Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Look, I know we are still basking in the various sacred celebrations of hope and renewal that come with the season, but sometimes we get hit with reality in any case.  Yesterday, my Chicago niece sent me this article from the Chicago Tribune, Global Warming: Australia showing effects of climate change, some experts say.  Indeed — some experts say.  All these experts are doing is describing the actual experience of Australians.

Source: Climate Progress, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Australia is rapidly becoming uninhabitable.

It’s a short article: please read it.  Then imagine what this world might look like if we continue prolonging this debate about global warming, climate change, and what to do about it.  The delays in making drastic changes to the underpinnings of industrial and post-industrial life, to human economies of extraction, consumption and enormous waste — into our atmosphere and biosphere — is looking more and more like a matter of grave moral consequence.

As is global warming denial, as are climate change skeptics, as is the fossil fuel industry and its supporters who keep on fudging and twisting information and manipulating and paying off politicians with their lobbying money and campaign contributions.

As are religious leaders who know how bad things are but quibble instead about ritual correctness and enforcement of orthodoxies and hierarchies or keep the focus on individual personal salvation — well, you know what and who I mean.

Source: Wikipedia

When have you heard yet the cry from pulpits about the necessity of change in how we live for the sake of the people of Australia? Or for the future of our children?  Does love of neighbor and our responsibility for our impacts on the well-being of others reach across the ocean or to future generations?

Imagine Easter without the beauty of the natural world! How will we rise on a spring morning to celebrate the miracle of life’s continuing renewal in the magnificent cycles of life if we have undermined the ecosystems that bring about that renewal? And what happens to the population of Australia when temperatures during heat waves continue to rise beyond the 110-120 that they are already experiencing?

According to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, “The average annual death toll from heat waves is over 1,100 people in Australia and that number only stands to increase. [click here]

Source: World Bank 2004

Now Australia also has one of the highest per capita rates of carbon emissions in the world. They rely for energy on the dirtiest of fuels — coal. The government has in the past been resistant to mandatory limits on emissions because of the potential impact on the economy. What will be the impact of a frying, drying, uninhabitable continent on its economy?

But, still, still, the United States has the highest per capita rate of carbon emissions of all — far beyond any other country. Like it or not, we are culpable here. Carbon emissions don’t stay at home, and already the chemical makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere has been altered. Really, how bad do we want things to get?

Climate scientists say Australia “epitomizes ‘accelerated climate crisis,’” predicted by the computer models that the skeptics love to disparage.  What happens when climate changes continue to match those predictions?  Can we stop the debate then?  Can we get to the work of bringing about this great transition in the human presence on the planet?

As Frank Eddy says about whether or not it is climate change that is causing these Australian disasters: “You’d have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise.”

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View this video featuring Frank Eddy:

Further reading: Why Global Warming May Be Feuling Australia’s Fires, from Time Magazine.