August 3 2022
SOMETHING NEW.
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9,10)
Well: there IS something new under the sun, in spite of what Ecclesiastes, that blunt Bible book, says. We, in the year 2022, play poker with the planet without knowing the rules of the game, with our very existence at stake: that’s something new.
New warnings.
Every day there’s a new warning. Every day the warning is more explicit and more ominous than the previous one. Every day it comes from a different source. Every day it concerns a new threat, a new facet on the fate of the earth and a new phase emphasizing its finiteness. Last week an international team of experts argued the world needs to start preparing for the possibility of the climate endgame. “An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity”, is a new book, written by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen.
So, what do we do?
Are we worried? Become environmental boosters? No. We fire up the mothballed coal plants because cleaner burning natural gas is in short supply; we employ more drilling equipment for fracking, that energy-intensive procedure to obtain oil and gas; we expand the tar-sand operations because: “The price is right”, and the profits of the oil companies soar.
Yes, there is something new under the sun.
Half of humanity today is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. So? Conserve? No. We continue to feed our fossil fuel frenzy. “We have a choice”, says Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, “Collective action or collective suicide.”
The age of humans has caused sea levels to rise three times faster than predicted. The arctic ice is vanishing at rates that were unforeseen. Even if we stop carbon emissions today – we have already reached 421 parts per million, up from 280 – carbon dioxide concentrations will continue to climb to as high as 550 ppm because of the heat trapped in the oceans. Global temperatures, even in the most optimistic of scenarios, will rise for at least another century, assuming we confront this crisis. The earth that God pronounced ‘good’ seven times, has become a source of misery and death. And we – we! – are the culprits: our ignorance, our inertia, our politics, our greed, our stupidity that has ensured that we sleepwalked to that dangerous 1.5C climate change guardrail, with higher temperatures on the way, and sure collapse.
The fulness of Time.
Last week I was reading a chapter in a book on “The fulness of time”, expanding on a quote from Ephesians 1: 10: ‘when the times reach their fulfillment.’
Today, now, Anno Domini 2022, the times have reached their end-points. The hourglass is full: drip by drip, grain by grain, chip by chip, we have polluted all the natural resources: air, water, soil, and now our era of extravagance at the expense of creation, is ending.
For those who have eyes to see, the signs tell us that we are dealing with a world that is falling apart. Turmoil everywhere: airports in disarray; shipping of goods stagnating; prices of essentials soaring; the combination of Covid, Inflation, Climate Change, threatens to undo our so interconnected world economy; ignoring flagrant facts, in our arrogance and blindness, we have forgotten that ‘the living earth’ is finite, has an expiry date, now fast approaching.
Conclusion
We are dealing with a situation which our sharpest brains are no longer equipped to handle. We cannot cool the heat in the oceans. We cannot remove the CO2 in the air. We cannot replant the forests needed to regulate the weather. We cannot call back the lost species. We cannot refreeze the Arctic or restore the glaciers. We cannot refashion the prairies where once thousands of buffalos roamed.
We, proud humans, have failed the test. God has allowed us to be in charge of his creation: we have tried; we have experimented; we have accomplished much. But……
James Lovelock, who died last week at the age of 103, coined the name ‘Gaia’ to designate the living earth. Psalm 148 is an ode to that living earth: there the entire universe sings, shouts, glorifies God: the hills, the mountains, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds.
Now the hills are aflame with the sounds of fury, the butterflies no longer fly, the wild animals to nowhere flee, the cattle, encased in poisonous pens, in despair die, the earth a pyre of self-sacrifice.
The earth needs renewal: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations”, promises Revelation 22: “No longer will there be any curse”.
Pray for renewal. Live for renewal. Live in renewal.