Climate Action 3.22.07

 
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
 
    The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
 
 
March 19, 2007                                            “Climate Action”                        Greening California Panel
                                                                                                                                                                                 
 
How can community based organizations help create a culture of change?
Three ways:
 
The size of the problem: Over the past 15 years California’s greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing by the equivalent of about 6 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
 
According to a scholarly paper by Daniel Yergin titled “Ensuring Energy Security”, world oil demand has grown by 7 million barrels a day since 2000. Two million have gone each day to China. India currently uses 40% of China’s energy usage, but is fast accelerating. Last year, for the first time ever, Asia’s oil consumption exceeded North America’s. Cambridge Energy Associates indicates, based on a field-by-field analysis that net oil capacity could increase by 20-25% by 2030. Currently 40 million barrels of oil every day are on ocean tankers, by 2020 that is estimated to become                                                               67 million. LNG imports will triple to 460 million tons by 2020.
 
What is wrong with this picture ethically? We are destroying the earth as a home for all living things. I believe the problem is one identified by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse.  It is the problem of insulation. The rich can insulate themselves from the consequences of their behavior, the poor cannot.
 
In Holland the rich and poor live side by side behind the dykes. If the dykes break both will suffer together. The rich and powerful get that and so Holland is one of the most global warming sensitive nations in the world. The American Congress was also insulated until this year following the nation wide efforts coming largely from the projection of An Inconvenient Truth.
 
The good news is this: There is now a possibility that much needed bipartisan efforts can take place politically. California is beginning to lead again. The Governor and Lt. Governor are behind green initiatives, Speaker Nunez has thrown his weight behind this, our city council is behind this and there are signs of hope from other politicians and business leaders.
 
One thing concerns me however. The scientists and government and business interests are not yet quite on the same page. What do I mean? Both scientists and government leaders talk about ‘reducing greenhouse emissions.’ But do they mean the same thing? Scientists mean by reducing greenhouse emissions a total reduction across the entire world.
 
Sometimes business and government leaders use the same phrase to mean reducing growth of greenhouse emissions, thus more cars and power plants and greener buildings, using less fossil fuel, but a net increase of fossil fuel use. What is needed is total reduction in emissions, not reduction in growth of emissions. Between these two scenarios, one truthful, the other a feel good framing of reality, lies the actual fate of the earth as a home for living things.
 
Given the possibility that climate change is far more urgent and out of control than we thought, is there any point in trying to do something as governments, community based organizations or as individuals? When you drive your hybrid and your neighbor buys a new gas guzzling SUV are we any further ahead? Is there hope? I think so if we as individuals will set an example:
 
In his marvelous book The Weather Makers Tim Flannery says that the very worst thing for citizens of the world to do is to sit on their hands…Action, he says, is needed now and the only responsible thing to do is to reduce our own emissions as far and as quickly as possible. Climate issues need to be on the top of our voting agenda. He says vote for no one who says it can’t be done. And ask your politicians about how they are personally reducing their own emissions! Al Gore is no doubt taking the heat as the media has flagged his excessive energy home use. Green credits are not enough. Example is all.
 
The biggest reduction in carbon emissions can come from the way we produce electricity. Next is transport. We can in a few months, rather than the fifty years that governments are talking about, easily attain the 70% reduction in personal emissions required to stabilize the world’s climate. All that it takes is to make some changes to our personal lives, all not requiring serious personal sacrifice.
 
Here are Tim Flannery’s suggestions and some of mine for us to find our personal 70% reduction.
 
But we are not done yet! We can and must work on our place of work and our community based organizations. They too need to reduce their carbon footprint by 70%. I am a churchman affiliated with California Interfaith Power and Light, and my congregation of Westminster is a member of their covenant. As congregations we pledge to support the following goals in a Covenant:
 
Scientists are changing their beliefs about the relationships between Global warming and mass extinctions that are in the paleontological and geophysical records. Formerly they believed that these mass extinctions were caused by impacts from outer space. But now they believe that the evidence shows that global warming coming from volcanic activity at various periods in global history has induced the major reasons for mass extinctions of life. I believe James Lovelock’s thesis of Gaia: that earth’s ecosystems have created the climate stability necessary for human life. Today we need to help living things preserve our future. When living things lose their grip on the planet we become subject to global warming which increases the intensity of tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. We lose climate stability and the buffering affect of life.
 
We need to partner with the earth’s natural systems, making them strong again or we will still lose this ballgame. It is a simple as planting a tree and as complex as re-growing a rain forest; as simple as riding a bicycle and as complex as recovering a coral reef; as simple as becoming vegetarian and as complex as replanting trees on agricultural land; as simple as staying informed with a newspaper and as complex as analyzing computer models on climate change; as simple as installing solar panels and as complex as an oil company becoming a green energy company; as simple as walking away from a gas guzzling SUV and as complex as creating zero emission vehicles; as simple as not putting carbon into the air and as complex as taking it out with yet to be invented green technology.
 
Have you seen the climate change ad where a man is pictured as standing on the railway track as the climate change train approaches? He says “Oh that is years away. I don’t need to do anything about this.” and steps off the track, leaving in his place a child.
 
That is what is at stake. Not just for us but for all living things. Global warming has happened before. We do not have to make it happen again if we protect and sustain the life systems of earth.
 
Let’s get it done!