Thursday, June 27, 2019
How Long Do We Have? (Part Two)
The
answer to the
question
highly depends upon feeding the masses. "There are no seasons
anymore. Agriculture is a gamble." A woman farmer in Uganda is
speaking to Mary Robinson (former Irish president, eloquent
spokesperson for climate justice) in 2009. Peter Sawtell quotes her in a post at Ecojustice Notes on
the summer solstice, which is predictable, as the seasons, and
agriculture, are not anymore.
Genesis
seems to say otherwise. "As
long as Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer
and winter, day and night, shall not cease" (Gen 8:22). James
Imhof, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, frequently quotes this verse
to prove that climate change is a liberal hoax; God has promised not
to allow it.
As
a Christian theologian, Sawtell wrote Imhof an open letter pointing out
that what the Genesis writer was pointing to was the dependable
journey of the Earth around the sun on its axis. But
we
humans can still sin, and since our technological prowess, multiplied
by our numbers, has allowed us to be giants in the Earth, we have
taken sin to new levels.
We are, as Brian Swimme says, a "planetary power,"capable of
ecological
sin, with our initially "innocent" use of fossil fuels now
turned monstrous.
The bottom line for all life to
flourish on the Earth is respiration, food and water, and a
temperature range in which the organism can function. Agricultural
output for a species now numbering well over 7 billion is one
important subset of this process. So the unpredictability for
farmers in the ongoing collapse of seasons is a key to the question
of survival. Farmers are adaptable, but there is only so much they
can do in response to the accelerating disruption of growing
conditions. To paraphrase the hymn, they have the whole world in
their hands.
For the Beauty of the Earth....
But what of the other aspects of
climate disruption? Losing the seasons is a loss of stability, and
of the aesthetic delight we have been blessed with for much of our
history (the exceptions being ice ages rather than rapid warming,
which we have never before encountered species-wide). Every time I
hear birdsong I say a prayer of thanksgiving. It is no longer
something to take for granted. The same is true for cool breezes,
refreshing water for recreational bathing, and the wildlife I see in
my yard. And as I wrote here a couple of years back, it is true
of looking up and seeing blue sky, since rapid warming will soon
probably result in deployment of sulfur aerosols at the poles to
dampen incoming solar radiation, causing the skies to turn gray. For
as long as we seed the polar stratosphere, it will be the atmospheric
equivalent of a continuing eruption of large volcanoes, and there
will be serious side effects, chiefly the loss of the monsoon winds
upon which South Asian farmers depend. No blue sky, no monsoon, even
as the Himalayan glaciers, mothers of the major South Asian rivers,
are on course to completely dry up before mid-century.
So, Peter Wadhams' testimony
aside, we will last awhile, but only through the continued
application of human ingenuity, which got us into deep trouble in the
first place. In the end, only restraint of our appetite for comfort
and the easy path, driven by corporate greed and nationalism, will
save us and the rest of the biosphere from ourselves. We have missed
the window for climate mitigation, and now must achieve the miracle
of transformation of global civilization to one of cooperation, even
as nativism and reactionary denial of our crisis have become the
rule. Adaptation, which is so often framed as a technological feat by
individual nations and city-states, is ultimately a social problem.
And that social problem is the key evolutionary issue for our species
in the face of its greatest challenge ever. Sadly, the odds favoring
abrupt climate change dwarf those for rapid evolutionary change.
Labels: ecological sin, Genesis 8:22, Himalayan glacier melt, James Inhof, Mary Robinson, Peter Wadhams, sulfur aerosols
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