ecospirit

Thus begins the document, the Kabarak Call to Peace and Ecojustice,  prophetic fruit of a once-in-a-generation world conference of Friends (Quakers) in Nkuru Kenya this spring. Friends worldwide spent two years responding to a query about the moral challenge of global change – not just climate, but all dimensions. Responses were collected and a group of Friends at the world gathering spent a week distilling them into a text presented to almost 900 Friends for final discernment. Those present included the gamut of Friends, from atheists to evangelicals. Most delegates were from Africa; the largest number of Quakers – primarily evangelical - live in Kenya. That this diverse group could come to consensus on a document which powerfully unites the social gospel of Jesus with environmental concerns is a testament to the underlying unity of Spirit which rose to embrace this occasion to salt the groaning world with the Light of Christ.

The Kabarak Call is as timely as it is stirring, for our generation is the one that must act on climate change, or face the consequence of being the species – ecosystem managers whether we like it our not – that failed God, the earth, and ourselves. Climate scientists now agree that we have only about four years left to significantly slow global carbon emissions, or face catastrophic climate change, creating a radically different planet in which higher life - we imagine ourselves its zenith – may not survive.

We are called to see what love can do...to love our neighbor as ourselves Friends General Conference held a gathering a few years ago entitled “Who is my Neighbor?” where we clearly recognized that our neighbors include all species, the whole web, not just 21st century Samaritans. And it includes future generations. To love them, to even give them a chance at the blessings of life in the Holocene era, is to sever our dependence upon fossil fuels. Governments of the world have done little to reverse the status quo, but 350.org is now conducting a campaign which is leading students to challenge 192 American universities to divest from coal and oil investments.

We are called to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To afflict the comfortable is to afflict ourselves. Though I have reduced my personal emissions from near 20 tons of carbon annually- the US average - to 10 or 11, I am still far from the 1-2 tones that would be my limit were I an average consumer of the earth's annual biomass production in 2050 on a crowded planet of 9 billion. My emissions are now average for a European, but one huge variable makes me an Ugly American some years – air travel. If I can limit such travel to one coast-to-coast trip a year, with only one stop, then I can come in near 11 tons. But I rather feebly resist family vacations that require huge outlays of carbon for air travel. I must honestly admit that my present enjoyment of family is more important to me than the survival of civilization, including future generations of this family.

We are called to teach our children right relationship, to live in harmony with each other and all living beings... Who are we to teach? At our current rate, by the time my oldest grandchild finishes college, roughly 2030, we will have used up our carbon budget to hold the temperature rise to 2 degrees C - the max for stopping uncontrollably cascading climate change. And that represents only one-fifth of known fossil reserves. If we don't leave that carbon, and the profits it represents, in the ground, by the time my grandchildren reach old age our planet will be 3.5-6 degrees C warmer than it was in 1990. If you want to know what kind of world that would be, review Mark Lynas' Six Degrees. If you can get past the three degrees chapter, you are tougher than I.

We are called to do justice to all and walk humbly with God, to cooperate lovingly with all who share our hopes for the future of the earth. To walk humbly with God evokes the Quaker testimony of simplicity. Voluntary simplicity in the modern world is a radical act, requiring tremendous focus and the willingness to disrupt patterns as pervasive as driving kids across town to soccer practice. Some of us have tried. I know only one or two First World people who have succeeded. Hopes for the future are linked of necessity to living in a way that acknowledges that our neighbors include future generations. What will we willingly sacrifice so that they might have a future? And what joys await us if we do?

We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace and ecojustice..Peace on earth, the call of the season of Christ's Light, requires peace with earth, ecojustice. We need to build the moral argument for stopping our emissions in their tracks. And we need to proceed to support governmental policies that will force, not encourage, us to do so.

Personal acts have helped a little, but living like a European, aided by expensive solar panels and driving a Prius (do you really think a 21st century Jesus would drive at all?), is not sufficient to the monumental task at hand. Cap and trade has no future, for it failed within the Kyoto Accord and is too subject to manipulation by greedy traders. Nor are comprehensive international agreements likely to provide a tough, enforceable framework that will slow emissions fast enough. We need carbon taxes, especially in the biggest countries, and bilateral “clubs” - trade agreements over carbon emissions discussed in my November post - in order to stem the tide.

The deterrents to progress in cutting carbon emissions are huge. The first is the wealth of known reserves that fossil fuel companies hold. The second is our addiction to the comforts that fossil fuels have made available, enabling a non-sustainable lifestyle that is globally emulated. A recent Pew poll showed that while over 70 percent of Americans thought we should reduce our emissions, less than 3 per cent of them had done anything to change their fossil habits. The richest one billion of us, living far richer lifestyles than kings a few centuries ago, use the entire annual biomass production of our planet. Divestment along the lines of 350.org's campaign would help, but we need a movement that pushes governments to put laws and taxes in place that will make using fossil fuels prohibitively expensive. We need our addiction redirected by mandate.

Even with that mandate, the radical recast of the social gospel that the Kabarak Call demands necessarily leads to a post-industrial world of appropriate technology, restraint in resource use, and a rebirth of live community, replacing a virtual world which uses real energy.