Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Yes, even the wildfires.  Earlier, warmer springs mean earlier snowmelt, which means earlier evaporation, longer seasons for the earth to dry out.  Here’s is a link to an article describing the results of yet another study on the growing impacts of global warming — impacts that are no longer only about the future, dear readers, but here right now.  Some of my favorite places in the world have been buring this spring.

“…evidence is mounting that anthropogenic effects have been contributing to warmer winters and springs in recent decades.”  This is leaving a lot of our forests and grasslands vulnerable to ignition from lightning strikes, errant campfires, a tossed cigarette butt.

In addition to the fire threat, there is also the fact that our forests absorb a great deal of carbon dioxide.  Without them, more CO2 will lodge in our atmosphere and global warming will only get worse.

The earth had a pretty good system going there for a while, until we overwhelmed it.

Brian Williams had a particularly powerful story on this new study on last evening’s NBC Nightly News.  To view it, go here and scroll down to NBC Video: Nightly News.  The story is on the list.

To read the article from the journal Nature, go here.

Sometimes I wish we really were making all this up, as the global-warming/climate-change deniers keep screaming on the airwaves.  Said the brilliant rightwing ideologue Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK): “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”  If only this was a hoax, and one day we could all just have a good chuckle about it, get on with our lives and forget it ever came up. 

Good god, how do these people get elected to office?  Check out this statement by Inhofe for an example of the remarkable veil of ignorance that many on the right would like to drop over this crisis.

Meanwhile, this from one of the researchers involved in this study:

“I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States,” said study coauthor Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. ” Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it’s not 50 to 100 years away—it’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.”

How bad must the devasation get before we act in a measure commensurate with the crisis we face?  There is no going back to the natural balance we once knew.  It is now about how this planet will find a new balance, and whether or not we humans will be part of it.  Already we are seeing things in our lives that will never be the same.

Ecological Hope rests in our capacity and willingness to embrace the truth of our predicament, not to run away or become paralyzed and just let the destruction come.  We were given these minds, these spirits, precisely so that we would have what we need in this moment to work with the earth to bring about a new equilibrium in which life can flourish, have a future.

And this, my friends, is undoubtedly the most important project of our times.

This blog is part of a project entitled, Spirituality and Ecological Hope.  Your contributions will help us create an Ecological Hope web site, linking communities that are creatively addressing the great crises of our times — climate change and resource depletion — and to get out into communities with workshops and presentations that can foster communities of ecological hope across the country.  Donations are tax deductible.  Make out your check or money order to the Center for New Creation, earmarked Ecological Hope, and send it to the address in the contact box on this blog.  Thank you!