On climate change and the church
Yesterday Freddie de Boer posted a brief reflection on climate change, which he opens in this way:
"This is one of those things where I feel like everybody quietly knows it but we have this sort of tacit agreement not to say it openly in order to preserve some sort of illusion about what our society is and who we are. But, I mean, come on – we’re not fixing climate change. Nobody thinks we are, not really. Everyone’s putting on a brave face, everyone’s maintaining the pretense on behalf of the kids of whatever. But come on. Let us be adults here. We are not, as a species, going to do the things necessary to arrest or meaningfully slow the heating of the planet and thus will be exposed to all of the ruinous consequences of failing to do so."
This is neither, for him, denialism nor despair, just the hard facts. Action is still called for:
"I’m not telling people to give up, and I’m not telling people to despair. Of course we have to fight this thing, just like you fight to save your life even when it’s impossible. This is not in any sense denialism; it’s real, it’s coming, and the changes are utterly devastating. And though I recognize it would be easy to think this, I say this without a shred of glee, smugness, or superiority. I just feel like everyone privately knows that this is a fight we’re going to lose. Turn off every emotional part of your brain and do the pure, brutal actuarial calculus and find out what you really believe."
Let me share a few brief thoughts and questions in response to this.
1. It seems to me that, bracketing sincere deniers and those who simply never think about the topic—and we should allow that, at least in the U.S., that covers a sizeable slice of the population—this analysis is basically correct. If, on the continuum of predictions, the worst is true, paired with what it would be necessary to do to prevent such a future from happening, who can plausibly believe a fractious and divided globe of 7 billion people will unite in order to change their own lives and the lives of everyone else, the very structure and habitus of civilization, in the blink of an eye, without dissent, peaceably, and voluntarily?
2. Is Freddie correct that this is not a counsel of despair? At least, for people who broadly share Freddie's moral and political convictions? People fight to save their lives out of the natural instinct of self-preservation. But would it, strictly speaking, be rational for, say, an atheist who knew she would die in 3 hours to fight—with all her might, with great suffering, and to no avail—with the certain knowledge that, at most, she would die in 6 hours instead? Why should people who lack faith in God (and the concomitant beliefs, commitments, and practices of faith in God) not despair for themselves and their progeny, assuming the prediction of doom is correct?
3. What do Christians have to say about this? What should Christian theology say about it? So much of the oxygen of this conversation has for so long been sucked up by dispute over the existence and severity of climate change, and even then, in the register of politics. But let's just stipulate the fact: not only of climate change but also of its most disastrous potential consequences. Does the church, do theologians, have something unique—something substantive, or prophetic, or evangelical, or apostolic, or penitential, or whatever—to say about such a matter? Has such commentary been offered, and I have missed it? Are there Europeans or Africans or other church authorities or theologians that have offered a richly Christian word on the topic? I don't mean, again, recognition of the problem and vague generalities about meeting the challenge of the day. I mean the possibility (here, the stipulated fact) of widespread ecological ruin, terror and suffering and destruction of human life and culture on a vast, perhaps unparalleled scale, social instability and generational loss, the near-total transformation of conditions of human existence on planet earth. Has serious theological attention been paid to that? Even as only a potential or stipulated future? What would the gospel speak into such a situation? What would the call of God be upon the church, both today and in such a future?
I'm left wondering.
"This is one of those things where I feel like everybody quietly knows it but we have this sort of tacit agreement not to say it openly in order to preserve some sort of illusion about what our society is and who we are. But, I mean, come on – we’re not fixing climate change. Nobody thinks we are, not really. Everyone’s putting on a brave face, everyone’s maintaining the pretense on behalf of the kids of whatever. But come on. Let us be adults here. We are not, as a species, going to do the things necessary to arrest or meaningfully slow the heating of the planet and thus will be exposed to all of the ruinous consequences of failing to do so."
This is neither, for him, denialism nor despair, just the hard facts. Action is still called for:
"I’m not telling people to give up, and I’m not telling people to despair. Of course we have to fight this thing, just like you fight to save your life even when it’s impossible. This is not in any sense denialism; it’s real, it’s coming, and the changes are utterly devastating. And though I recognize it would be easy to think this, I say this without a shred of glee, smugness, or superiority. I just feel like everyone privately knows that this is a fight we’re going to lose. Turn off every emotional part of your brain and do the pure, brutal actuarial calculus and find out what you really believe."
Let me share a few brief thoughts and questions in response to this.
1. It seems to me that, bracketing sincere deniers and those who simply never think about the topic—and we should allow that, at least in the U.S., that covers a sizeable slice of the population—this analysis is basically correct. If, on the continuum of predictions, the worst is true, paired with what it would be necessary to do to prevent such a future from happening, who can plausibly believe a fractious and divided globe of 7 billion people will unite in order to change their own lives and the lives of everyone else, the very structure and habitus of civilization, in the blink of an eye, without dissent, peaceably, and voluntarily?
2. Is Freddie correct that this is not a counsel of despair? At least, for people who broadly share Freddie's moral and political convictions? People fight to save their lives out of the natural instinct of self-preservation. But would it, strictly speaking, be rational for, say, an atheist who knew she would die in 3 hours to fight—with all her might, with great suffering, and to no avail—with the certain knowledge that, at most, she would die in 6 hours instead? Why should people who lack faith in God (and the concomitant beliefs, commitments, and practices of faith in God) not despair for themselves and their progeny, assuming the prediction of doom is correct?
3. What do Christians have to say about this? What should Christian theology say about it? So much of the oxygen of this conversation has for so long been sucked up by dispute over the existence and severity of climate change, and even then, in the register of politics. But let's just stipulate the fact: not only of climate change but also of its most disastrous potential consequences. Does the church, do theologians, have something unique—something substantive, or prophetic, or evangelical, or apostolic, or penitential, or whatever—to say about such a matter? Has such commentary been offered, and I have missed it? Are there Europeans or Africans or other church authorities or theologians that have offered a richly Christian word on the topic? I don't mean, again, recognition of the problem and vague generalities about meeting the challenge of the day. I mean the possibility (here, the stipulated fact) of widespread ecological ruin, terror and suffering and destruction of human life and culture on a vast, perhaps unparalleled scale, social instability and generational loss, the near-total transformation of conditions of human existence on planet earth. Has serious theological attention been paid to that? Even as only a potential or stipulated future? What would the gospel speak into such a situation? What would the call of God be upon the church, both today and in such a future?
I'm left wondering.
