GLOBAL WARMING, OUR MORAL IMPERATIVE

Rev. Millie Rochester

January 28, 2007

Mark Twain has often been quoted as saying: "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

Everybody does seem to be talking about the weather these days. In parts of this country, there is not just snow, but record snowfalls and blizzards, official disaster status in the Midwest. Ice storms have caused dozens of deaths in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. Frost in the citrus of groves of California is translating into a billion dollar loss, a disaster for growers.

At the other end of the country, in parts of New York we see the other extreme. Already, robins and bluebirds have been spotted upstate, where they don't usually arrive before April. Crocuses and daffodils are in bloom. Asparagus was harvested in the normally frozen Catskills in the first week of January. Downstate, turtles, like bears in Scandinavia, forgot to hibernate for the first time in human history.

In Europe, ski slopes are without snow. With unusually warm temperatures in the Alps, about one-quarter of the resorts have yet to open. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that two-thirds of the resorts in the Alps could be out of business in the next 30 years.

Are we having a ‘weird weather’ year, or is our climate changing to a different definition of what’s “normal?”

Both weather and climate are in the news. We hear every day of unusually low or unusually high temperatures. What happens day-to-day is what we term the weather. It can change in an hour – say, when a cold front moves in bringing Arctic air, and suddenly it’s freezing cold. Or when the barometer falls announcing the arrival of a low-pressure center and a rainstorm not far behind.

The climate cannot be harsh on Thursday and mild on Saturday, because it’s not measured in terms of days, but in terms of many years. When we say the climate has changed, we are describing a long-term shift – from cold to warm, or from dry to wet, say.

Meteorologist weather forecasts have been commonplace for so long we can’t imagine the day they didn’t exist. Climate study is not new, but I doubt it’s ever been more in the news than these days. And there is agreement among most experts that the global climate is in the process of warming.

Admittedly, not everyone agrees, for a variety of reasons. Just recently, the Associated Press reported a decision made by the school board of a Seattle suburb. Parents had complained that their children, after viewing the film, “An Inconvenient Truth” at school, were taking global warming as fact. The board decided to require schools to balance the documentary with “an adequate opposing viewpoint.” The father of seven children told a Seattle newspaper, "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

That’s indisputably true. The DVD is based on science, not biblical interpretation. “An Inconvenient Truth” has received approval from some of the nation's top climate scientists for its accuracy. Federal researchers with the National Academy of Sciences have said the planet's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, and has begun to affect plants and animals.

For millions of years, nature achieved a balance that was relatively stable. The atmosphere held some of the sun’s warmth, and nurtured life. But since the beginning of the industrial age, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased more than 30%. This holds in more heat.

More than 1500 members of national, regional, and international science academies, from 69 nations, answer with the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity. The introduction states:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

This warning sounds as if it might have been issued yesterday, but in fact it was in November of 1992.

Nine years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report responding to questions posed by the White House. You have probably read conflicting interpretations, some citing conclusive evidence of global warming, others skeptical. Its next report will be issued in four parts; the first part will be released this week. This segment, written by more than 600 peer-reviewed scientists, reviewed by another 600 experts, and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, prompted a top US climate scientist to say, “The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak. The evidence is…compelling.”

The Canadian climate scientist who co-authored the study went further: “This isn’t a smoking gun; [this] is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles.” “Fundamental changes are urgent,” they said then. Most of the international community recognized that, and thirty-eight industrial nations partnered, ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The goal of this agreement is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions growth seven percent below 1990 levels. The leaders of many countries, like Great Britain’s Tony Blair, acknowledge the urgency.

French President Jacques Chirac, in his New Year’s message, said, “The excessive exploitation of natural resources is upsetting the climate and will endanger mankind, if we don’t react right now.”

Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, replaced cabinet members in early January, largely to deal with this issue.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to make the matter a focus of her country's 2007 presidency of the Group of Eight, which is made up of leading rich nations including the US. The European Commission, the European Union's head office, has proposed that the 25-nation EU commit to cutting greenhouse-gas output by at least twenty per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

The world has been watching the US, because this country produces a disproportionate amount of the carbon gas emissions that cause global warming. In 2001, shortly after taking office, President Bush withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. In the weeks leading up to this year’s State of the Union message, there was speculation that the President would announce he had softened his position.

Referring to climate change, he called for improving fuel economy standards, and for increasing domestic oil and alternative fuel production. He emphasized voluntarism and technology, giving no significant attention to imposing actual emission cuts. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, “The president’s speech was more notable for what he didn’t say on global warming than what he did say.”

In the meanwhile, the public is prodding government, and meeting with some success. Congress has introduced a flurry of bills; the states of Washington, Oregon and California have joined forces in an effort to create a clean car corridor along Interstate 5; and three hundred sixty-five cities have pledged their intention to meet the stringent terms of the Kyoto Protocol.

But what about the economy? We’ve been warned that it will surely be harmed by restricting carbon emissions, however American business interests are more worried about the consequences of maintaining the status quo.

An informal coalition of environmental groups and US companies including General Electric, chemical maker DuPont and the aluminum giant Alcoa has urged Congress and the Bush administration to address climate change quickly. The Ford Motor Company, and even Wal Mart have pledged progressive reform.

But a pledge is merely symbolic. True commitment means making substantive changes in the way we live. A recent piece in “E/The Environment Magazine” illustrates the inherent struggle. A Minnesota-based organization, The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, cites only one in ten cities having come close to meeting its pledge so far. Still, that’s movement in the right direction.

The film “An Inconvenient Truth” has lit a spark of general interest, and the public is thirsty for information. Since the documentary was released, hundreds of individuals have been trained to lead presentations in the US and Australia. Here in the Tampa Bay Area, there have been about eighteen presentations just recently.