The data is in: Global warming is becoming the ultimate moral-values issue. Both religious and political leaders must mobilize immediately to address it. No society is more reluctant to accept these two claims than the United States. No religious community is less sympathetic to them than “Bible-believing” Christians. What will it take for us to change our ways?
In November the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offered a powerful summary statement of its latest research. The report ends the debate about whether man-made emissions of fossil fuels, along with deforestation, are primarily responsible for the rise in atmospheric temperatures. Human beings are indeed culpable. This is the conclusion reached by 2,500 of the world's climate scientists, by far the most carefully peer-reviewed scientific process in the world.
Their findings are staggering — though not new — and it is not surprising that it has taken us a while to wrap our minds around it. No one anticipated at the dawn of the industrial era that somehow the very success of the industrialization project would bring in its wake a dangerous change in the very conditions of life on this planet. But that is where we are.
The IPCC group has also sharpened its warnings related to the likely consequences of climate change. These include the loss of one quarter or more of the world's species; more violent hurricanes, drought and famine; further Arctic and Antarctic melting; and a significant sea-level rise that will threaten or overrun coastal and low-lying regions.
Basically, we are already facing the likelihood of a significant decline in the quality of life in many regions of the world, with consequent spillover effects throughout the planet. And we face the possibility of the eventual collapse of the planet's ability to sustain human life. This is not an “environmental” issue, as in “save the whales.” This is a “save the humans” issue. Will that finally get our attention?
The IPCC scientists are now saying that time is running out for us to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases. IPCC tells us that we must stop the increase of greenhouse gases and find a point of stabilization by 2015. That's only seven years away! That means, in the words of IPCC leader Rajendra Pachauri, “What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future.” That means that, along with the rest of the world, the United States must enact and begin to implement a cap on carbon emissions within the next two years.
After 2015, assuming we have made the enormous changes necessary just to stabilize this runaway train, we must globally move toward significant reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions (and deforestation) and finally begin the transition away from carbon-emitting technologies by the middle of this century.
I turned recently to a careful reading of Collapse, a hugely significant 2005 book by geographer/anthropologist Jared Diamond. Diamond distills decades of his own fieldwork in the climate history of the planet, especially with regard to civilizations that eventually collapsed.
In researching civilizations as diverse as Easter Island, Norse Greenland, and the Anasazi of North America, Diamond finds that a combination of human-caused ecological damage, climate change, deteriorating relations with neighboring countries and trading partners, and an inadequate societal response to these growing challenges generally have all been at play in various degrees when cultures have collapsed in human history.
Reading Diamond's staggering scholarship and panoramic view of the rise and fall of human civilizations helped me to see, once and for all, that the survival of, for example, our beloved United States of America is hardly a sure thing because the survival of no nation, no civilization, is a sure thing.
And Diamond points out quite tellingly that one difference between previous collapses and the one we might now face is that the world is indeed connected together in a way never before seen. When Afghanistan sneezes, Des Moines catches a cold. As China industrializes using dirty coal, all of us get sick. And if we go over the tipping point toward abrupt climate change, no one will be spared.
Diamond, in his sober way, essentially pleads for our own country and the world to find the leadership needed to respond to what is becoming a question of human survival. We need leaders who will avoid the mistakes made by those long-dead civilizations, which, in Diamond's summary, failed to anticipate problems before they arrived, failed to perceive problems even after they had arrived, failed even to try to solve problems once they were perceived, and if they finally tried to solve the problems failed to find the right solutions in time. Because human well-being is at stake, even human survival, those looking to have political influence must now say that this is the ultimate moral-values issue.
Where is God in all of this? Where is the church? This is not Diamond's topic, but he does say this: One reason why some dead civilizations responded sluggishly to threats to their very survival was because their existing system of values was not up to the task — and they were unwilling or unable to change those values in time.
I might suggest that any Christian theology or ethic that believes human beings are too puny to affect the planet's ecosystem, that God will not let anything bad happen to us; that anything that happens (good or evil) is the result of God's direct will and purpose, that social ethics and morality are unimportant, that gay marriage and judicial activism are the key values issues in 2008, or that nothing must be done to hinder or regulate the free market, is part of the problem, not part of the solution. That attitude needs to change before it is too late. For evangelicals, our responsibility is great indeed.
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— David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. www.davidpgushee.com