“Our Climate Changing”

One of “the hottest topics” of our day is climate change.  It involves all of us, since all of us live on this one planet called Earth.  Not everyone acknowledges the concern that many, even most of us feel for the future of all of us.

Time Magazine in its Special Climate Issue, September 23, 2019, articulates this concern regarding our changing climate.  Balancing urgency with science, the authors of this issue offer compelling evidence that now is the time for us to act.  The time for study has passed; the time for action is upon us!  What we do in the next twenty to thirty years will effectively seal the fate of this planet, which includes us, our children and grandchildren and all God’s creatures who share our place on planet Earth.

In the article entitled, “Keep Antarctica on Ice”, by Jeffrey Kluger, this author shows how rising sea levels have occurred since 1993 until 2017 of 80mm (3.15 inches).  Seas may rise 1 meter in 100 years or more.  Some predict 3 meters of rise.  If all Greenland’s glaciers melted sea level rise is 6 meters.  If all Antarctica glaciers melted, sea level rise is 73 meters, which is 239 feet.  No one expects this to occur.  But the fact is already occurring that certain places on planet Earth are becoming less hospitable from sea level rise.  Already certain vulnerable areas are flooding including people of the South Pacific, Bangladesh, and parts of northern Nigeria.  Certain areas of the United States, including Miami, Florida and Charleston, SC already experience the effects of sea water infiltration during high tides.  New York City is beginning to plan for levies to protect from predicted sea level rise and more powerful storms.

Another effect of climate change are rising global temperatures.  Jacobadad, Pakistan experienced a scorching temperature of 51.1C (124 degrees F) this year.  According to Aryn Baker, in the article The Hottest City on Earth in this same issue of Time Magazine, “in July, 2019 all- time heat records were broken in Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands.  Wildfires raged in the Arctic…Globally, July was the hottest month ever recorded.”  This reflects changing weather patterns over the years.  “18 of the last 19 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.”  Camilo Mora, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii (Manoa) says “the global average 3 degrees C increase by 2100 would mean three times as many hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves.” A 2003 heat wave in Europe is estimated to have caused 70,000 deaths.  He references other natural disasters. Mora concludes, “How many more disasters do you want before we start taking it seriously?”

Many are taking climate change seriously.  Greta Thurnberg, age 16 years, from Sweden has challenged the status quo thinking on climate change, along with many others.  Some parts of our world are listening, as for example, Paris, France.  Other parts are not listening, as for example, the current US administration.  Instead of providing leadership, President Trump is set to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accords.  Some bury their heads in the sands of the world economy, mostly wealthy old men who will be dead when the worst effects of climate change arrive.  Ms. Thurnberg confronted many of these old men at a recent forum in New York on the climate change.  Our President ignored her.  She concluded her remarks this way: “All you can talk about is money and the fairy tales of eternal economic growth.  How dare you!  You are failing us…But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.  The eyes of all future generations are upon you.  And if you choose to fail us, I say:  We will never forgive you!” (2019 UN Climate Action Summit, September 23, 2019)

Christians have known from the beginning that we have a responsibility for the stewardship of the earth.  Those of us who grew up in farming communities, as I did, knew it is our responsibility to leave the earth we till and cherish better off for the next generation than we inherited it.  All of us have benefited from the rise in economic prosperity and growth of this past century.  Those of us in the industrialized world have been given so much from the earth which has nurtured us.  In this growth, we have polluted our streams, poisoned our air, and ravaged our land.  There is now a turn toward a new model of long term sustainability.  It is imperative that everyone get on board so that the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees C will remain possible.  Some scientists, citing the warming of the Arctic and the potential release of methane from the frozen permafrost say it is already too late.  It is easy to become discouraged with wild fires raging across California and 1000 year weather events becoming more commonplace.  The oceans as a sink for our excess CO2 is reaching its capacity.  The increase in catastrophic hurricanes tells us the oceans are warming.  More heat stored in the oceans feeds more violent storms and more catastrophic rainfall and other weather events.

As I pray about these things, I truly do not know what can be done to change these future events which are happening now.  I hope and pray we all do our part, big or little as it may be.  We can at least dedicate ourselves to try and do our part.  We can plant more trees, recycle more waste, develop ways to reuse plastics, capture atmospheric C02, and move away from a fossil fuel based economy to a carbon neutral one.  All of these things are possible and doable.  Will we do it?  Will our political leadership jettison the old way of thinking to enter an exciting new world of change for us all?  Our next national election is paramount so that we can jettison this old way of thinking and doing.  We can delay no longer!  It is time for us all to begin!  May God help us by God’s grace and by God’s power to be and to become better stewards of His creation, of our planet, and of our relationship to one another!  We can do this.  Do we have the will to change?

Twenty years from now, about the time I lay my body down into the dust of death, I will know whether we have succeeded or not.  You will know, too.  You will still be here to work this thing out or not.  Some Christians pray for Jesus to come and bring this creation to its end.  If we do nothing, Jesus won’t need to come.  We will have accomplished that without him.

Bill Wilson, servant of God by God’s grace and mercies.

“Hear our common prayer, O blessed Lord!  In your holy name. Come, help us.  Come and save us all!   Amen.”