Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Yet another study has linked the rising threat of hurricanes — more severe storms because of the warming of ocean waters — to human causes, specifically the rise of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.  Here are a couple of links referencing the study.

And here’s another story related to global warming – the threat to plant life all across the globe.

Want more?  because the news just keeps coming now, on a daily basis.  So, here’s another on the shrinking of the sea ice in the Arctic.  “The winter warming signal is finally coming out.”  It’s because of the greenhouse effect, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Now here is my thinking on all this news — which just keeps mounting.  How much news does it take to get people to take action?  The thing about these studies is that there is always a voice that says, well, you know, we can’t be absolutely sure about anything nor predict exactly when it’s going to get really, really bad, you know, like the exact date that we reach the tipping point, the exact date when we lose half the living species on the earth — so that we can plan ahead.

Once we experience the loss, it is already too late.  Extinction means the end.  The tipping point means heating that we can no longer do anything to slow, much less reverse.  This is a case where we come to the crisis at the point at which it is already too late to avoid it.  The ‘ahead’ about which we must plan is here right now.  It is getting very, very late indeed.

So when does this news reach its own tipping point in our consciousness, that moment when we stop everything and say, ‘Oh, my God,’ I can’t go on like this any longer?

There are things you can do.  Check out the Climate Crisis Coalition, for example, or the Green House Network.  There is a lot we can do, many ways to get involved in saving the planet, and we humans within it.