Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

I’ve been pondering for days now the story about the Arctic ice and how it has receded at record levels this year, alarming climate scientists.

I hate it when climate scientists are alarmed. Makes me lose sleep at night. What they are saying is that this is happening faster than all the previous predictions, faster than computer models had indicated.

And then I think of the breathtaking recklessness of our president. I think of the adolescent stubborness that he brings to the most serious crises of our times, this being at the top of the list. Climate change and ecological overshoot combined will bring calamities that will make Hiroshima, the tsunami in Indonesia, and Katrina all together pale by comparison.

So the United Nations is addressing the crisis this week at the annual General Assembly meeting. World leaders met yesterday to talk about it. Our president skipped the session on climate change, but showed up for dinner. Later this week, he will have his own meeting with 14 other big carbon-emitting countries. They will discuss ‘aspirational goals,’ and insist that there be no binding agreements on reductions of carbon dioxide emissions.

Addressing the session yesterday, UN Scretary General Ban Ki-Moon once again reiterated the urgency of dealing with climate change now, that only greater disaster waits if we don’t. George ain’t listening. He’s stuck in his narcissistic stubbornness, enabled by a Democratic-led Congress elected to actually do something about the big crisis of our times — the war, climate change, health care — but appears unable to muster any moral or political spine to fight the good fight on these issues.

And the world warms, the Arctic melts, beetles eat up the forests of the west, forest fires burn, floods and drought change the landscape and economies in the US, Europe and elsewhere, lakes recede — and the US, the world’s biggest carbom emitter, at the federal level leads not at all.

For a better idea of the scandal of this, check out this page on the website of the Global Footprint Network to see how far beyond the earth’s carrying capacity we live here in the ol’ U.S. of A.

He is playing recklessly with our lives and the lives of all our fellow creatures on the planet — among them, the polar bears, walrus and other species here long before us, long before the boy George got to the White House.

And, as one would expect, he lags far behind the world in getting his brain to adjust to the reality. Marjorities around the world believe human activity is causing climate change, according to the BBC, manifested in part by the crazy weather that we have all seen and experienced in recent years.

Here’s what one of the scientists, Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), said in regard to the report:

“We’re on a strong spiral of decline; some would say a death spiral. I wouldn’t go that far but we’re certainly on a fast track. We know there is natural variability but the magnitude of change is too great to be caused by natural variability alone.”

As you know, ice reflects sunlight back out into space. Water absorbs it, accelerating the warming process. That is why what is happening in the Arctic is so stark, a classic ‘positive feedback loop.’ While countries greedily eye the oil and natural gas under the ice, one wonders who will be using their precious energy on a planet where habitability in many parts of the world will be deteriorating — including right here in the United States.

Bush is playing recklessly with our lives, he is playing recklessly with our biosphere, the one within which we live and move and have our being, without which we do not live, move, or have any being at all.

[tags] Arctic ice sheet, george bush on climate change, united nations general assembly, aspirational goals[/tags]