Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

The Challenge of Climate Change

Reverend Amy Zucker
January 30, 2005
Palo Alto, CA

Reading:

Terry Tempest Williams
Passion and Patience in the Desert
Vintage, 2005.

Can we not . . . conceive of birth as an act of the imagination, giving body to a new way of seeing? Do children need to be our own to be loved as our own?

Perhaps it is time to give birth to a new idea, many new ideas.

Perhaps it is time to give birth to new institutions, to overhaul our religious, political, legal, and educational systems that are no longer working for us.

Perhaps it is time to adopt a much needed code of ethics, one that will exchange the sacred rights of humans for the rights of all beings on the planet.

We can begin to live differently.

We have choices before us, conscious choices, choices of conscience and consequence, not in the name of political correctness, but ecological responsibility and opportunity.

We can give birth to creation.

To labor in the name of social change. To bear down and push against the constraints of our own self-imposed structures. To sacrifice in the name of an ecological imperative. To be broken open to a new way of being.

Sermon

The Challenge of Climate Change

Four days ago, a man in Los Angeles named Juan Manuel Alvarez decided to commit suicide. He’d been in and out of drug rehab, in trouble with the law; he had recently separated from his wife and wasn’t allowed to see her or their child. He’d talked about suicide before. But when he finally decided to do it, the method he chose was to drive his car onto a commuter train track and wait for the impact. When it came, it killed 11 people.

Some of the anger aimed his way seems to focus on the fact that he did not, in the end, kill himself. He jumped out of the car and, as the reports keep repeating, “watched” the disaster. He had tried to move his car off the tracks, and according to police he is filled with remorse. But the question in my mind is not, “why did he change his mind,” but “what on this good green earth made him opt for that form of suicide in the first place?” Unlike just about any other way to die, the method he chose was bound to take a lot of other people with him.

The police called him “deranged,” and the mayor called him “crazed,” and if having a death wish isn’t crazy in itself, it sure does seem crazy to inflict it on a lot of innocent bystanders.

But it also seems familiar. Who else do we know who is on course for suicide and doing it in a way that is killing millions of others along the way?

It sounds an awful lot like us.

Human beings are doing something unspeakably stupid and suicidal: we are making our planet impossible for us to live on. And along the way, we are obliterating billions of creatures, thousands of species. I don’t know if we think we’re going to bail out and watch this train wreck from a nearby planet, or what. Maybe we will. And no one will put us on trial for the destruction we have brought about, unless it’s our own consciences. The earth is heating up at an incredible rate, and there is near-consensus among scientists that our rapid consumption of fossil fuels is largely responsible.

Last June, at the Unitarian Universalist annual General Assembly, the delegates from around the country looked at several pressing issues, trying to choose one for congregations to study and act on. We chose global warming. Before the vote, a woman from our northernmost congregation, Fairbanks, Alaska, stood up to tell us that climate change is a daily reality for them. They feel it in the bumpiness of roads and the crumbling of foundations that used to stand on permafrost. They see it in skinny polar bears. You could feel the room contract with horror at an image as sad as a skinny polar bear. What seems to be happening to the bears is that sea ice forms much later in fall than it did even only 60 years ago, and breaks up much earlier in spring. On the water nearest where the woman from Fairbanks lives, the bears can’t even get out onto the ice, because it is no longer reaching the land. It floats out at sea. They depend on the ice season as their main feeding time; until the ice comes, they virtually fast, and their fast has just gotten a lot longer. The results for breeding and survival are predictable.

On the other end of the world, Adelie penguins are also suffering, as one of the species of fish they depend on most has responded to warming waters by fleeing south. Less cuddly animals are threatened too. The world’s coral reefs are dying from waters whose average temperature has risen. The repercussions for the fish that live there, and the people who live off the fish, are just beginning to be felt. Warm water takes up more space, so sea level would be rising even if it weren’t for the water pouring in from melting glaciers and icecaps.

