Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Well, I guess the Bush administration is a bit on the defensive regarding global warming and climate change since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its dire report on the extent and acceleration of warming as a result of the human spewing of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. The IPCC report drew a lot of headline news over the weekend, and an administration with very little to show for itself in the way of policy got a bit testy.

First, they assured us that the US government had committed a great deal of money to research. Wow, yes, that is impressive — money for research, including research for this study. (I know one of the lead scientists in a previous study done on climate change and resource depletion by the US government — in the late 1970s!)

Then, the White House sent out its energy secretary, Sam Bodman, to tell the world that, after all, the US is not a major contributor to global carbon emissions. Reuters quoted him:

“We are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world”

Now that’s a novel approach; but how in the world how does one say that with a straight face? Reuters had the good sense to follow this paragraph with one that points out that the US emits one quarter of the world’s human-induced CO2 emissions, while using a quarter of the world’s oil. We are a mere 4 percent of the global population.

Does that give us any special responsibility? Not if you are part of the Bush White House, apparently.

It is Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) who gave us today’s post headline. He likened the president’s response to the IPCC report to that of the groundhog on Groundhog Day — he saw the shadow of global warming, then retreated back into his hole in the ground.

Our favorite global warming denier — favorite because he can be so entertaining — is Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who has never seen a science report on warming and climate change that he didn’t assign to some get-rich scheme by evil-doing, shady, dubiously motivated scientists and environmentalists. Get this quote from the same Reuters article:

“This is a political document, not a scientific report, and it is a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain.”

Sigh…

Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who mercifully replaced Inhofe as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, wants to get some hard-hitting hearings going, and an international summit of the worst-polluting nations to get some commitments on reducing GHGs.

We have said that this is as much a moral issue as anything else, so let me lay out a few statistics that highlight our moral dilemma, from a document I found at the BBC website:

The global account so far shows that 33% of people have 94% of the global dollar income and account for 90% of the global historical total of greenhouse gas emissions, while the other 66% of people have 6% of global dollar income and a history of emissions totalling 10%.

The ratio of poor to rich life value in all this is worse than 15 to one.

I don’t know how the moral issue could be any clearer than this. Bush and his followers are trying to tell us that the US won’t act unilaterally, or act internationally, if the US is asked to do things not asked of countries like China, India, Brazil — and the countries of Africa? On the other hand, countries like China and India, whose share of emissions is growing exponentially with their rapid industrialization, are saying they will not take action if the US is not willing to do much, much more.

There you have it — the chicken and egg — both about to get cooked in a heating atmopshere.

Oh, by the way, this from a 2003 article from New Scientist:

“The US emits 25 times as much CO2 per head as India.”

And before we sign off for today, a couple other tidbits to add to the moral weight of our reflection:

“If 8-9 billion people [a conservative estimate of population growth to 2050] were to use mineral and energy resources at the per capita rate people in rich countries use them now, almost all potentially recoverable resources would probably be totally exhausted in 20 to 40 years.

“There is therefore no chance that all people could have the per capita resources and energy use we have in rich countries today.”

To further make the point, if we tried to do that, by 2050, we would need four Earths, four Earths to support that level of human consumption.

And there it is. Now, what do we in this rich, post-industrial, affluent United States of America do with this information in the context of our most troubled and endangered world?