Jake Comes Home From College

and wants to talk about global climate change
​

Jake: What did you do about climate change when I was growing up? You never talked about it at home. Maybe we should have done something as a family.

Mom and Dad: We didn't think it was a problem. We just wanted you to be happy. Our president said it was a hoax, and that was good enough for us. We’re Americans, after all, and we put America first. We'll be fine.

Jake: So you ignored it?

Mom and Dad: Yes. We had more important things to talk about: school, clothes, hobbies, guns, and sports. And how we might pay fewer taxes so that we might have discretionary income for family vacations. You know how we hate taxes.

Jake: So you ignored it?

Mom and Dad: Yes. Our religion had something to do with it, too. We believe that God is in control of everything and that the environment really doesn’t matter that much. The earth is pretty and all that, but the plants and animals were put here for our pleasure. God created the earth for us and he'll do what he wishes with it. He has a plan.

Jake: So you ignored it?

Mom and Dad: Yes, we ignored it.

Jake: What if God doesn't have a plan but instead has a dream? What if God cares more about people and animals and the earth than, say, guns and sports and vacations? What if God dreams of a world where love and sharing are the guiding ideals? What if God needs us to help the dream come true? What if that's why God sent Jesus and other prophets?
​
Mom and Dad: We'll ignore it.

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The Facts About Climate Change
​

​PART I:  UNPRECEDENTED THREATS

Introduction: The basic issue is whether global warming, besides leading to a hellish existence for our children and grandchildren, will destroy civilization. Each chapter in Part I addresses possible responses: Plan B (mobilization), Plan A (business as usual), and Plan C (wait and see).

1  Extreme Weather: Prior to discussing four types of “extreme 
weather,” this chapter discusses extreme weather in general and how global warming is responsible for it.

2  Heat Waves: This chapter deals with the phenomenon that 
comes to mind most readily when people think of “global 
warming,” namely, warmer weather, which will include hotter and more frequent heat waves. The danger is that the temperature will make life hellish, eventually intolerable.

3  Droughts and Wildfires: Drought has thus far been the climate effect most harmful to people. Aggravated by global warming, its pernicious effects include dramatic increases in wildfires.

4  Storms:  Various types of storms are becoming more extreme 
and increasing in number: rainstorms (deluges), which increase 
flooding; major snowstorms – as in the "Snowpocalypse" of 2009; hurricanes, which are becoming bigger and stronger (such as Katrina and Sandy); and tornadoes, which have been shown by recent evidence to be also intensified by global warming.

5  Sea-Level Rise: This chapter deals with scientific projections 
about sea-level rise if business as usual continues (perhaps 7 
feet by end of century) and what this will do to island nations and the coastal areas of the USA, China, and many other countries.

6  Fresh Water Shortage: Although national security experts have long worried about peak oil, “the real threat to our future,” said Lester Brown, “is peak water.” There are substitutes for oil, but there is no substitute for fresh water, which is getting less 
plentiful in many parts of the world, due to melting glaciers, 
shrinking snowpack, decreasing water in lakes and rivers, and 
the depletion of aquifers.

7  Food Shortage: According to Oxfam, “Increased hunger is likely  to be one of climate change’s most savage impacts.” Food 
shortage will be increased by extreme weather, water shortage; 
and global warming’s “equally evil twin” - ocean acidification - 
which, if it continues, will lead to a world without seafood.

8  Climate Refugees: Climate refugees have to leave home 
because of some type of climate-influenced change, such as sea-level rise, upon which this chapter focuses. If climate change continues, the refugees will number in the millions and 
eventually billions. Going with anything other than Plan B will be 
catastrophic.

9  Climate Wars: Climate disruption is also important because of ways it could threaten national security and the world’s political-economic order, due primarily to increasing resource scarcity. Conflict over scarcity may end up influencing more people than any of the other results of climate change. Plan B is the only way to minimize international strife.

10  Ecosystem Collapse and Extinction: Although any one of the 
changes in Chs. 1-9 could become catastrophic, even worse will 
be the occurrence of some of these changes simultaneously, 
which could lead to global ecosystem collapse. With business as usual, the sixth mass extinction, which we are already in, will 
eventually include us.  

