Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Always looking for signs of hope.  It may be hard to find it at the top, but then there’s the folks, the scientists, researchers, employees of agencies who actually care about what is happening to our atmosphere.

So as the Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in the suit filed by 12 states to force the feds to take action on carbon emissions, unions representing 10,000 workers at the Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement calling on the government to take urgent and immediate action on global warming.

Time is running out, they said:

“If we wait, we will be committing the next generation of Americans to approximately double the current global warming concentrations, with the associated adverse impacts on human health and the environment.”

They criticize the Bush administration for trying to silence the science on climate change, and declare that the voluntary programs supported by the feds are simply not working.

Meanwhile, the Earth warms — inexorably and at an accelerating rate.   Carbon emissions continue to be spewed into our atmosphere and each day what is added contributes to the duration and intensity of the climate changes coming.  Heard about the drought in Australia?  It is said to be unprecedented in 1000 years.  The country is trying to make urgent preparations to ensure a water supply to the country’s cities.

“What we’re seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming,” the leader of the South Australian state government Mike Rann told reporters.

And that’s one less noticed example.

Meanwhile, global growth in carbon emissions is reported to be ‘out of control.’ 

The growth in global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels over the past five years was four times greater than for the preceding 10 years, according to a study that exposes critical flaws in the attempts to avert damaging climate change.

    Data on carbon dioxide emissions shows that the global growth rate was 3.2 per cent in the five years to 2005 compared with 0.8 per cent from 1990 to 1999, despite efforts to reduce carbon pollution through the Kyoto agreement.

Said Dr Mike Raupach, chair of the Global Carbon Project:  ”This is a very worrying sign. It indicates that recent efforts to reduce emissions have had virtually no impact on emissions growth and that effective caps are urgently needed.”  [emphasis added]

Now this isn’t just about the cars we drive.  This is also about the energy we use for electricity.  And this, also, is not just about whether the sources of the energy create carbon emissions in production and burning, but also how we get it.  And how we get that energy is related to another issue — how we look at our Earth, how we ‘develop’ it (’maldevelop’ is perhaps a better word at this point), and whether human behavior supports and lives within the balance of the biosphere, or upsets and harms that balance.

Example?  This article on how drainage of wetlands, for things like the production of palm oil, are rapidly accelerating CO2 emissions by releasing the carbon in peat bogs and destroying a vital carbon sink.

There are areas of the Earth that store an incredible amount of carbon, and we will say more about this in future posts.  Human activity is causing changes that are starting to release this carbon, and some scientists believe this to be an even greater threat than all the cars we drive and electricity we use.  This is the kind of stuff that could cause sudden and drastic climate change within our lifetimes.

Signs of ecological hope — in those insisting on action, going public, organizing, changing their lives, deepening their spiritual bonds with the Earth community, changing their values, caring about the future of their kids. 

You and me.