Month: December 2009

Species on the run from warming temps

A Reuters article today describes reports on rapid changes in habitats due to warming temps. The article discusses the pressure on species, from plants to insects to animals, that will require migration north to cooler temperatures and whether many species will not be able to make the curve and eventually become extinct.

At issue is an important fact to remember: current rates of extinction far exceed the normal extinction rates of past millions of years. The  spike in extinction has occurred in the industrialization period of human history.

Anther key issue is to remember that each species is part of a community of species that are linked. Loss of one affects many others.

Reflecting on Copenhagen Accord

From TerraDaily Express this Associated Press article reviews attitudes about the Copenhagen Climate accords  that will be known for its historic failure to limit green house gas emissions. 350.org, the organization galvanized by Bill McKibbens, posted this sober message on its front page: “We do not have the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world hoped the world leaders gathered in Copenhagen would deliver. They are not done yet, and neither are we.”

Please read Archbishop of Canterbury’s address in my previous post for a deeper reflection and way for personal action. Dr. Williams may be more lucid than any world leader about a way forward in uncertain times.

“Act for the sake of love” – Archbishop of Canterbury

From the
“Act for the sake of love”: Archbishop of Canterbury preaches in Copenhagen Cathedral

   Sunday 13 December 2009
“We cannot show the right kind of love for our fellow humans unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a
secure home for all people” said the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today at an international ecumenical service in Copenhagen Cathedral, at a midpoint during the critical UN Climate Change talks.
Dr Williams was invited to preach by the Danish Council of Churches. The service was attended by the Queen of Denmark, by ambassadors and by members of international delegations attending the Copenhagen climate change negotiations, as well as religious leaders.
In his sermon the Archbishop contrasted fear, which can paralyse, with love, which is the liberating and decisive force
for change: “In this season of Advent … We reaffirm our conviction and commitment in the name of love; and we say
‘don’t be afraid’ to all who stand uncertainly on the edge of decision. Don’t be afraid; act for the sake of love.”
“The deepest religious basis for our commitment to the environment in which God has placed us is this recognition
that we are called to be, and are enabled to be, the place where God’s love for the world comes through. We have to
flesh out in our lives that fundamental biblical conviction that when God looks on the world he finds it good. We have to
show in our lives some echo of the delight God finds in creation”.
“And as we should have learned by now, the truth is that we cannot show the right kind of love for our fellow-humans
unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people and for future generations.”
Full text:
‘Perfect love casts out fear’. It’s a well-known biblical text; in its original setting, it’s about how we learn to have the proper kind of confidence in the love and forgiveness of God. This kind of confidence, St John says, comes from understanding that we are – miraculously – able to stand in the same place as God himself. ‘In this world we are as he is’. Our own confidence, our fearlessness, is built on seeing love at work through us – not our personal warm feelings or positive emotions or even kind actions, but the love that really sets people free and brings something new into the world: God’s love, dealing with the deepest tangles and knots of our situation, the love that was the essence of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection.
And the deepest religious basis for our commitment to the environment in which God has placed us is this recognition
that we are called to be, and are enabled to be, the place where God’s love for the world comes through. We have to
flesh out in our lives that fundamental biblical conviction that when God looks on the world he finds it good. We have to
show in our lives some echo of the delight God finds in creation, recalling the astonishing image in the Book of
Proverbs of God’s eternal wisdom playing and rejoicing in the whole span of the universe.
Love casts out fear. If we begin from the belief that God wants us to rejoice and delight in the created world, our basic
attitude to the environment will not be anxiety or the desperate search for ways of controlling it; it will be the
excited and hopeful search for understanding it and honouring its goodness and its complex, interdependent beauty. If there is any ‘fear’ around here, it should be fear of spoiling the heritage given us, of forgetting the overwhelming scale and depth of the gift and of our responsibility and care for it, fear of forgetting that we are called to show consistent and
sacrificial love for the created world as we must show towards our fellow-human beings. And, as we should have learned by now, the truth is that we cannot show the right kind of love for our fellow-humans unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people and for future generations.
But there is another kind of fear we have to think about, a fear that should prompt us to get in touch again with the love
that made us and sustains us. At the present moment, we are faced with the consequences of generations of failure to
love the earth as we should; and we are also faced with the choices that might make those consequences less destructive
than they would otherwise be. Each of us as an individual, each international business concern, each national
government – all of us have choices. We are not doomed to carry on in a downward spiral of the greedy, addictive,
loveless behaviour that has helped to bring us to this point. Yet it seems that fear still rules our hearts and imaginations. We have not yet been able to embrace the cost of the decisions we know we must make. We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing lifestyle. We are afraid that new policies will be unpopular with a national electorate. We are afraid that younger and more vigorous economies will take advantage of us – or we are afraid that older, historically dominant economies will use the excuse of ecological responsibility to deny us our right to proper and just development. There is, in a word, no shortage of excellent excuses for turning away from decisions that will mean real change. But at least let’s be honest about where they come from: it is fear – not necessarily irrational fear, not even necessarily purely selfish fear, but fear all the same. And so long as that
dominates our calculations, we are stepping back from love – love for the creation itself, which we must look at as God
looks at it, love for one another and for the generations still unborn, who need us to do whatever we can to guarantee a
stable, productive and balanced world to live in – not a world of utterly chaotic and disruptive change, of devastation and desertification, of biological impoverishment and degradation. Love casts out fear. The truth is that what is most likely to get us to take the right decisions for our global future is love. The temptation is to underline fear so as to persuade one another of the urgency of the situation: things are so bad, so threatening, that we have to do something. And indeed there are moments when we might think, rather bitterly, that the human race is still not frightened enough by the prospect of what it has stored up for itself. But this is to drive out one sickness by another. That kind of fear can simply paralyse us, as we all know; it can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bedclothes and wait for disaster. What’s more, it can tempt us into just blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move because we don’t trust them. We need more than that for lifegiving change to happen.
And that is what we are here to say today. We meet as people of faith in the context of this critical moment in human
history; and so we are not here just to plead or harangue, let alone to encourage panic and terror. We are here to say two simple things to ourselves, our neighbours and our governments.
First: don’t be afraid; but ask how the policies you follow and the lifestyle that you take for granted look in the light of the command to love the world you inhabit. Ask what would be a healthy and sustainable relationship with this world, a
relationship that would in some way manifest both joy in and respect for the earth. Start with the positive question – how do we show that we love God’s creation?
Second: don’t separate this from the question of how we learn to trust one another within a world of limited resources. In such a world there can be no trust without justice, without the assurance of knowing that my neighbour is there for me when I face insecurity or risk. How shall we build international institutions that make sure the resources get where they are needed – that, for example, ‘green taxes’ will deliver more security for the disadvantaged, that transitions in economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope?
Love casts out fear; and the promise that makes sense of all this is the promise we heard in the reading from St Paul’s
letter to the Romans: if we allow God to teach us trust and if we learn to live in trust and confidence, the whole created
order feels the effects. The ‘slavery’ imposed on the created order by human sinfulness and selfishness gives way to
liberation; human freedom and the fulfilment of the destiny of the world around are manifested together, and the result is glory.
In this season of Advent, we renew our confident hope that such a future is possible. We give thanks for the Christmas
gift of Jesus Christ that has broken through our selfishness and begun the work of our liberation. We reaffirm our
conviction and commitment in the name of love; and we say ‘don’t be afraid’ to all who stand uncertainly on the edge of
decision. Don’t be afraid; act for the sake of love.