PART II:  UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES AND FAILURES

11  Climate Change Denial: Worst in America, climate-change 
denialism has resulted from a concentrated campaign by the 
fossil-fuel industry to repudiate the scientific consensus and 
promote public uncertainty. This chapter examines techniques 
previously used by big business to impact public opinion in 
relation to smoking, acid rain, CFCs, and the ozone layer, 
showing how they are now being used by the fossil-fuel industry to dispute the conclusion of virtually all climate scientists that fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas - are imperiling our planet. The fossil-fuel industry, which knows its claims to be false, has deceived many citizens into accepting its propaganda over the evidence provided by climate scientists. This chapter debunks a large number of the claims against climate science,

12  Media Failure:   The fossil-fuel industry’s denialist strategy has been forced upon, if not willingly embraced  by, the major 
American corporate media, leading to  their failure to adequately address either the science or the urgency of climate disruption. Examined here are various media techniques geared to produce public uncertainty on the issue:   reduced coverage, inadequate contextualization of extreme weather events, and false balance (giving the opinions of propagandists paid by Big Oil as much attention as the views of renowned climate scientists), and going even beyond  that to explicit denialism.

13  Political Failure: This chapter documents the historical record 
of global failures to successfully address climate change and 
explains  reasons why. It demonstrates the extent to which 
politicians have overruled the findings of science and analyzes 
their motives. The record of US Presidents on climate change is 
examined. Charting the Republican stampede toward absolute 
climate change denial since 2011, it names  specific malefactors 
pursuing their selfish private interests to shed light on what  
British journalist George Monbiot terms “the greatest political 
failure the world has ever seen.”

14  Moral Challenge: There is a basic global ethic related to global warming implicit in our understanding of human rights as well as religious principles. The primary issue is intergenerational justice - whether today’s generation will finally act fast and decisively enough to save a tolerable planet for our descendants or continue to act within the boundaries of its narrowly defined self-interest. The notion of moral obligation in relation to climate protection, along with the capacity of morality to make a difference, is re-enforced by parallels to successful global justice campaigns: the abolition of slavery and divestment from South African apartheid.

15  Religious Challenge: American religious culture has mainly 
revolved around theism, which comes in both traditional and non-traditional forms. Traditional theism, which holds that the 
supreme being is omnipotent, is held by most Evangelical 
Christianity.   This view  often results  in climate complacency, 
holding that the world will not be destroyed by global warming 
unless God wants this to happen - an attitude expressed by 
several members of the U.S. Congress. Some Evangelical 
Christians resist this tendency, instead fighting strongly to stop 
global warming. But there are forms of theism that more fully 
support climate concern.  

16  Economic Challenge: Besides being impeded by limited 
moralities and false religious ideas, society’s task of saving 
civilization has also been impeded by false economic ideas. 
Starting with the complacency of Yale’s William Nordhaus, this 
chapter traces the mounting urgency of coming to grips with the projected costs of climate disruption through the thinking of 
Oxford’s Nicholas Stern and Harvard’s Martin Weitzman – who 
warns that the costs could be infinite. Whereas Nordhaus argued that going full out to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible would damage the economy, a growing number of 
economists have realized, with Stern and Weitzman, that going 
full out is the only way to save the economy. This chapter ends 
with the policies most needed: a carbon tax and the elimination 
of fossil-fuel subsidies.

PART III: WHAT IS TO BE DONE

17  Transitioning to Clean Energy: Fossil-fuel industry 
propaganda has claimed that clean energy is too expensive and 
could not, in any case, power civilization. But developments over the past decade show that clean and renewable energy is now not only achievable but also affordable. This chapter discusses various types of clean energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean energy, showing how these, combined with hydropower, could provide far more than enough energy to power civilization. Also discussed are automobiles, trains, and airplane fuels that could make 100% clean transportation 
possible. The great untold story is that the planet’s energy could 
be 70% clean by 2035 and 100% clean by 2050.

