MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES.
“Man proposes, but God disposes” is a translation of the Latin: “Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit”.
This well-known proverb played in my mind, when I read an article about AI, Artificial Intelligence, outlining the energy requirements powering this new phenomenon. Now Google and Microsoft are seeking to revive the Three Mile Nuclear Power Station – shut down in 1979 after a nuclear meltdown – to provide for AI’s immense electricity needs.
Coal, too, is making a comeback: consumption of this ultra-polluting fossil fuel is now on track to rise to a new peak of 8.77bn tonnes by the end of the year – and could remain at near-record levels for years to come: we need electricity to power our toys!
How about Climate Change?
Suddenly, it seems, that Climate Change and Global Heating have been placed on the back burner, even as warming trends and unnatural weather conditions multiply. The fossil fuel industry also has their eyes on roughly three billion people, whose annual energy consumption is equal to only the yearly power use of my refrigerator. There’s a huge market out there, both for electricity use and modern conveniences, such as refrigeration and transportation. That’s how people in the energy industry calculate: they propose, but God, through his creation, has the final Word. Because…..
El Niño comes calling.
El Niño is a complex weather pattern that occurs when surface water in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean becomes warmer than average and easterly winds blow weaker than normal. These events, usually occurring every few years, can cause unusual and sometimes dangerous weather conditions worldwide, including droughts, floods and severe storms. El Niño is an important climatic happening, recognized as a factor of weather change responsible for large and varied detrimental effects.
Now studies show that for the first time, significant loss of sea ice in the Arctic directly affects global climate extremes, including the increase in the frequency of severe El Niño occurrences. Make it a habit to regularly check ARCTIC NEWS, where climatologists post their weather warnings. It is well-known that temperatures at the Northern and Southern tips have skyrocketed in the past decade, boding ill for all of us, the 8 billion earth dwellers.
For us, even for us, the prosperous few, the news is bad.
Instead of eating a steady diet of high-quality food, we are being fed an endless stream of heavily-processed packaged foods that are loaded with extremely unhealthy filler ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup.
Sadly, many of us are also financially stressed, because the heavily-processed packaged foods are all that many of us can afford, even though, there too, prices have increased significantly.
Humanity, both rich and poor, faces a very dangerous time, exacerbated by the incoming TRUMP rule, blind to the ‘signs of the Times’. God, through his creation is speaking loud and clear, actually, is screaming to us: “Change your ways, live within the means and limits of my world, the cosmos, my first and foremost Love.”
Isaiah 11: 9 comes to mind: the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Listen to creation’s cries! Make the 4 laws of ecology a staple of life, remembering that:
1. Everything is connected to everything else.
2. Nothing ever disappears.
3. Nature- creation – knows best.
4. Nothing comes free.
Dr. Barry Commoner coined these laws some 60 years ago, and they have stood the test of times.
Nature is like a human body: a defect there affects our total wellbeing. We live in a closed system, from which there is no escape: carbon fuels, when ignited through our beloved transportation systems, cause GHG – Green House Gases – which heat up the atmosphere. Loving God – a direct command – entails loving his creation. It’s as simple as that.
We now are faced with paying the ultimate price for our luxurious life. Trump’s Christians – a blasphemy if there ever is one – have so distorted “The Good News”, that total annihilation is facing us.
We have made a choice.
We have taken the restlessness road to ruin. We have enslaved God for our (temporary) conveniences. We have subjected God’s precious possession – bought back with the Life-blood of his beloved Son (see John 3: 16-17) – to the point where Hell on EARTH has become the only remaining option.
But God has different plans. The Bible points to the way God disposes: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. (2 Peter 3:10).
Yes, “Man proposes, but God disposes”.