September 20, 2020

Alan Broom

Over the last 3 weeks we have been considering our responsibility to care for creation and in this context our carbon footprint and what each of us is prepared to do to make a smaller impact on our environment. We have all been challenged to review our way of living and engage with each other around these issues with high levels of concern expressed in favour of change.

And so we have considered our energy sources, our energy use, and decided to be more mindful about flicking the switches of our homes. We talked about travel, our daily commuting, and public transport and our air travel. And then our food, where it comes from, the energy that goes into processing and transporting food. We have talked about intensive animal farming and the impact on the environment. And we have discussed our wasteful society, how we wrap, tear apart, throw out, chuck and dump and the Earth is meant to swallow all of this. We have also alluded to the increased risk to the poor of the world, with the world in climate crisis.

It has caused us to think and reflect and to take action to see what differences we can make in lowering our environmental footprint. For this is Creation we are talking about. As yet, we know of no other planetary system like ours. We are called to love the Earth and the fullness of it, the abundance of nature, yet so threatened because of lack of restraints.

But, there is still a feeling that we are perhaps tinkering around the edges, that we cannot render significant change as a small group of people, and the real change, change that will release a world safe for the next generations needs to be done on the macro scale. Change that is mandated because we as humans, and our Governments, see the planet is in crisis of our own making. Governments need to change their approach radically and societies need to recognize there will be no societies unless there is major change. Change starts with us but today is about calling for change, advocating for change on a large scale. We will discuss the details of that in our after church discussion.

Listen to the powerful words of Jim Antal in his book Climate World, Climate Church:

For the sake of humanity, the world, the ecosphere, and countless generations of unborn children and creatures, our present social and economic system needs a moral intervention. And so does the church. It’s time to declare a new moral era. [1]

I’ll read it again.

Notice that the moral order is not just about humanity, but it is the world and the ecosphere, that is all of life and its teeming abundance upon which we are dependent, and it is the countless generations following us, the unborn children, our unborn grandchildren, great grandchildren and their children. It is for these that we call for change. And it is for the already disadvantaged in the world who as sea rises, droughts parch arable land, increasingly common floods and forest fires make their already marginal livelihoods impossible. It is not primarily about ourselves but all of creation and that which is yet to be created. It is about intergenerational and interspecies justice. It is a fundamental issue of justice, how we impact the future.

We are in the middle stages of a crisis but it is as if we are driving over a precipice blindfolded, hoping against what we are told, and read, and see on our screens. Wouldn’t it be good if this nightmare was just that, some entertaining of dark fantasy that will in the end not happen, or that maybe this is just a really bad year and next year will be better? How many 100 year floods, forest fires and droughts do we need in 5 years to convince us? Unfortunately the science of climate change does not allow this blind hope. Instead rising GHG levels in the stratosphere are wrapping the earth as it were in a thermal blanket, and this needs to reduce markedly to render any hope for the future. The science is disputed by a few who have another agenda but the main culprit is CO2 largely from fossil fuel emissions since the industrial age, with diminishing forestation to absorb the CO2. It is since the industrial age that CO2 levels have increased exponentially. Hence our crisis.

We ignore the vulnerability of our planet at our peril and to the peril of generations and all species to come.

Reversing climate change is like stopping a huge ship. Stopping happens 20km out of port because of the momentum. If and when we stop carbon emissions, there will be a long lag time before there will be observable benefit. We were told about this 50 years ago and the common response was that they, whoever “they” are will work something out. So here we are now, on the brink of collapse, and we have a very small window of opportunity left.

It’s time to declare a new moral era.

In the past crises have been averted because people have been emotionally engaged. With the pandemic, we saw what was happening overseas, the overloaded hospitals, the bodies being loaded into mass graves and we fell in with the Government plan. There was general acceptance that the plan was right and this is what we needed to do for each other.

The threat of nuclear holocaust made NZ stand up against the powerful and say no to nuclear ships. We had seen the evidence of nuclear devastation in Japan and knew much worse was possible. And the superpowers were loaded with weaponry, enough to destroy the planet several times over. St Matthew’s was a leader in the antinuclear movement.

Now we see the bleaching of coral reefs, and out of control forest fires on parched forest reserves. And we see huge areas of Africa inundated with floods and people fleeing their homes. Climate refugees are on the way.

It’s time to connect the dots that this is a planet in crisis.

As the human species, we occupy more than our share of the biosphere. We do not live in harmony with nature; rather we try to control it for our advantage and we consume much more than our fair share of resources. It has been estimated that if everyone on the earth ate a standard western diet of 2 servings of meat daily and processed foods, say ham sandwiches for lunch and then meat and 3 veg at night, maybe bacon and eggs weekly for breakfast, plus cheeses and desserts, it would take the equivalent of 5-6 earth planets to feed the world. That of course is not possible. I know most of us do not eat like that but many do.

Scientists talk about global warming of 1.5 degrees average as our tipping point. We are very close to that. I suspect most people cannot get their heads round that 1.5 degree change, or 2 or more degrees for far worse consequences. The numbers seem trivial. They are not. The earth is a finely balanced system of complex interactions between species, sun, water, soil and air, all held in a delicate balance. Think of the human body. If our body temperature rises 1 degree above 37 to 38 we have a fever and feel unwell. Even more unwell at 1.5 degrees above, needing to go to bed, rest, drink plenty of fluid. At 3 degrees above we may well need hospitalization. These tiny incremental differences make a huge difference. Our bodies are perfectly and finely balanced keeping our temperatures at a constant. Of course, our bodies do not have the same daily variations of internal climate, but the average temperatures of the earth are a reflection of a precise setting for balance between the Earth systems.

