I want to continue talking about the climate because we need to put what has been happening in another perspective. We’ve been talking about droughts in some places, overwhelming rain and floods in others, the intensification of storms, hurricanes, cyclones, and global sea rise. All of those bring climate refugees and tragedy, deaths, destruction and embittered lives to the survivors. And the phenomena are spreading. More and more ice fields are thawing, raising global water levels and increasing the climate effect – decreasing ice shelves, sea ice and glaciers reflect less of the sun’s heat back; decreasing types of ground covering absorb and hold less heat and carbon dioxide. The problem multiplies. Scientists have been describing that process for many decades and reality has been much worse than their predictions.
In other words, the earth has been reacting in ways that don’t prevent further problems but intensify it. It might as well be punishment by the earth for our misbehavior. It is not like a prison sentence because we don’t get out; we get extinguished. For crimes we insist on guilty intentions and only a few would be punished. But earth does not make that kind of discrimination. We are all punished, with extinction, regardless of our intentions. Men, women, and children, in every continent and country, will be punished. The punishment earth is inflicting on humanity can be avoided only by fighting back, fighting all the processes producing climate change, replacing all the systems, structures, habits and behaviors that are producing the problem, with better environmentally friendly processes.
Does that sound too hard? That’s why I spoke recently about a war against climate change – no effort is too great in war. We are at war and have to fight this enemy in every way.
Does my characterization sound misplaced because the earth is not some form of global police force? I am trying to describe the effect of natural processes that are observable and that follow well-known natural rules. Calling it punishment is certainly using an anthropomorphic term. I claim no conscious decision though our religious scriptures repeatedly describe God as punishing humanity. I am trying to put this in a completely ecumenical way so that nothing depends on which religious tradition you do or don’t follow. But the effect on us is not less without conscious decision. If it were a deity’s conscious decision, we could bargain or try to appease it. But we can’t bargain with the rules of nature – rules imposed in the creation of the world, rules that scientists have spent their lives studying and describing. We can only respond according to the rules of nature and of nature’s God. We can’t reduce flooding by spitting the water back. We can only deal with these tragedies, which I’ve described as of biblical proportions, by following the rules of God or nature and stopping those things that trigger the natural processes leading to the extinction of humanity and life on earth. If we do not, we will baking at unimaginable temperatures and as lifeless as all the other planets we have been able to investigate.
Do we have the will to fight back? Do we have the willingness to obey? Or are we doomed like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah?
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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