Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Some more bad news today regarding the Greenland ice sheet.  New studies, reported yesterday in Science, show that it is melting faster than expected, that it is no doubt due to global warming, and that the ocean levels will also rise more quickly as a result.  This melt of fresh water into salty seas may also slow the Atlantic Ocean ‘conveyer,’ the flow of ocean waters that has kept Europe’s climate moderate now for centuries.  The continent can expect more extreme weather as a result.

For more background on the new studies, you can also go here.  And click here for a report from a study earlier this year.  For a good summary on the two studies with commentary from other scientists, check out the Wash. Post’s article about this.  The lone naysayer that they quote here (for journalistic balance, no doubt), is from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.  These are the folks who brought you those brilliant TV commercials last May telling us that carbon dioxide is not pollution, but rather is the stuff that makes flowers grow and children happy.  ‘We call it life,’ boasted the commercials.

Right.  In balance, the earth created just the right amount of CO2 for life to happen.  It is, indeed, part of the substance of life.  But in excess, too much of this gas gets trapped in the atmosphere and, well, in that case, god help us.  These pro-business, anti-government-action voices are becoming more and more morally irresponsible.

These studies are, of course, very bad news for the climate (the melting will accelerate the rate of global warming) and for coastal communities throughout the world that will be inundated by rising waters.

It is another pointer to ‘an inconvenient truth.’  We are running out of time to take action to slow warming, to prevent our entering a new ‘hot age’ in which life will become quite uncomfortable and most things we assume about our lives will no longer be ‘assumable.’

So, are we still going to wait for more science?  Or are we ready for the big change required of us?