Time for a cool change?
In March, the United Nations released the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on how global warming is affecting not only our planet but our lives and livelihoods. The IPPC report is by far the most comprehensive–and grim–accounting of the impact humanity is having on greenhouse gas emissions. Our window of opportunity to change the outcome is growing smaller.
Climate change has been in the headlines for more than 50 years. I recall 30 years ago reading about global warming and its potential impact–research from scientists many dismissed as crackpots and tree-huggers. But scientists have studied climate change for decades. In recent years, it seems the greater debate has been not that it doesn’t exist but who is responsible.
I don’t think there is any doubt in 2022 that human beings are the biggest contributors to the cause of global warming. The big question we all should be asking is what we can–and should– do about it.
In 2015, Pope Francis published his second encyclical, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home.” This outlined the impact climate change has on the poorest of the people who share this planet with us. In his encyclical, the pontiff presents climate as “a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.” We live in a disposable culture, not just tossing way trash, but people, too. In addition to the loss of biodiversity, the increase in natural disasters, and overall environmental degradation, many poor people live in areas where the impact of climate change destroys their fragile existence, especially those dependent on agriculture, fishing, and forestry. “They have no other financial activities or resources which can enable them to adapt to climate change or face natural disasters, and their access to social services and protection is very limited,” writes Pope Francis. Moreover, those who have the” financial resources or economic and political power to help are more concerned with acquiring more of these resources and additional power without consideration for the poor and marginalized victims.”
For us, it seems, the big fear that comes with admitting any responsibility to climate change means we may have to give up all those creature comforts we’ve worked so hard to acquire–big SUVs, the latest technology, more food than we can possibly eat, more clothes than we can possibly wear, fancy homes with the latest in labor-saving devices and expensive toys. This is a consumer-driven society. Perhaps we are not so much denying the human factor in contributing to climate change as we are hoping it will go away and leave us alone.
I am not condemning anyone here. I get it. I have worked hard and I enjoy my big SUV and dishwasher and traveling on jetliners. I could be better at recycling, I could be better at making fewer trips to town in a day than I currently do, I could do a better job of using less water and throwing away less food. But it sometimes seems like too much effort. And does it really matter, anyway? I’m not likely to be here 100 years from now when our planet becomes like something in “Mad Max.”
Technology has resulted in more power, in making a better “mousetrap” as it were, but this power really doesn’t serve us. More power doesn’t mean progress as much as it means a greater enslavement to our perception of it bringing good to all. As the Pope points out, “contemporary man has not been trained to use power well because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values, and conscience.” In other words, we use our power for our own gain.
It is long past time for us to develop a true sense of responsibility for others, caring for others, and listening to our collective conscience when we toss our plastic bottles and aluminum cans into the trash instead of recycling, or think the most vulnerable people live in third-world nations when they live among us.
I don’t know how far we can go when it comes to saving the planet but it cannot hurt to do all we can to make our own little corner of the world better for each other and for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who will be living here long after we’ve gone.
SQUIBS 