perhaps forever. Exxon Mobil has resisted taking full responsibility for this disaster from the start, and still it resists, while raking in record profits.

Maybe the power of these oil companies has something to do with the Bush administration’s reluctance to have global warming fully reported. Maybe there is a connection between that reluctance and the fact that Exxon Mobil has been one of the biggest sources of funds to groups carrying out a campaign to debunk the science.

Why is this denial a moral issue? Because this involves the fate of the planet. It involves the populations of tens of thousands of villages and communities already destroyed or damaged by climate change. It involves hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. It involves putting off decisions that could save hundreds of millions of lives over the course of this generation.

We could use a good dose of moral outrage right now from our religious, cultural and political leaders. How ’bout it?