The best preacher I have ever heard in person was Rev. Dr.
James Forbes. When I heard him preach at the national meeting of the United
Church of Christ General Synod at Kansas City in 2001, I laughed and cried all
at the same time. Moved . . . I
was. When I heard him preach at his home
church, Riverside Cathedral in New York City, it was for this Sunday in the
liturgical year probably close to 30 years ago.
He used the “doubting Thomas” story we have in Scripture today, its
proximity to Earth Day, to talk about climate change and remind people that
some folks will have to be brought along, not everybody has seen the light as many
had. Others will need to have not only
evidence but personal experience of touching and seeing to join in the work of
stemming climate change. That was over
30 years ago!
We come from a faith tradition that recognizes doubt as an
important part of an examined life. We
ask critical questions of ourselves. We
necessarily challenge authority and power with doubts and questions. The Risen Christ even allows doubting Thomas
to examine his wounds so that he can make his own proclamation of the
resurrection.
But there is another form of doubt that seeks to unseat
confidence of the examined life in favor of the unexamined miraculous, the
uncritical claims to power, and for keeping a story being revealed to us under
wraps. Too often that kind of doubt is
in favor of a romantic past. This doubt is
about flooding the market with dollars and influence to allow the powerful to continue
along a path that harms, destroys, and does violence. Advertisements, paid endorsements and
movements, all show up to make us believe that the movement of the divine comes
from the devil.
Last year, several members of the congregation and I came
together a movie inspired by Naomi Oreskes’ book, Merchants of Doubt. The basic premise of the movie is that the
fossil fuel industry, borrowing from the wisdom and leadership of the tobacco
industry, intentionally created and is creating doubt about climate change in
the wider populace. Even with 99% of
climate scientists agreeing that climate change is real and that human activity
is the driver of climate change, much of the United States’ population has not
bought in. Much like the way the tobacco
industry made us doubt that cigarettes or second-hand smoke were harmful to human
health for so long, doubt about climate change has made it almost impossible
for us to get the necessary oomph necessary for the sweeping and transformative
change we need.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC,
has been very conservative about the impacts of climate change and how far
along we are. But now in this latest
report, I read, “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on
adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of
opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all." As a Christian pastor, when I read such
things, I believe I am obligated to once again put this before you . . . to say
that there are direct and simple ways to work, to say that you are not to blame. But we
need to wax up our anger and courage as people of faith. To doubt and challenge doubt. To say that there are different and diverse
ways of knowing each of us can bring to this urgent love we must now display
for our home.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and now the senior
citizens climate group Th!rd Act[1],
environmentalist, educator, and writer for the Christian social justice
magazine, Sojourners, believes the
only way we might be able to turn the tide for the will on climate change is
actual relationships people develop with rivers, mountains, and animals. Out of those relationships, that real touch
and see, McKibben believes, we may grow the necessary courage to step
forward.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, is a professor
of political science at Texas Tech University where she is the Director of
Climate Science. She is a self-described
evangelical Christian. Professor Hayhoe
believes the most important thing we can do about climate change is talk to
people about climate change. We need an
overwhelming movement that transforms people’s hearts and minds. We can be the leaders, the movement, those
who finally turn the tide because we are persistent, because we keep talking,
because we refuse to go away. Let us
help the “doubting Thomases” touch and see the reality of climate change.
How? Aditi Judeja,
co-creator of the Resistance Manual, said it is critical to have conversations
about climate change in the everyday places.
“The basis of democracy is self-governance,” Judeja writes, “and that
requires citizens to engage with one another.”
We begin, Judeja believes, by assuming the best in other people. We should remember that others can disagree
with us and still be good people.
Secondly, we should be well-informed.
But it is to remember, she warns, that people will rarely come together
over the facts. Know our audience, use
humor, and learn what the other person cares about. Finally, she counsels, stop complaining about
it and take ownership for making conversations happen. Start.
Practice. Stink at it. Keep practicing.[2]
What every person who advises in getting climate
conversations started is not only knowing your audience but finding out where
you connect with the other person, have in common in them, discerning what the
other person values. As Katharine Hayhoe
suggests, if they are a skier, talk to them about the shrinking snowpack. If a birder, how bird migration patterns are
being disrupted. Tim Guinee, as a
volunteer firefighter, always wears his dress uniform and talks about how
climate change creates danger and exhaustion for emergency service providers. One of friends in Billings, Montana, related how
her work fighting fires in the West, used to be a seasonal job. It is no longer. And the risk of losing one’s life has become
even greater.
Maybe even more than what
others value, speak to what people most love and how climate change will most
affect the people and things they most love.
