Sermons

It’s customary to begin sermons with a parable. So here’s one:

Just outside a village there was a bridge over a deep gorge. It had been there as long as anyone could remember, and let the people walk to the next village. It could even support a donkey cart, though it creaked a bit. One day an automobile arrived in the village, headed toward the bridge. The people were curious, and gathered around the car. The driver was eager to continue, but the villagers wondered what the automobile might do to their bridge. They were a resourceful lot, and well connected in the city, so they sent for ten engineers to assess the strength of their bridge. After all 10 examined it, 9 said they didn’t think it would hold, but one was dismissive, saying no one had proven it would fail, so the car could go ahead and try to cross. The driver succumbed to a momentary case of motivated reasoning, and drove onto the bridge.

What you think happened next could depend on what you think about global warming. If you think the driver should have listened to the 9 engineers, you probably think that we should listen to the more than 9 out of 10 scientists who say we need to mitigate human-caused climate change.

If you think the driver had places to go and stuff to do, and probably made it over the bridge, you might think that we can continue to burn fossil fuels because there’s still uncertainty about climate science.

You’d have lots of company. Denial has a large following in our country. Unique among developed counties, we have a major political party including denial in its platform. Here are a few quotes:

“Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue.” [2016 Republican Platform, p. 20]

“We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide.” [2016 p.21]

We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement [2016 p.22]

My sister holds this view. On a recent Thanksgiving visit with her in Georgia, she asked to see my climate change slideshow. She knows that I’ve been going on about climate change for a decade. But it made her uncomfortable. Her love for me, and her knowledge that I love her was not persuasive, against the voices from her tribe. They tell her that climate change is a hoax. It’s perpetrated by corrupt climate scientists to get more grant money. It’s perpetrated by liberals who want a government takeover of our lives. Who want to destroy capitalism, take away our sovereignty, and end our American way of life. This message comes to her from Fox News.   It comes from the chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, James Inhofe, who famously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” It comes from her group of friends, her tribe.

Of course Our Tribe thinks this view is wrong. We accept the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, 97% saying that the climate is changing as a direct result of our use of fossil fuels that generate carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Most of us are aware that Earth’s temperature will continue to rise if we don’t drastically reduce CO₂ emissions.

But we have our own forms of denial. “I’m too busy;” “It’s too big; Nothing I could do would have any effect;” “Even if I totally cut back, it wouldn’t matter because nobody else would.”

Just as some of the concerns of deniers are well founded, our reasons for inaction have some basis in fact. It’s a global problem, and would be catastrophic even if the US stopped emitting. Any individual’s contribution to the problem is less than a billionth of the whole. One vote almost never decides an election. It’s easy to feel helpless.

But I think there’s a simple, sufficient reason to do what one can toward reducing the harm that climate change will cause, whether or not we avoid the catastrophe. This is my reason: When my grandchildren ask what I did when I became aware that their future was in jeopardy, I want to have an answer. When I see the climate refugees fleeing flooded coastal areas, I want to know that I did what I could.

So what can I do? What can any of us do?

Perhaps the first thing is to read up on basic climate science. Until we understand what fossil fuel use does to our atmosphere, climate change can seem a distant and unreal threat. There’s a good Climate Change Primer on the Woods Hole website. First up when you Google “Climate Change Primer.” When you get farther into it, Joseph Romm’s CLIMATE CHANGE: What Everyone Needs to Know is right up to date: 2016. And only $16.

I started reading about it after I attended the UU General Assembly in 2004. Climate change and species extinction were chosen as the study/action issue that year. I’m an engineer, and the challenge of understanding the science was what got me hooked. But even if you’re not as geeky as I am, understanding the basic science makes it real.

A next step could be learning and attempting to reduce your family’s carbon footprint. If you Google “EPA Carbon Calculator” it will be first up. By using your fuel and electric bills and your car data, you can compare your household usage to our national average. You might be motivated to sign up for green electric power, join a solar farm, install a heat pump, join a car pool or hang the laundry on the line. There’s a list of ideas on the insert in your order of service. My wife Elissa and I have been adopting as many of these ideas as we reasonably can. My carbon dioxide emissions as a single person in 2004, by the EPA calculator, were 20 tons of CO2 per year. That number now is 5 ½ tons. Changes include sharing a better-insulated house with Elissa, installing solar panels and heat pump, joining a community solar farm, hanging out the laundry, buying a hybrid car, composting. My main failure is getting a handle on air travel. Those grandchildren I spoke about live in Australia. The trip to Australia every other year accounts for two tons of my carbon footprint.

A third step is to communicate with local, state and national elected officials. In our democracy, leaders usually don’t get too far out in front of their voters. As citizens, we need to let them know where we want to go, and will back them. Your letter, email or phone call might be the one that makes the difference! They really do read these things, but only if you write them yourself. Masses of identical emails that come from advocates’ websites are discounted, as you might imagine. Even if your official is already on board, write them anyway. Support is important. Write a letter to the editor or op-ed. Seeing it in print is a real joy, and who knows? might influence somebody. I got a letter printed in the NYT, and that was really a blast!

Talking with friends and colleagues about climate change can be part of that shift of opinion that will ultimately bring this nation to taking effective action. Sometimes this isn’t easy. It wasn’t easy talking to my sister about it. The conversation will go better if we appreciate that the person we are talking to may have cultural, psychological or group-loyalty emotions behind their position. They may be in denial precisely because they understand the implications of dealing with climate change. It’s important to listen. And then to ask whether they want to know how you understand our situation. It’s difficult, but try to avoid “I’m right and you’re wrong.” That’s seldom persuasive.

Another thing to do is Get involved with a Project. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most, while working on this, is working with others on a project that had, at least, some chance of reducing emissions. Two years ago, the Sierra Club organized something we call the Portland Climate Action Team. We focused on community solar farms. One of our members has land that’s now host to the second community solar farm in Maine. Our most recent achievement has been pursuading the city of Portland to put a large solar array on the closed Ocean Avenue landfill. The City Council approved this array in September. As you might imagine, the unanimous vote was a rather exciting occasion!

Contribute to climate change organizations. There are organizations that are doing vital work to change government policy, such as Natural Resources Council of Maine and Union of Concerned Scientists. There are way too many to name here, but support your favorite one.

And, last but not least, Vote! I think it was Tom Friedman who said, “Change your leaders, not your lightbulbs.” I don’t think the pulpit is the place to make political pitches, but the national parties DO have different principles, as expressed in their platforms.

Climate change is the greatest challenge to the future of human civilization and so many other species. The stable temperatures and sea levels that have permitted the rise of civilization over the last 10,000 years will come to an end if greenhouse gas emissions are not essentially curtailed over the course of just a few decades.

If we know this, but are too busy to respond, we are in denial, just as effectively as are those who actively reject the notion.

But if, instead, we resolve to attend to this, to do what we can, then we can say to our grandchildren, when they ask, “Let me tell you what I did . . .”