Climate Change and the Future of Humanity
What I have learned during several
months of study during the course of writing a long theological paper about
climate change and the probable future of humanity, can probably be summed up
in a few simple facts, followed by what I think are a few common sense
observations.
First, nearly everyone agrees that
there has been, especially in the last century or so, definite evidence of global
warming. The only real issue, as it seems at this point, is whether or not humans
have anything to do with it. Some claim it is all attributable to natural
cycles. Some of these cycles, such as the weather fuctuations like El Niño and
La Niña and the North Pacific Oscillation, the solar (sunspot) activity cycle,
etc., are of comparatively short duration, occuring anywhere from a dozen to
three times a century and, at best, can only explain relatively short-term
variations in the weather patterns from year to year. Others, are of much more long term duration,
like as the periodic variation in the degree of eccentrity in the earth’s orbit
of the sun which reaches an extreme only about every 95,000 years or so. It is this latter (along with the combined
effects of some other long-term solar variations) which probably explains the fairly
sudden onset of at least ten “ice ages” over the past million years, each interpersed
with prolonged periods of slow global warming.
Second: However, the existence of such long-term natural cycles do not seem to explain
the rapidity of the temperature rise at the present. Instead, the evidence, especially from the
Third (and here we are dealing with
paleontogical data that is rarely brought into the debate), we now know that
the human race, or at least its early prototypes, barely survived the last two
occurances of the ice age cycle. Nor were humans, or even mammals of any appreciable
size, around 65 million years ago when the age of dinosaurs abruptly ended and the
global climate was much warmer than it is now or or has been ever since. So whether we (homo sapiens), who seem to have evolved primarily during the previous
interglacial warming trend, then gradually replaced the Neanderthals as the
last ice age slowly retreated about 20,000 years ago, can survive this latest
warming trend remains to be seen. Waiting for massive volcanic eruptions to
cool the atmosphere, or until the next ice age begins (not scheduled until
about 30,000 years from now) hardly seems like a wise option. Nor is placing
one’s trust in the earth as a self-regulating organism any sure bet, especially
considering that Mother Nature’s response to past imbalances was a series of
mass extinctions of practically all life on earth!
However, for Christians and for
others who believe that they have been called by God to care for the earth and
to promote its productivity, I think the message should be at last becoming clear.
While more carbon dioxide and acclerated global warming might make some forms
of agriculture in the more northernly regions of the earth more productive, the
increasing shortage of reliable sources of fresh water elsewhere has, despite
the “Green Revolution”, actually reduced agricultural production, while
increased agricultural chemical runoff (never mind the BP mess in the Gulf of
Mexico) and other forms of pollution have already destroyed large areas of what
was once productive offshore fishing grounds, once a major source of protein
for much of the world’s population.
All this considred, it seems to me,
at least if we claim to be responsible Christians, that we cannot, in good
conscience, continue our wasteful and destructive “standard of living” (this
while a major
portion of the 6.7 billion who are already alive now are already suffering from
deep-set poverty or even malnutrition) — much less expect to “increase and
multiply” to the 9.4 billion persons the UN expects by 2050. Instead, I think we
must undergo a major revision of what we hold to be “the good life” or else we
will deserve to be condemned as destroyers of the fulness of life that we
believe God intended to flourish on the face of the earth.
R