Some tech companies claim we are in an irreversible situation and it is too late stop climate change. So they are putting their creative energies into cooling fabrics, building and roading materials with higher melting points. There is money to be made here. Agencies such as MarsOne plan settlement on Mars partly for the survival of the human species. It is all I suspect a reenactment of the Tower of Babel myth where humankind is in a search for ultimate control.

I find this completely lacking in moral direction. It is a plan to escape this mess here rather than pitching in with their enormous resources to reverse the damage.

We are heading into more and more perilous times. Our customary comforts are going to be less obtainable, there will be much suffering around the world as peoples can no longer live in their environment whether it be because of inundation with risen sea levels, or land no longer bearing crops because of drought; “1 in 500 year” floods happening yearly; vast forest fires; food scarcity, and temperatures which are too hot for work and living; wars over land and water ownership. We are starting to see this.

I take no comfort in my age. We are starting to see enormous upheaval, but our children are going to see much worse.

“It is time to declare a new moral order.”

It is time to give away feelings of hopelessness and despair and be a beacon of hope.

Not a reality-avoiding hope that something better is ahead beyond the grave, but hope grounded in love for each other, and for all living things.

It is time to stop the blaming and to take responsibility.

It is time to lament our role in this crisis and ask “What can we do?”

How can we effect change in our country and signal to the world that we are serious, deadly serious?

There is a small chance of holding calamity back if we take on near carbon neutral lifestyles and help lead the nation to do the same. People argue that there is no point in NZ changing if the bigger culprits do not. But in the past NZ has been a leader – the women’s vote – we were the first and all Western nations followed. There has been a lot of noting of our pandemic response. We are powerful when we go alone. The world does notice. Let’s continue to be a model.

But people say that will cost us too much. How we trade, what we trade, how we relax, how we travel, how we eat. Yes there is a big cost but this is tiny compared to the cost to the next generations of a depleted planet.

There is a common false separation of the economy from ecology. Economic hazard seems more important to people than ecological disaster. In the US major political players and parties wallow in denial about climate change in order to make room for corporations and those who profit from them to become the de facto rulers of the earth as we know it.

The Earth has remarkable repair capacity when it is treated with respect but today the environment and the economy are seen as valid occupants of each end of a seesaw. The growth orientation of economies goes up and the environmental impact is driven in the opposite direction. We are presented with a growth economy which involves more extraction, more emissions, more polluted waterways – I would love to be convinced it could be different.

Has the Garden of Eden myth set us up with some simplistic false notions? There is the creation narrative and then the man and woman are set up as having dominion over all creatures. But it was a scene of harmony, man and woman naming all creatures – classifying all creatures. But the temptation has always been to have more than the natural order of things allowed. And so the apple was eaten and we continue to do that.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a genius in human discovery that has created so much and we are beneficiaries of wonderful human exploration and creativity. It’s just that we have felt entitled to dominion over land, creatures and indigenous peoples.

Matthew Fox asks the question:

What does it mean to wake up to ecology, to learning to love our earth home with a deeper love, and to acknowledge how much we owe her, and how deeply we need to adapt our ways to her, if we are to keep her healthy and fit so that future generations of beings can thrive in her midst?

The future is to a large part due to how we have been living our lives for the past 200 hundred years and the decisions we make in the next 1-10 years are the only chance we have for changing that picture for the better. We are responsible for the future.

The Gospel narrative of today is very familiar and has inspired charitable deeds over the ages. The man beset by robbers and the passers-by, the dignitaries, the religious leaders, those with means, pass him by on the other side of the road. But it is the outsider, the Samaritan who takes action to save this wounded man. He tends his wounds and finds him shelter and a place to recover.

Let’s modernize this story. Let’s think of the earth as having been exploited, gouged, drained, chopped, flattened, polluted, an Earth struggling to sustain life systems upon which all of life depends. And let’s think of our journey through life. We have been aware of the ecological consequences of modern living for a long time. I was a teenager when I first heard about it. We have been warned. Voices have been calling for restraint for at least the last 50 years. But we have changed little. There have been proclamations and agreements to cut emissions like the Paris agreement but worldwide the emissions increase.

On what side of the road are we walking past this wounded world? Yes, obviously the oil industry passes by looking away towards vast profits; industrialists pass by saying we need more oil and coal to power our manufacturing; others need to protect their shareholders; Governments pass by, elected by their people but are afraid to mandate strict environmental policies because an election is looming and so they pass by reluctantly; picture ourselves flying by, looking for pleasures in distant places; picture large parts of the church passing by, preaching salvation for the afterlife as its main message.

Yes, we see the damage done but who is going to come to the aid of the wounded Earth? Who is going to say enough, we have to stop and rescue the Earth before it is too late?

“It’s time to declare a new moral era.”

It is time to find another way than relentless growth by further extraction, production, acquisition, and waste on monumental scale.

It is time for us to mirror God’s love for creation and set that as our overwhelming priority.

How we might do this is in part the discussion we will have after church today. Is the Church going to be a leader in turning the world away from the brink of this nuclear moment. Let’s act together.

[1] Antal, Jim, and Bill McKibben. Climate Church, Climate World: How People of Faith Must Work for Change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018 end of Chpater 3