Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

If we don’t understand our world, we can’t make good decisions. If we don’t know how the Earth works, we will not know how to heal it, to restore it to the health our ignorance and human hubris have done so much to damage.

Greenland ice melt - photo: NASA/GISS

Two bits of info to put side-by-side, both stories reported in the NY Times:

Statement: there is ‘solid evidence’ that the Earth is warming because of human activity.  Number of people who agree with this statement = 36 percent.

36 percent!!!!

That factoid was cited in a front page article on Thursday, March 4, about the connections among those who doubt anthropogenic global warming and those who do not believe in evolution.

Today, this, as summed up in my own words:

One of the global warming impacts climate scientists have long feared is that methane locked in Arctic permafrost would begin to release as it melts. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and some of these scientists have warned that a big methane release could trigger what is called a ‘tipping point,’ a point at which warming greatly accelerates and becomes irreversible.  Evidence suggests that this process has begun in an area of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf – (Ref: Undersea Greenhouse Gas Gains New Notice in Study, by Cornelia Dean).

Wow, what a headline! Nearly puts you to sleep, doesn’t it? “…Gains New Notice in Study.”  Hardly a shrieking warning.  How ’bout – “Release of methane in the arctic permafrost may trigger runaway global warming!” That might even get somebody’s attention. The headline is a bit better online, but still…

So, these two bits of info side-by-side:

1) increasing doubt about human-caused global warming among the US population; 2) more evidence that it is occurring.  1) More doubt about climate science computer models; 2)  more indication that trends are following those models.

The best proof of scientific theory is when the research affirms the theories in repeat, peer-reviewed studies – like evolution, which isn’t even a controversy anymore so vast is the research that supports the overall theory – except that it is for a substantial portion of the US population, despite the evidence, despite the knowledge.

From the article, Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets:

“Wherever there is a battle over evolution now,” [said Lawrence Krause, physicist at AZ State University], “there is a secondary battle to diminish other hot-button issues like Big Bang and, increasingly, climate change. It is all about casting doubt on the veracity of science — to say it is just one view of the world, just another story, no better or more valid than fundamentalism.”

Some 54% of people in the US believe in the literal biblical version of the creation story (see, The Classroom as Climate Hot Zone)

Climate scientists are beginning to own up to the fact that they have done a poor job of communicating the research on global warming to the public (see another NYT article from Wednesday, Scientists Take Steps to Defend Climate Work, by John Broder). Their miscalculations of the campaigns against the science, their often bruising academic competition and rancor, and reluctance to own up to some mistakes in research, have cost the reputation of the science dearly – despite the fact that none of these mistakes have been in the essence of the science itself – which continues to indicate that we humans are warming the atmosphere dangerously and that the ‘weirding of weather’ in recent decades is one result.

Changing opinions about global warming - Pew Research Center

But what concerns me is a growing divide in this country between those who believe in science and knowledge, and those who don’t when science and knowledge conflict with religious beliefs. And it concerns me that many politicians and corporations wedded to industries most responsible for GHG emissions are manipulating those who hold these beliefs for the sake of undermining the consensus we need to build in this country in order to address this ecological emergency – only one of several we face.

But more, it seems to me that this skepticism and the larger retreat from troubling information about the conditions of the planet and the threats we face of real catastrophe reflect the larger reality of the loss of faith in institutions of all sorts – from government to business to religious institutions to education systems and medical care systems to banks and mortgage companies. Trust is gone; institutions are collapsing; corruption seems to be everywhere; so why not retreat into systems of denial, psychological escape, the certainty of various forms of fundamentalist belief?

When I ponder the long, ugly, manipulated debate on health care reform, the lies and subterfuge, the rancor and insane nature of some of the exchanges, I could hang my head thinking about these looming challenges ahead of us, weighted as they are with the import of our children’s future.

Wounded Earth - Mary Southard

I fear this divide, and I challenge us all to figure out how to bridge it. We have got to be able to teach our children the science they need to know in order to understand the world they live in, how it works, what must be done within the workings of the planet to make it possible for this species to survive and to have a rich and viable future. I fear the belief that God will somehow save the righteous and punish the rest, and if the Earth goes down in flames so be it. I respect anyone’s right to hold those beliefs. But those beliefs must not interfere with the process of giving our kids and our people the tools they need – given to us by God or the Creator or Creation, however you want to describe its origins – for a reason.  Our minds, our ability to make conscious decisions, are gifts to be used, not denied as if using them was some form of attack on faith itself.

But I also want to insist that withholding this necessary knowledge from our youth, or not teaching it all along the way of their education – Earth science, the workings of the atmosphere and biosphere, the interconnections among the beings within Nature and the water, air and soil that nurture us all, what scientists know, what research is still needed, etc. – to withhold this knowledge, this education, is immoral because it denies our kids what they need to know in order to make the crucial decisions regarding the future of the human species on this planet.