18  Abandoning Dirty Energy: The “carbon budget” - meaning the most additional carbon that could be burned without catastrophe - shows that, if there is to be any hope, fossil fuels must be quickly phased out. Coal and oil have long been the primary threats to the planet. But natural gas, alleged to be a “bridge” to clean energy, has become equally harmful, especially with the rise of “fracking.” And oil is now more dangerous than ever due to the exploitation of “tough oil.” Fossil fuel companies have been irresponsible global citizens and a primary threat to 
civilization.  Now that there are numerous alternatives,  we 
should have no regrets about swiftly phasing them out of 
business.

19  Mobilization: Lester Brown, author of Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, says that quickly moving from fossil fuels to clean energy “will take a massive mobilization - at wartime speed.” Any global mobilization would likely need to begin in the United States: The President should declare a national climate emergency and implement pro-climate policies on an appropriate scale. Such US leadership should then enable, indeed unleash, a similar mobilization worldwide. This mobilization will require leadership of many different levels and types, mounting from all sectors of society (academic, activist, agricultural, business, entertainment, labor, media, political, scientific, and so on) to enable such presidential action.

Conclusion: We are facing an unprecedented challenge. This 
chapter drives home the need to devote ourselves to the task 
wholeheartedly for the coming decades, until the transition to a 
clean-energy economy has been made.

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS OF DAVID RAY GRIFFIN'S UNPRECEDENTED
offered by publisher, Clarity Press

​America the Sinful
​
Hiding from Climate Change
​

Catechism to be Updated to Include Ecological Sin, says the Pope

​The future has arrived and it looks like this: heat waves, droughts and wildfires, more extreme storms, rising sea levels, fresh water shortages, food shortages, climate refugees, climate wars, collapsing ecosystems, and extinctions.  

​Perhaps if we center our lives around the values of consumerism -- appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement -- we can hide from it, pretending that our personal journeys and the well-being of our loved ones are all that really matter.  We can think selfishly and act selfishly.  The climate-change deniers and fossil-fuel industry will help us in our hiding.  So will the preachers who tell us that the future is in God's hands alone, and that there's really nothing to worry about.  The relative silence of the media and educational institutions will also help us.  

But if we suffer the effects of the food and water shortages, if we cannot find shelter from the storms, this hiding is not an option.  The future of climate change is our immediate environment.  And if we live in relative comfort but want to live with a sense of integrity, loyal to the world and committed to the well-being of life, the hiding is also not an option.  We know that the measure of our lives is not how much money me make or comfort we enjoy, but rather how much love we give.  We know that we are small but included in a larger web of life and that each node in the web is precious.  If we believe in God, we know that the future is open even for God, and that God beckons us to respond to the new normal with wisdom and compassion, responsive to the suffering and grateful for the beauty of life.  Even if we can find shelter from the storms, we want others to have that shelter, too.   Even if we do enjoy clean water, we want others to have water, too.  We cannot separate our happiness from that of others.  We feel part of a larger community and we call it the earth.  Our motto is: Think Planetarily, Act Locally.

We can demand that our public leaders take heed of the new situation, developing wise public policies.  We can urge our schools and universities to provide us with skills and wisdom for responding to the new normal.  We can work in our own local settings to build transition communities: that is, local communities that are resilient to the vicissitudes of changing weather.  These are communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, multiicultural, and ecologically wise -- with no one left behind.  We can become part of the transition town movement.  Along the way we may find that our personal skills -- accounting, gardening, business management, merrymaking -- are indeed very useful.  And we will realize that the very development of transition towns can be, as it were, fun.  

In this sense, and this sense alone, the climate crisis is also a climate opportunity.  It is an opportunity for widened horizons, freedom from consumerism, and the enjoyment of what we in the process world call "strength of beauty"  in community with others.  But any talk of this opportunity best begins with reliable information and a good overview.  It helps if there is a single book that can function as a climate change manual -- a bible for climate change respondents and transition town builders. It needs to explain what climate change is, where we have failed, where the challenges lie, and what can be done to help save human civilization.  David Ray Griffin's Unprecedented, described below, can be that book.

-- Jay McDaniel

​Ecological Civilization:
​The Best and Only Hope

Institute for Ecological Civilization

Ecological Civilization Podcasts

David Korten on Ecological Civilization