Temperatures are supposed to vary. But the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere had gone up and down by only about half a degree from the year 1000 until about 1900. Then, it is thought, the effects of the Industrial Revolution began to be felt in the atmosphere. We have been burning carbon so fast that the natural processes that keep it cycling can’t keep up; we add it to the atmosphere about twice as fast as they can take it out. Today, carbon dioxide levels are 30% higher than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution, higher than they have been in the last 420,000 years, possibly higher than they have been in the last 20 million years.

Because of the way carbon dioxide helps the earth retain heat, the average global temperature has already risen about one degree over the past hundred years. If one degree still doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider this: today’s average global temperature is only about 10 degrees above the average global temperature at the end of the last Ice Age.

The most recent research suggests that previous estimates of the rate of increase may be too optimistic. According to a report in this week’s Nature, we may be looking at an increase of 20 degrees over the next 50 years, and certainly no less than three degrees in that time.

The other problem is that gradual climate change can lead to abrupt climate change. Think of a sticky thermostat–you try to raise the temperature by just two degrees but it sticks and then gives suddenly, so that you raise it by six. According to the geological record, that’s the way global warming has often happened: there is a slow rise and then a sudden jump. Ecosystems need time to adjust to change; they can’t do it overnight. They do adjust, through migration, and through the disappearance of some species and the resurgence of others. What’s bad for the polar bears is good for the seals they used to eat. But it’s a lot harder for species to move around than it used to be; look at mountain lions, which can’t range a mile out of our mountains without coming past a school. And it’s a lot harder for humans to move around, too. During the last Ice Age, there were no cities. Now we have settled on every river and ocean, built entire civilizations on their shores.

As some scientists will tell you, even a few that aren’t funded by Exxon-Mobil, we can’t be sure about any of this. This is true. We are using scientific models; we’re running a giant experiment, though as one paleoclimatologist says, we don’t have a control planet. The results have yet to be known. But the phrase that keeps coming up in the literature, in accounts of various species as they struggle to survive is “the canary in the coal mine.” When your canary dies, it’s always possible that it isn’t poison gas that’s killed it, but an innocent heart attack. But only a fool would keep on going deeper into the mine.

It’s bitterly appropriate that Alvarez created the disaster in Los Angeles with an SUV. That’s what we’re doing too. The impact of cars upon the environment is tremendous; 20% of America’s considerable contribution to the carbon dioxide problem is from cars, SUVs, and light trucks. They aren’t the only cause of global warming—the burning of fuel of all kinds sends carbon dioxide soaring—but they’re a huge part of the problem.

We can’t just bail out and leave the train wreck to someone else. It doesn’t work that way, not for us, not with the values we have. Oh, sure, in some ways we can escape the suicidal trap we’ve set. No one will put us on trial for the crimes we’re committing against other species, the ones that are dying now and the ones that will die because climate change is leaving them with no food and no habitat. Another speaker at General Assembly imagined people two generations from now asking, “How could you have known and not have acted?” but, you know, we won’t be around to hear them. We won’t have to look into their eyes and try to answer. And we, relatively wealthy citizens of one of the wealthiest nations, can get away from many of the consequences of climate change.

But we, the larger we, the species humanity—we are committing suicide. We can’t jump out and leave the disaster to someone else. Because of the changes we have brought about, this planet is on course to become a place where the species Homo sapiens cannot live. We’d better start living up to our name, homosapiens, wise humans, because we are dying for lack of wisdom.

A small framed sentence on the wall of my chiropractor’s office asks, “If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?”

If we don’t take care of our planet, where will we live?

Or do we only mean “we, right in this room” when we say “we”? If we do, then we can carry on doing what we’re doing.

If not—if when we say “we” we mean poor and rich alike, Americans and non-Americans alike, people in the tropics and people in the temperate zone and people at the poles alike, humans and animals and plants alike–if we really believe that this planet was not created as the private playground of a few million lucky humans, then we have a challenge to meet.

The good news in all of this is that since we know what causes the majority of global warming—and it’s our own activities—we have the power to turn things around. If we were just on a planet that was destined to heat up, we’d have to do some pretty wild engineering to figure out how to change its climate to one that we could live in. One day that may be true of Earth. But right now, for the next few millennia, this is a planet just right for us if we’ll let it regain its equilibrium. It won’t happen for a long time–even if we cut carbon dioxide emissions to zero, the earth wouldn’t return to pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures for a long time–but it has to be done. The question is, then, will we do it?

