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  • More than morality

    By G. Rendell October 14, 2009 4:20 pm

    For a while now, I've been hearing that climate change is, among other things, a moral issue. The basic argument centers on the truth that the people who will suffer first and worst as the planet heats up are ones who had little or nothing to do with creating the problem. People living in marginal settings -- in semi-deserts, on unprotected coastal plains, in the Arctic -- are already seeing increased incidence of droughts, wild-fires, storm surges and ice melt. Coincidentally or otherwise, the countries and cultures which have put the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the past century or so are relatively sheltered from the impacts. Only relatively, and only temporarily, but long enough to allow an extended state of denial.

    Now, according to The Guardian (UK), the Archbishop of Canterbury -- the head of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide -- has raised the stakes a little bit. Rowan Williams, speaking at Southwark Cathedral, has described us (well, he meant his flock, but I think we can extrapolate) as being addicted to "fantasies about prosperity and growth, dreams of wealth without risk and profit without cost". As a direct result, he says, the human soul has become "one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation". Thus, taking steps to actively mitigate climate change is necessary for us to become fully human again.

    This isn't the first time Williams has spoken about climate change. Earlier this year, he pointed out that God had no "safety net" for the human race which, as a result, faces a whole range of doomsday prospects (of which climate change was one, but only one). He also criticized the deniers of climate change, saying that humanity faced being "choked, drowned or starved" by its own stupidity.

    I guess that's one of the advantages of being a major religious leader -- you can decry the stupidity of the human race and people take you at least somewhat seriously. By comparison, that's never worked for me. Not even once.

    But when our culture treats political reality as if it trumps physical reality and the economic environment as more immutable than the ecological one -- when our response to reports of rising sea levels threatening to overwhelm South Pacific islands is to jet right down and see them before they're gone -- maybe "stupidity" is too mild a term. Maybe an all-out religious assault on the root of all evil (not money itself, but the unbridled love of money) is entirely overdue.

    And if, as Agence France-Presse reports, Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee will take up climate change legislation later this month, maybe we can hope for a number of Episcopal (US Anglican) leaders -- along with all those college and university presidents who signed the PCC -- down in DC lobbying for responsible action. (Wouldn't that be a nice change from what passes for politics-as-usual?)

    After all, if the latest accounting by Germany's Advisory Council on Global Change (see, I'm an equal opportunity Europhile) is to be believed, we have far less time to act than previously estimated. (More on that later -- I just started reading the report, myself.)

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Comments on More than morality

  • Less is more
  • Posted by Michael Legaspi , Assistant Professor, Theology at Creighton University on October 15, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

  • I would counsel against a moral escalation of the climate change discussion. As it is, the moralism, sanctimony, and apocalypticism so characteristic of environmentalists is already a significant obstacle to the social transformation they crave so deeply. Great and important movements like abolition and the U.S. civil rights movement worked with America’s noblest religious traditions. They did not set themselves up as substitutes for them. A counterfeit religion advanced by wild-eyed doomsdaymen and hectoring Green prophets—especially when examples of environmentalist hypocrisies are almost too easy to enumerate—looks and sounds like a new revelation cynically urged upon the barbarian hordes. Rowan Williams is certainly in a position to advance an environmentalism that appeals intelligently to our consciences and calls forth what is best in us. I fear, though, that, in chiding us for our unmitigated greed and stupidity and appealing only to our naked fear of disaster, he is not listening to his better angels but rather to his lesser (angry, green) ones.

  • From Skeptic to Heretic?
  • Posted by Mike at LSU on October 15, 2009 at 9:15am EDT

  • Is it not quite obviously in the Bishop's self-interest to meld the God people have forgotten to fear with the latest eco-panic they do fear? Is someone who does not believe, now a heretic to be burned instead of just a skeptic to be silenced?

    If the good Bishop was concerned about the plight of man and the environment, he might choose a cause like eradicating malaria, which has millions of real human victims. The problem is that it doesn't make the local flock afraid like the arch-angel of global warming.

  • Our Moral Resposibilty
  • Posted by Beulah Victor , Senior Lecturer at DSI, Bangalore, India on October 15, 2009 at 11:30pm EDT

  • The Living God who created us gave us the moral resposibility of also nurturing the Earth that He has given us to enjoy. But we have not done our duty properely and our children and their children are going to suffer. It is right, important and significant to bring God into this scenario as it is time we understood our moral responsibility and took drastic steps to preserve the world and hand it down to the coming generations with at least some improvement.
    The writer is totally on the right path when he says that it is the greed for money and power that has led to this degradation of the earth.Accountability is something that is rarely seen in all spheres of life.
    Let us accept our moral responsibility and save our planet for the future gererations.

  • Malaria and the Archbishop
  • Posted by Charlotte Pressler on October 20, 2009 at 12:00pm EDT

  • Actually, the Church of England has already invested heavily in malaria eradication. They have also given their financial support to the Millenium Development Goals popularized by Bono, and their leaders actively and publicly take measures to reduce the carbon footprint of the Church. Another member church of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church of the United States, also supports the MDGs and has been a leader in supplying anti-malarial sleeping nets. Archbishop Williams may talk the talk on climate change, but he walks the walk as well.

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