"A Slow Burn"

READING: "Threat of Global Warming," UUA 2004-2006 Study/Action Issue

This statement is an excerpt from a resolution passed by the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2004. After two years of study and re-writing, a new resolution will be re-voted at the General Assembly this June. It is one of several stands our faith community has taken on protecting the environment.

Transcendentalism awakened 19th century Unitarians to the experience of the sacred through the unfolding of the natural world. Our seventh Principle challenges contemporary Unitarian Universalists to remember that we are part of the interdependent web of all existence. The choices we make, coupled with the choices made by government and the private sector, profoundly affect our environment. We have a moral responsibility to future generations to mitigate global warming while there is still time.

Greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels, are trapping heat in earth's atmosphere and raising temperatures. The evidence is everywhere - retreating glaciers, thinning polar ice, and warming oceans and lakes. Scientists have estimated that global warming could increase worldwide average temperatures as much as eleven degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. Predicted effects include extreme weather, spreading disease, widespread species extinction, and large areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable because of rising sea levels or drought. Changes in plant and animal life are well underway, including alterations in the range and distribution of plants; dying coral reefs; shifting migration patterns of birds; declining numbers of some species such as Arctic ringed seals; and a potentially devastating impact on countless others, from polar bears to manatees and from salmon to krill (the base of the Antarctic food chain). Increasing acidity of the oceans from carbon dioxide absorption could eventually threaten the survival of shelled marine animals and calcium-containing plankton. Wildfires, which are difficult or impossible to control in earth's northern forests, will become more likely as the environment become drier. Yet many political and business leaders in this country have failed to take seriously a problem we ignore at our peril. Our experiences with the insecticide DDT and synthetic fluorocarbons should have taught us how much damage human activity can do to the environment. The risk global warming poses to virtually all life is a greater potential danger than any other we face today or perhaps ever have.

SERMON

By now only someone in a determined state of oblivion has missed the new bad news about the earth. These past few weeks, following the publication of the March 24 issue of "Science" magazine, which reported the breaking of the ice in Greenland, the media have given their full attention to the dire situation, from "Time's" pronouncement "Be Worried," to sobering specials on TV. I couldn't let another Earth Day go by without dedicating today's service to the reality of the imperiled state of our environment.

Like many people, I've always known there was a problem. And yet, because of the enormity of it and the seeming futility of individual efforts to address it, it has always seemed somehow out of my hands. Yes, I recycle. I even drive a Prius - though I have to give the credit to my husband for suggesting I buy one. These small gestures help to raise awareness. But we are not doing enough and we don't have much time. It may already be too late.

That is what James Hanson, NASA's top climate scientist and truth-teller, has just told us. In a report to the Geophysical Union this past December, "he noted that carbon dioxide emissions are ‘now surging well above' the point where damage to the planet might be limited. . . . Having raised the earth's temperature one degree Fahrenheit in the last three decades, we're facing another increase of four degrees over the next century. That would ‘imply changes that constitute practically a different planet,'" Hansen concluded. "The technical terms for those changes include drought, famine, pestilence, and flood." "'It's not something we can adapt to,' he continued. 'We can't let it go another ten years like this."[1]

What are we going to do about it? The answers are not comfortable. They require changes of all kinds, from how we live our lives to which politicians we elect. And the science is challenging too.

I watched the public television special "Dimming the Sun" this week. It showed how we have masked global warming with another environmental abuse, global dimming. Pollution has shielded the sun's rays from us, so temperatures have not risen quite as drastically as they could have. But the blanket of smog and reflected rays of the sun have also worsened the greenhouse effect.

Global warming is happening faster than we thought. It's a simple but unpleasant fact. As British filmmaker David Sington, who made the TV show, writes, the reality of the greenhouse effect "is really no more scientifically controversial than saying you'll feel warmer if you put on a sweater."[2] A good scientific analogy for us human beings, who seem to have a hard time taking responsibility for this.

"The risk global warming poses to virtually all life," our Study/Action reading states, "is a greater potential danger than any other we face today or perhaps ever have."[3] Friends, this issue is more serious and more lethal than the war in Iraq, gang violence, and AIDS combined. And unlike some of our misguided adventures, which take a human toll, the environmental disaster affects every living thing.

All right, you've heard it all before. I know I have. But somehow I keep asking myself why I haven't let it sink in quite the way it should, if I hope to make a difference. I'm the one who, up until a couple of weeks ago, was running off to cycling class with my brand new plastic bottle of water each and every time. Somewhere there is a growing mound of discarded plastic water bottles that will take over what's left of the melting earth, before it's all over. That could have been my legacy.

It's not as if there haven't been warnings and pronouncements close to home. Back in 1989, Unitarian Universalists voted at our General Assembly a resolution titled "Protecting the Biosphere." That was followed by several others: "Safer Sources of Energy," in 1992; "Population and Development," in 1996; "Earth, Air, Water, and Fire," in 1997. In 2001 we voted, "Responsible Consumption is Our Moral Imperative," and now, this year, we have one more before us, "Threat of Global Warming."