When Hayhoe spoke to the West Texas Rotary Club, she used the Four-Way
Test the Rotarians use as an ethical guide to talk to them about climate change.[3]
For example, we may have heard about the vast amount of plastics being dumped in the oceans. But we may want to talk about how, locally, a study done five years ago, "estimates 22 million pounds of plastic debris enters the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada each year!"[4]
If the thriving of our ecosystem is not a concern, then maybe we can relate what was just reported in March of this year. Plastices have so inundated our lives, that microplastics have now been found in human blood, detected in almost 80% of the people tested. Microplastics are known to cause damage to human cells.[5] 
And as a recent article in Popular
Science magazine pointed out, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel
problem.”[6] And according to the International Energy
Agency, plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly
half of oil demand growth by midcentury.[7]
As people of faith, we can
care for our place, our own Lake Michigan ecosystem by bringing our doubts, our
critical eye, our movement toward something more life-giving by being critical
of the fossil fuel industry and by weaning our investment in it.
Or, as this
congregation has been so faithful in supporting relief for Ukraine, we could
turn our continued work as peacemakers by recognizing that wars are fought on
blood and treasure.
Putin can only fund his war
because 40% of his economy is floated by fossil fuel exports. He also controls the chokepoint of natural
gas to western Europe. Peace may require
a rapid and massive scale-up of renewable energy—especially in the United
States and Europe, as German is implementing.
Such actions, said Bill McKibben, “dramatically reduces the power of
autocrats, dictators, and thugs." With
guidance from Patriarch Batholomew, “the Green Patriarch," who strongly
condemned the Russian attack, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine could emerge as an
advocate for God’s creation and renewable energy as a sign of Ukrainian resilience,
independence, and national pride.[8]
Meanwhile, corporate has tried to make us
believe either that climate change is not happening, that it won’t be that bad,
that human activity is not to blame for it, or that we, personally, are the
ones responsible. They cast doubt on
their responsibility and cast blame on us . . . as individuals.
This casting
blame on us has been done through repeated corporate advertising. The word “litterbug” was coined by the
corporate industry. “Carbon offset” was
coined by corporate. All to make us
believe that we are the ones responsible and to blame and to take away our hope
that we can ever measure up to meet the challenge. When what we really need is to bring our
critical eye, our diverse ways of knowing, and our imagination for a future
that does not depend on fossil fuels.
Even the International Monetary Fund, long seen as a conservative
organization, detailed that the fossil fuel industry receives 11 million
dollars a minute in subsidies to keep its crumbling infrastructure afloat.[9] But imagine . . . just imagine . . . if that
kind of money was directed toward renewable and sustainable energy.
You can’t be
what you can’t see. Children’s rights
activist, the late Marian Wright Edelman, would say, “You can’t be what you can’t
see.”
What
Christian writers have done for centuries, advocating for an examined life, is
to not only use their critical eye, and their diverse ways of knowing, but also
use our imaginations for what a future might look like if we could choose walk
a path that is very different from a harmful, destructive, and violent status
quo. As in the book of Revelation, the
writer asked critical questions of a power that seems to be hell-bent on destruction. And then they ask, what would water look
like, flowing crystal clear from the throne of God? In our mind’s eye, how can we imagine
it. And so, to end, I want to share one
of the videos imagined by journalists at The Intercept.
(The video is shown) “Message
from the Future II: The Years of Repair,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m8YACFJlMg
Let us begin these
conversations, knowing that the power is within us to do this. We will do this imperfectly. Who cares?
Seriously.
Winona LaDuke has written,
Power is not brute
force and money; power is in your spirit.
Power is in your
soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you.
Power is in the
earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.[10]
Power is in your spirit and
in your soul. Have the strength of our
faith to doubt and ask the critical questions—feel the actual wounds of Christ,
the suffering that is already happening on God’s good earth. Have the strength of our faith to not let the
doubts of those who are invested in an unexamined status quo steer us away from
a faithful future. Believe that and
begin these diverse conversations and diverse actions to transform so that we
all may know the power that is in the earth.
Amen.
[1] Get started now!
www.thirdact.org
[2] Aditi Judeja, “Your next bar conversation is about
climate change. Here’s how to do it,” grist, https://grist.org/guides/umbra-apathy-detox/your-next-bar-conversation-is-about-climate-change-heres-how-to-do-it/.
[3] “3 Tips from the Experts: How to talk about the climate crisis
effective,” The Climate Reality Project,
March 29, 2019, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/3-tips-experts-how-talk-about-climate-crisis-effectively.
[4] Susan Galowicz, “Researchers study plastic pollution
in Great Lakes,” Rochester Institute of Technology, December 19, 2016, https://www.rit.edu/news/researchers-study-plastic-pollution-great-lakes.
[5] Damian Carrington, “Microplastics found in human
blood for the first time,” The Guardian, March 24, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time
[6][6][6][6] Erica Cirino, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel
problem,” Popular Science, October 14, 2021, https://www.popsci.com/environment/fossil-fuel-plastic-production-links/
[7] IEA (2018), The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA, Paris
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals.
[8] Rose Marie Berger, “’War Is A Great Evil,’” Sojourners,
May, Vol 51, No. 5, 2022, p. 16.
[9] Damian Carrington, “Fossil fuel industry gets
subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds,” The Guardian, October 6, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds
[10] Winona LaDuke, https://sacredecology.com/honor-the-earth/
