Climate Change is a Moral Issue

This week, my parish, Christ Church, put up our banner for climate change awareness — this is the third year we’ve done so, probably to turn our own attention toward the environment as to remind anyone who might drive by and see it (several other Waltham congregations have done so as well…. I don’t think First Presbyterian has ever taken theirs down!).

This Saturday, Christ Church will host the Waltham Event for the international (yes — international!) Moving Planet Day to move beyond fossil fuels. Students will march from Brandeis and converge at Christ Church at 1:30.

In the morning, you can work on the rail trail with the Waltham Land Trust, and then come over to the church for the gathering. There are rallies all over the world, encouraging people to travel by foot, bike, or public transportation to raise their voices for solutions to the climate crisis. Our neighbors in Lexington, Arlington, Somerville and Medford will all host similar events to plan to caravan together to the New England-wide event in Boston on the waterfront at Columbus park (near the Aquarium T).

Worldwide, more than 160 countries will have events. In Boston, Steve Curwood from the NPR show Living on Earth will emcee the event, and Episcopal Priest Margaret Bullitt-Jonas will be part of the opening, along with other speakers and action. It's also the day for Farm Day, up at Waltham Fields, where I'll be heading with my kids after the Waltham Rally.

“Climate Change is a Moral Issue” — it’s a bumper sticker slogan, and if all we do with it is once a year to haul a banner out of the closet to feel good about our dedication, we might as well not bother. As our climate warms, the suffering inflicted by the change is born so disproportionately by those who are already less fortunate.

This is a fact: in political debates, you hear again and again how it’s a theory that human action is the cause of global warming and that not all scientists agree. I heard one commentator say recently (I wish I could remember who) that deciding not to do something about our carbon emissions for that reason is like sitting in your basement smelling smoke from the kitchen and insisting that there is no way your house can be on fire because you don’t actually see the flames.

My cynical voice says that acting on behalf of the environment is naively idealistic: how noble to do something for generations to come! You could put it on a hallmark card. My other cynical voice says that it is almost willfully foolish to think that just one person’s actions matter. My screw-shaped light bulbs will not change the world. If I were alone, it would be pointless. But I am not alone, and climate change is not just an issue for my children to contend with — it will change life in our time, not just theirs. Maybe climate change isn’t a moral issue after all; maybe it’s a clear-cut case of self-interest. Now that’s cynical.

Jesus didn’t talk about the environment — the single thing he talked most about was money, actually — not sex, marriage, or even prayer. But he did teach a lot about how we are to understand ourselves, about a church-wide — no, creation-wide! — family that crashes down the boundaries between self and other.

He asked what profit it was to gain the material world but lose our souls. Where will we be when Bangladesh is submerged in water? Each of us driving our cars and eating strawberries in January shipped from Chile? I know in my own life, I have so, so far to go, as I have written many times in this space (my blog (ecrier.blogspot.com) has five pieces tagged “environment,” and I know not everything is up there). But I will keep writing, maybe keep repeating myself, hoping that someday I get the message. In the meantime, I’ll see you Saturday.

But ask the animals, and they will teach you;

the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

...and the fish of the sea will declare to you.

In God's hand is the life of every living thing.

Job 12: 7, 8b, 10a

Links:

http://www.moving-planet.org/

www.christchurchwaltham.org

http://walthamlandtrust.org/

www.communityfields.org