Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Checked in with the entertaining environmental gristmill.org daily this morning and found there this info on the preemptive strike by the energy industry against Al Gore's new documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, which opens in various cities this coming week.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is one of the corporate groups leading the charge to debunk the science on global warming, has put a couple of ads on TV in advance of the film's release and, well, unusual for me, I am almost speechless. In these ads, they use the scientific truism — that we breathe out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while trees and plants take it in, reflecting the marvelous balance of nature — to tell us that all this excess CO2 gas is actually good for us.

We tree-hugging innocents call it pollution, while the enlightened industry leaders call it life.

Of course CO2 is necessary for life — when recycled in the balance created over millions of years that made life as we know it possible.  It is the amount we pour into the atmosphere every day as a result of our fossil-fuel based lifestyles that is putting this beautiful system out of balance.  Heat creates energy, and the earth is warming.  While the earth begins to seek the new equilibrium — uncertain as we are about where this warming trend will end, what the "new normal" will be – there remains the real possibility that in finding that new equilibrium, earth will not be able to maintain life as we know it, which could mean another mass extinction, including our species.

It is quite remarkable, and breathtakingly irresponsible, that these ads equate our breathing out CO2 from our lungs with the spewing of emissions from our cars and trucks, our coal-powered energy plants, our oil refineries, and on and on.

These people are dangerous in part because we don't have time for this debate, for an industry-sponsored generation of false uncertainty.  We have time, if we act now, to prevent the worst catastrophes from happening.  That, of course, is why they fear Al Gore's film, which I am very eager to see.  I hope it means lots of discussion, lots of new motivation among grassroots communities to get involved in saving life on this planet, lots of invitations to speak, do workshops, write, organize around the new way of life required by our human predicament.

Now, if you want to view these ads, go here.  Meanwhile, on the CEI's home page, there is this brief "explanation" of global warming:

About Global Warming

Although global warming has been described as the greatest threat facing mankind, the policies designed to address global warming actually pose a greater threat. The Kyoto Protocol and similar domestic schemes to ration carbon-based energy use would do little to slow carbon dioxide emissions, but would have enormous costs. These costs would eventually fall most heavily on the poorest nations in the world. Luckily, predictions of the extent of future warming are based on implausible scientific and economic assumptions, and the negative impacts of predicted warming have been vastly exaggerated. In the unlikely event that global warming turns out to be a problem, the correct approach is not energy rationing, but rather long-term technological transformation and building resiliency in societies by increasing wealth. CEI has been a leader in the fight against the global warming scare.

Okay, the energy industry is going to fool us into believing they have the interests of the poor of our world at heart.  But it is the poorest of our world who will suffer the greatest impact, and who indeed are already suffering them. 

So, leaving that appalling fiction aside, read closely that second-last sentence.  First, they are telling you that we don't have to deal with the threat of global warming until that "unlikely event" when "it turns out to be a problem."  Folks, when the industry figures out that there is a problem, when we arrive at the more serious disruptions of our lives because of climate change, it will be way too late to do anything to mitigate the impacts.  Then they have the breath-taking gall to tell us that we should "build resiliency…by building wealth."  WHAT?!?!

Presumably, the wealthy will be able to seal themselves off from the impact of the destruction.  Wealth will make us resilient to the droughts, floods, tides of environmental refugees, devastated eco-systems, and more.

Folks, go see the film.  Then spend time with your children, your families, friends, communities, neighbors, and talk about the future you want for the generations that come after us.

And then get to work!

We're not stupid, are we?