Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Fire.  One of the four elements.  A frightening power.

According to ancient Greek philosophers, Water and Earth, two other essential elements, draw us downward and within.  They are our bodies, the stuff of which we are made.  Within them we plant what nurtures us, within them teeming life dwells.

Fire and Air — they reach upward and out (for this summary of the philosophical dimensions of the 4 elements, I visited this website: Elemental, the Four Elements).   Sitting around the campfire, lighting a fire in the fireplace on a cold night, igniting the flame on the gas stove to cook a meal: fire as element that sustains life, provides warmth, into which we make our offerings, an element of profound transformation.  Air: a soft breeze on a spring day, the steady rhythm of the flow into and out of our lungs, what moves the weather around the world, the atmosphere that we renew from within our own bodies by taking in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.

Australia wildfires Feb 9 NASA Earth Observatory

Southeastern Australia — fire and air combined in a power more destructive than anything in recorded history.  Fire that has burned everything in its path across vast landscapes of this hot dry continent.

The death toll has now surpassed 200, and still the fires rage.  Moving faster than people can drive their cars, the flames overwhelm, causing trees and homes to literally explode.  A couple of towns wiped out.  Hundreds of people injured, many with severe burns.  Thousands left homeless.  Lives lost in the ashes of this unimaginable terror.

Some sick people find it exciting.  Officials believe some of the fires have been deliberately set.

The Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd embracing victims, weeping with them, looking utterly stunned, trying to find words…  Mass murder, he said.  Yes, by human beings, and by Nature.

Southern Australia is suffering from epic drought.  Parts of that nation are literally shriveling up.  Parts of this nation, much of which is already hostile for human habitation because of harsh climate, are becoming increasingly uninhabitable — in large part because, as many scientists believe now, this is not just epic drought but permanent climate change.

From this morning’s NY Times:

The firestorms and heat in the south revived discussions in Australia of whether human-caused global warming was contributing to the continent’s climate woes of late ” including recent prolonged drought in some places and severe flooding last week in Queensland, in the northeast.

Climate scientists say that no single rare event like the deadly heat wave or fires can be attributed to global warming, but the chances of experiencing such conditions are rising along with the temperature. In 2007, Australia’s national science agency published a 147-page report on projected climate changes, concluding, among other things, that œhigh-fire-danger weather is likely to increase in the southeast.

The flooding in the northeast and the combustible conditions in the south were consistent with what is forecast as a result of recent shifts in climate patterns linked to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Once again, I’m not making this up, just reporting it.

Complex Basin Fire near Big Sur, July 2008 - photo by Margaret Swedish

Last year’s firestorms in California.  Many scientists believe this is not just epic drought but permanent climate change.  I could repeat that phrase in describing other parts of the world — a third of Spain and other stretches of southern Europe, the Horn of Africa, the U.S. Southwest, much of Texas, for examples.  In recent years, southern Europe has been hit with record heatwaves, while the Amazon region is facing rainfall shortages.

What climate change, better described by John Holdren as ‘global climate disruption,’ is doing is altering weather patterns.  It is not about whether global warming is simply warming the Earth in some predictable way over the entire planet; it is shifting weather patterns, air and water circulation.  Some parts of the world are getting dumped on, while others are parched.  Severe disruptions will continue to cause severe events.

It was a record-shattering 117 degrees in Melbourne the other day as the fires raged.

Australia wildfire - Juliet Moore

Fire — this awesome power.  Sadly, we are likely to become far too familiar with this power as the atmosphere warms.  This is not because of heat, but because of drought caused by the changing weather patterns.  Because of drought, diseases and insects will spread through forests (as in our Rocky Mountain west right now).  Because of drought, forests will become tinder, ready for a lightning strike, a too-casual camper, a cigarette butt tossed carelessly from a car — or a mass murderer who thinks it thrilling.

So be prepared to become much more familiar with fire.  But let’s also prepare for a world made more wildfire-friendly: by committing right now to drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases, by changing the culture of development to prohibit the building of communities in areas that are becoming increasingly prone to fire, by renewing our spiritual lives towards a reverence for Earth and the four elements as essential aspects of what it means to have a spiritual life at all.

At such moments, I appreciate why my most ancient ancestors worshiped fire.  Surely it is a force that strikes us with awe.  It ought to also strike us with humility.