That poor man, the one in Los Angeles, the one now on trial for his life because he committed murder instead of suicide—by the reports I’ve read, he’s an addict.

We’re addicted too–addicted to luxuries, addicted to oil, addicted to convenience. Now, there are two things about an addiction that might help us out of this mess, if we can keep them in mind.

One is that with something addictive–take heroin, for example–it’s not actually something you need. It’s the last thing your body really needs; it’s toxic, it’s deadly. Then, after you start taking it, you do need it. Oh, you really need it. Your whole body is organized around it. It’s still toxic, but now it’s not a luxury, it’s not a kick: it’s part of how your nervous system keeps going. But you can undo that. We lived for most of human history without the kind of energy we use now–we can do it again.

The other thing about an addiction is that it’s a choice. A hard, hard choice, whether your addiction is to drugs or to your car, but a choice nevertheless. We created this situation out of our own willfulness, and with an application of will, we can get out of it.

So what can we do?

We can take individual action and we can take institutional action, and we’ll need to do both.

The biggest thing we can do individually is drive less. Drive less, drive less, drive less.

Carpool. Take public transportation. Here’s my pledge: I make six or seven round trips to church every week, 6 miles each. I’m going to make sure one of them is by bicycle. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. And I’ve told all of you about it, so now I’m accountable.

We, each of us, can use fewer resources: reduce, reuse, recycle, resist the voices from Madison Avenue that tell you to scrap what you’ve got and buy something new. Making new products usually uses much more energy than recycling does. When we do buy something new, we can choose the most energy efficient models, especially if we’re buying some of the biggest energy users like cars, water heaters, and refrigerators.

Ask of the things you do, the decisions you make: how does what I am about to do affect the earth?

Educate yourself. Know the issues.

And then—turning to institutional change—use that information to speak out on policy. The changes in individual behavior are essential; we won’t be able to slow global warming without them. But institutions are just as important, or more so.

Governments have a huge impact because they can set policies that require responsibility and accountability. Think of EnergyStar, that sticker that tells you whether the fridge you’re about to buy is an energy guzzler or energy efficient. That’s a US government program. And if there’s public transportation to your workplace, it’s because the city or county has put it into place. We have curbside recycling in this area; that’s a rarity in the US. Imagine if every city government were pressured to offer it too. We have that power as citizens.

Businesses have a huge impact as well, because they provide responsible products in sustainable ways–or don’t. There are hybrid cars out in that parking lot because a couple of companies decided to start making them. What we buy and refuse to buy directs businesses to do our will. We have power as consumers.

Work together. There is a program right here at UUCPA: it’s called the Green Sanctuary Task Force. The Green Sanctuary Program was created to guide UU churches and their members in making better environmental choices. Our Green Sanctuary Task Force has already begun an audit to discover our environmental practices, individually and as a congregation. The forms in today’s order of service are an important part of the audit, so please fill yours out. If you shared an order of service, good for you! Saving paper is an important way to save energy (and Green Sanctuary is looking at ways we can do more of it). You can also order canvas shopping bags from the Green Sanctuary table, saving the energy and pollution involved in creating or recycling paper and plastic. And best of all, you can join the Green Sanctuary Task Force and help put our respect for the delicate balance of life on Earth into practice.

We act as if we have a death wish, but I don’t think we really do. We’re addicted, like a cigarette smoker, and once we know that what we’re doing is killing us and others, we’ll want to stop. It won’t be easy, but we will have the will; we will be aware and empowered by our awareness. Terry Tempest Williams has seen what an unthinkingly suicidal nation can do to itself; she and her family are among Utah’s downwinders, and cancer has hunted them down ever since the bombs began going off in their desert. And despite all that, as we heard in today’s reading, she holds out hope that instead of death we will choose to birth new ideas, new institutions, a new way. We can choose to save ourselves and this blue-green planet and all the beautiful things that live on it and swim its waters and fly through its skies. Let’s start now.