Dear Edwards Church Community,
I am conditioned by my childhood to greet the beginning of summer as cause for celebration. I grew up in a small city, which was the county seat of a largely agricultural area. Memorial Day and June meant the three month celebration of summer was about to begin, announced by the flowers and strawberries (we did not have much local asparagus like Hadley). This was the season when all the hard work of planting and protecting during growth would yield corn, tomatoes, peaches and every other fruit and vegetable grown in western Maryland – and there were many.
This year the sweet anticipation of summer’s bounty is disturbed by the growing fear that we have waited too long to respond adequately to climate change. The increased number and intensity of extreme weather events, the see-saw temperature swings, the steady drift north of plant hardiness zones, and the forecast for a highly active hurricane season all make it impossible to deny, much less ignore.
In a recent survey1 of scientists whose work feeds into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 80% of the respondents (and about half of the over 840 surveyed did respond) believed global warming would shoot past the agreed upon goal of no more than a 1.5 degree Celsius rise and go to at least a 2.5 C rise in this century. The scientists, whose work has been warning of these outcomes for decades, are now seeing them unfold in real time. Increasing droughts and floods, wildfires and hurricanes, the loss of habitat and entire species — these are not good signs.
Some despair; some still find hope. Interpretations vary, even among the scientists, who agree that whatever the specifics, the general trend is ominous. What we do know is that our choices matter.
For generations human beings developed technologies and businesses with no awareness (at least no scientifically informed awareness, even if there was an instinct) of the cost of burning carbon in terms of the environment and human life. For at least 40 years in the global North, we have allowed (if not encouraged, by our silence) business and political decision makers to slow walk the scale of response needed. Now it is clear that nothing short of full mobilization will suffice.
As with our national policy on guns, the children often lead. This spring three high school friends in North Carolina decided to take action to dull the impact of climate change. After learning that “orphaned” oil wells – which had been drilled, pumped until they were no longer economically productive, and then abandoned by prior owners – were a huge contributor to climate change, they decided to raise the money required to sponsor capping one. These abandoned wells leak tons of methane, which is far more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2.
These three high school students raised $11,000, which was their share of the total cost borne by the Well Done Foundation, a non-profit formed by a former oil industry executive who considers it shameful the way oil companies exploited the resource but walked away from the cost of capping wells. (Regulations now require that the cost to cap be set aside at the beginning.) The students capped only one of the millions of abandoned wells, but they have announced their intent to do it more. 2
As one of the IPCC scientists notes, reducing the extent to which human activity warms the atmosphere by even one-tenth of a degree will save many lives and shorten the time needed for the planet to recover, assuming humanity as a whole can change its behavior soon enough to avoid complete self-destruction.
None of us is called to do it all, but all of us are called to do all we can. The Talmud, that collection of ancient Jewish wisdom, states: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.“ The increase of anxiety and depression among adolescents during Covid is well documented, and it was already high before then. Climate change is a major component of that increase. And yet, three teens came together to repair the world, one capped well at a time.
Most of the present members of our church will not be alive to see the worst that is in store for the generations after us. But many of us have families, other humans we love dearly and not just because it is our moral duty. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The great Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” As we prepare to enjoy the coming summer, may we consider more fully how to live so that others may live more fully.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
- “The Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied, 380 of 843.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/climate/orphan-wells-capping-methane-leaks.html
To read the full Spire click here.