COP 15 Plays Out a Sad Reality

Today I personally am not proud to be an American citizen. If you have not been following the Climate Summit negotiations in Copenhagen you will be surprised to know that at this moment countries around the world do not hold our country in high esteem and indeed it looks like we will be known for what we are: the biggest polluters on the planet and unwilling to change our lifestyles even when developing countries, who have added little to the global emissions build up, are beginning to suffer the effects of climate warming.

350.0rg sent a message last night that our current agreements will result in over 3.9 C degrees of warming by 2100. The goal was to keep parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide emissions to 350 ppm or below. The current commitments will be 770 ppm.  Obama will arrive in Copenhagen today but the expectation is that he’ll continue to offer only a 4% reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. This is not much of a commitment in terms of what the rest of the world is willing to do. Mud on our faces…but worse, all our children and grandchildren will inherit a world where living may be a nightmare. I personally thought we would do better than this. But why? Special interests have always ruled American politics. Obama, like all others before him, has caved to these interests, and in trying to be reelected,  he has assured he will become a one term President. I am very disappointed in his leadership.

We can say without exaggerating that Americans shopped while Rome burned. Shame on us!

Copenhagen Tremors Draw George Soros Idea

Rumblings from developing countries over rumors of a separate agreement between the U.S., Denmark, and Britain that would allow developed countries to pollute more relative to developing countries, is causing tremors in the Cop 15 Climate Summit spirit of cooperation.

Many of the expected climate change impacts such as rising sea level will disproportionately impact poorer countries with less economic resources than rich countries.  Did we really think we could discuss, argue, and come to agreement on a world-community plan to mitigate environmental and economic impacts without addressing the age-old problem of have’s versus have not’s?

Philanthropist, George Soros, addressed this gap and called for the IMF to fund climate change adaptations in developing countries by investing $100B  in developing countries for green energy projects and adaptations necessary to adapt to climate impacts in those countries. Money will come from the funds set aside for financial recovery in world-wide economies. Soros addressed the 192-country summit.

Soros is responding to the possibility that the talks will break down due to The Group of 77 (bloc of developing countries) which contends that developed nations like the U.S., who have contributed the lion’s share of CO2 emissions over the last 150 years of industrialization, should make substantive commitments for reduced emissions and assistance to developing countries. Soros called upon the political will of the people to assure Congress will not delay to support his plan and significant commitments from the U.S. to the rest of the world community to reduce emissions.

Kyoto Protocol

Copenhagen Summit