Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Just a few things to list here today:

A killer heat wave across southern and eastern Europe has sparked forest fires in many locations, including a huge one in a national park in Greece that is making a beeline today for the Athens suburbs. Dozens have died from heat-related causes in Italy, Romania, Greece, and Serbia.

The Lake Tahoe fire, fed by human habitation, mismanagement of forests, and a years-long drought.

Floods in Texas and Oklahoma. One town in the recent deluges reported that 19 inches of rain fell in a 24-hour period. While the southwest US remains parched — drought levels in many areas are at ‘extreme’ and ‘exceptional’ levels — rain just keeps soaking the mid-section of the south.

In an op-ed in the NY Times, Nicholas Kristoff notes that in Africa, “our greenhouse gases are killing people…” Climate change is causing changes in weather patterns which is bringing about failure of the crops upon which millions of people depend for their meager survival. At the same time, Africa’s “‘great lakes’ are shrinking.” He quotes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Projected reductions in yield in some countries could be as much as 50 percent by 2020, and crop net revenue could fall as much as 90 percent.

Let’s be clear — we are talking here about famine, mass starvation directly related to our greenhouse gas emissions — which was one thing when we didn’t know — but now we do, and this projection of mass death has become something else. In my old Roman Catholic upbringing, we would refer to this as “mortal sin,” a category that includes both grievous sin and the awareness that the sin is grievous.

More, this from yesterday’s NY Times:

Enough fertlie land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an ‘environmental crisis of global proportions,’ large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia, unless current trends are QUICKLY stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes. [my emphasis]

Fifty million people are at risk of displacement over the next decade “if desertification is not checked.” The UK’s Christian Aid adds this tidbit, also from the Times article:

A recent study by Christian Aid… found that 155 million people are currrently dispaced by conflicts, natural disasters, and development. By 2050, an additional billion people may be forced to leave their homes because of climate change…

Again, that would be an additional one billion people.

Moving on. Because of global warming and climate change, mosquitoes are carrying dengue fever into the US; actually, they are spreading it in many places around the world. You don’t want to get it. I know folks who have had it. It is nasty.

The virus is spreading fast. Global warming is extending the Aedes mosquitoes’ habitat so that dengue has now marched north from Latin America to the southern United States.

There is no treatment or vaccine.

That’s it. Just a few things, you know, from only two-days-worth of newspaper reading, just some stuff to think about when we get into our SUVs or fly off on our vacations this weekend, when we wonder how bad things will get because of global climate change. Just a few things to think about when we insist on our right to gas-guzzling cars and 2-3 homes all running central air.

Kristoff is pretty merciless. Our lifestyles are killing people.

I don’t mean to put a damper on things. I do mean to put out a clarion call for quick and immediate change in how we live.

[tags] southern Europe heat wave, Athens forest fires, Lake Tahoe fire, drought and floods, Nicholas Kristoff, dengue fever, intergovernmental panel on climate change[/tags]