Climate justice - How do we manage our guilt?

By the time my father died, in 2016, weeks after the desperate signing of the Paris Agreement, the climate system was tipping toward devastation, passing the threshold of carbon concentration—400 parts per million in the earth’s atmosphere, in the eerily banal language of climatology—that had been, for years, the bright red line environmental scientists had drawn in the rampaging face of modern industry, saying, Do not cross. Of course, we kept going: just two years later, we hit a monthly average of 411, and guilt saturates the planet’s air as much as carbon, though we choose to believe we do not breathe it.

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 5). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

David Wallace-Wells in his book, The Uninhabitable Earth, pulls no punches and states it like it is.

We have done it and crossed the threshold set by scientists for carbon emissions to mitigate the negative effects of climate warming. Wallace-Wells writes that "guilt saturates the planet's air as much as carbon, though we choose to believe we do not breathe it," although of course we do.

Denial, avoidance, attack of truth tellers is promulgated by the 1% who have a vested interest in the profits from fossil fuels and the fossil fuel based capitalistic economy from which they benefit while we foul our own nest and create our own hell.

We are told we are now in the "anthropocene," the human influenced ecology of the planet. The question is one of moral responsibility. Will we, as a conscious species inhabiting and influencing this ecology, take responsibility for our own behavior and policies? How do we manage our guilt if we are willing to recognize and acknowledge that we have some? Will we work together to rectify the harm we have done or will we blame one another and carry on with our destructive behavior?

What we choose, and how we behave, is the gravest moral question of this age. Will our religious institutions take the lead or secular institutions or a combination? What part do we, as indiviudals, have in influencing the organizations and groups we participate in to engage in moral activity to mitigate the damage and enhance the respect and support for the interdependent web?

Climate justice - Will we take responsibility?

Will we take responsibility for human impact on ecological systems or continue with our human exemptionalistic thinking?

“Writing in the late 1970s, William Catton and Riley Dunlap, early environmental sociologists, wrote an oft-cited paper that argued that virtually all sociological theories were anthropocentric; that is, they view society as the center of the natural world, with humans controlling and using the environment without regard for the human resource-based limits to social growth. They termed this sociological worldview the “human exemptionalism paradigm” (HEP).” P.6, Gould, Kenneth A, Lewis, Tammy L,. “An Introduction to Environmental Sociology” in Twenty Lessons In Environmental Sociology, 2015, New York, NY, Oxford University Press.

While the sociologists note what they call the “human exemptionalism paradigm,” the theologians noted the “human domination paradigm” with oft quoted verses from Genesis in the Old Testament where God tells Adam and Eve to go an multiply and dominate the earth.

These narratives from sociology and theology are both at odds with the spiritual teachings of the Earth Centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature which is considered one of the six sources of the Unitarian Univeralist Living Tradition.

While UUs pay lip service to this Earth Centered tradition, their daily lives rarely exemplify the teachings of this source, but rather exemplify the teachings of a capitalistic consumer based society..

Human beings in the United States have seen themselves as the conquerors of nature and have lived their lives based on a nationalistic ethic of manifest destiny by taming the wilderness, domesticating the indigenous savages to comply with the norms of western, white civilizaiton, extracating the earth’s resources for personal and capitalistic enrichment without considering the ramifications for the interdependent web of which they are a part.

Americans consume and then “throw away” naively ignoring the understanding that there is, ultimately, no “away.” We are only beginning to understand that our exploitation, taking for granted, and ignoring consequences of our behavior on the ecosystem which we inhabit may have dire consequences for our survival as individuals and as a species.

With this dawning awareness will we work together to rectify our relationships with one another and nature or will we continue our irresponsible ways, and turn on each other where it will be a matter of the survival of the fittest and richest?

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part. How are we as a denomination of religious people impacting the systems that promote improved balance between our social systems and the ecological systems of life?

To be continued

Climate justice - Will we take responsibility?

The United Nations established its climate change framework in 1992, advertising scientific consensus unmistakably to the world; this means we have now engineered as much ruin knowingly as we ever managed in ignorance. 

Global warming may seem like a distended morality tale playing out over several centuries and inflicting a kind of Old Testament retribution on the great-great-grandchildren of those responsible, since it was carbon burning in eighteenth-century England that lit the fuse of everything that has followed. But that is a fable about historical villainy that acquits those of us alive today—and unfairly. 

The majority of the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. Since the end of World War II, the figure is about 85 percent. The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime—the planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and a funeral.

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 4). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

Inadvertently, we boomers have brought this climate warming about. We have known now for almost three decades now but awareness has been slow to occur. It is the young people who have woken us up. How will we leave our planet to our succeeding generations? What moral responsibility do we have to rectify the damage our life styles and social policies have done?

As Unitarian Univeralists be covenant together to affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. Our behavior, often unconsciously, has been very disrespectful. As we learn more about the damage being done primarily with fossil fuels the more incumbent it is on us to work to rectify the situation. How?

We need to get systemically smart and elect politicians who will legislate based on social policies to limit or eliminate carbon emissions. We need to no longer support fossil fuel industries by changing our life styles, developing and using renewable energy, and withdraw our investments in financial institutions which still invest our money in fossil fuel companies.

To be continued

What kind of an issue is climate justice?

What kind of an issue is climate justice?

 It certainly is an environmental issue based on biological and physical science, but in terms of how we manage the human caused changes we are seeing in our climate it is a political, economic, and most importantly, a moral issue.

What is the right relationship for humans to develop and maintain with the interdependt web or existence within which they find themselves living?

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web and is this respect to be demonstrated?

By intention and engagement and the personal, community, and global level.

Where to start? Start where you find yourself in the present with your vision on the future creating justice and right relationship with all  things living and nonliving.

 

Climate justice - It's worse than you think.

Chapter one

 It’s worse than you think

It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it; that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming; that the burning of fossil fuels is the price of continued economic growth; that growth, and the technology it produces, will allow us to engineer our way out of environmental disaster; that there is any analogue to the scale or scope of this threat, in the long span of human history, that might give us confidence in staring it down.

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 3). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

The biggest moral issue of our age is climate change. Those using a geological model for cosmology call it the “Anthropocene” meaning that the planet Earth is being shaped by human activity.

For all of human history, human beings have seen climate as a “force of nature” or as is written into our insurance policies “an act of God.” We have been in denial with our extraction technologies to enrich ourselves at Mother Nature’s expense and our naive practice of throwing “away” our garbage and the unwanted remains of utilization processes without being aware that there really is no “away.”

We human beings are coming to realize due to the consequences of our own actions that we are fouling our own nest. We are coming to realize that we have been arrogant, prideful, exploitative, and disrespectful of the interdependent web of existence which has given us life and sustains us here. We have taken the interdependent web for granted and lived with a grandiose sense of entitlement and Mother Nature has been very kind and supportive of our childish behavior until now when we have gone too far.

Mother Nature is telling us we need to grow up and take responsibility. We can’t just suckle at her breast forever. It is time for us to be responsible for ourselves and to treat her with gratitude, respect, and cooperation which she deserves. How long, after all, can we continue to take advantage?

The greatest moral issue of our age is stewardship and humble cooperation with the interdependent web. No faith tradition states this responsibility more clearly and visibly than the Unitarian Universalists who, in their seventh principle, covenant together to affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part.

The question is: “How do we affirm and promote this respect for the interdependent web?” How are we doing? If we were to grade our performance what grade would we get?

To be continued.