I'm always proud of our prophetic and sometimes even prescient stands. I'm less impressed with their impact. We have to face the facts, learn the science, and make the changes - personal and collective. What is going on with us, that we cannot seem to do it?

David Sington has a theory. We can't shake our skepticism, which causes us to feel distant and helpless, and further reinforces our selfish ways. We are skeptical, he says, because weather forecasting is clearly an inexact science, as anyone who watches the nightly news can attest. "A second kind of skepticism arises," he continues, "from a deep-seated psychological attitude towards the natural world. . . . The sense that Nature is big and powerful, and that we are puny by comparison, is rooted deep in the human psyche. So it is genuinely difficult for most people to believe that something they do as individuals . . . could possibly be having an effect on something as vast as the world's climate."

What's one more plastic water bottle? And what am I going to use instead? Especially when I'm in a hurry?

"There is a third reason," David Sington writes, why people are skeptical. "Faced with a choice between an awkward fact and a comforting fiction, most people will take the fiction any day. And global warming is certainly inconvenient. Just when we have finally freed ourselves from the tedium of tilling the earth and gotten nice and comfortable with a big TV, central heating, cheap flights to exotic destinations, and an armor-plated all-terrain vehicle for nipping down to the mall, along come some . . . scientists to tell us that we can't go on as we are and as we like doing."

It's one thing to give up plastic water bottles. What if we all had to cut our travel in half in order to reduce the contrails caused by airplanes? It's not a happy thought.

"We have a moral responsibility to future generations," our delegates at General Assembly voted, "to mitigate global warming while there is still time." That's what it comes down to: moral responsibility. As people who belong to a faith tradition that teaches the moral value of every individual, and understands the ethical weight of our freedom to choose, we have a responsibility to act. As people who belong to a faith tradition that celebrates nature "and the experience of the sacred through the unfolding of the natural world," we have a spiritual commitment to keep. As people who belong to a faith tradition that insists that what we do makes a difference and that salvation consists of what we pass on to our children, we have a future to protect.

I've decided to start with the plastic water bottle. Please don't feel bad if you have one with you today. There's still one in my car. But it's a place to begin and I need to do something right away.

There is, of course, a lot more involved with solving the global warming problem than our personal sacrifices, if you can call them that. Were we ever really entitled to all the things we think we need and now must think twice about using? I doubt it. But we are consumers, susceptible to suggestions of all kinds, and that is the larger challenge here. There is the fear that responding to the environmental crisis will turn our marketplace into chaos. Oddly enough, we fear having to make changes, or what will happen to the economy, more than we fear global warming.

David Sington takes a more hopeful view. "Tackling global warming is extremely unlikely to damage the American economy," he writes. "What's required is another industrial revolution. . . . But there is an important difference from previous industrial revolutions. This one requires political leadership; the market on its own won't do it."

Saving the environment will take political leadership. That means that we need to get out there and get involved with politicians and campaigns that intend to make that difference. We must never cast another cynical vote again. Acting on our moral responsibility will take optimism and strength, two qualities that are not easy to come by in today's political environment. We'll have to dig deep.

We are spiritually affected by the environmental catastrophe too. Despair and apathy are common attitudes. Those of us who grew up in a time when activism saw results can't understand why it's so much harder now.

A couple of weeks ago, David and I decided to join the anti-war march on Hollywood Boulevard. By the time we navigated our way through the jammed freeways and found the elusive parking spot, the march was nearly over. All the way there we talked about whether to turn around and go home. But we made it, milled around with the other marchers, said hello to our church contingent, and then walked back to our car for the long, slow drive home.

The state of our environment - clogged roads, too many cars, pollution - is an obstacle for much more than the rays of the sun. It cuts us off from our will to act. We need to recognize just how spiritually challenging it is to live in the environment we already have - and look for ways to overcome our apathy and despair. Recognizing this tendency, ingenious activists have come up with the "Virtual March"[4] to stop global warming - a demonstration on the internet, which is one very good way to protest.

I spent this past week educating myself about global warming. I don't know as much as I should, but I do know how important it is to learn, to wake up, to take responsibility for what is happening. Reclaiming the earth begins when we people rise to the moral challenge of practicing a sustainable lifestyle. Reversing the accelerating disaster begins when we elect leaders with the imagination and courage to work with scientists to find solutions, not dismiss them. Ending global warming begins the moment we look beyond our own needs and our own borders and see how truly connected we are - all over the world - to all of life.

It's not the end - yet. The future is still in our hands. Let's save it together.

[1] Bill McKibben, "Too hot to handle," "The Boston Globe," February 5, 2006.
[2] David Sington, "The Producer’s Story: A Taxonomy of Skepticism," http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/producer.html
[3] http://www.uua.org/csw/threatofgw.html
[4] http://www.stopglobalwarming.org