So, I just traversed hundreds of comments, in a Facebook group devoted to “Doctrinal Discussion for all who are unafraid”, on a post asking “Will the Bible be Banned?” Meanwhile, I’ve had exactly two comments about the Nova Episode (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/decoding-weather-machine.html) that aired last week on Climate Change, and the history of the Science that is shouting to us about a Real and Present Danger (unlike Bible banning).
The irony here is that the very people who MOST NEED to see this are those people who have decided that NOTHING will dissuade them from denying that this is a real problem. So , I realize that the suggestion to watch a 2 hour Science documentary is not going to be popular.
But, I can attest, that this is an actual, documented, widely known problem in the Climate Science community. And the problem is such a threat to the fossil fuel industry that they spend millions and perhaps billions funding various outlets of disinformation. Both Exxon and Shell have been exposed doing just that, even after knowing for 30+ years that their product is responsible for a dangerously high concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere. It has been found that the concentrations have not been as high as they are now in at least 800,000 years, before human civilizations began.
But don’t take MY word for it. YOU REALLY DO owe it to yourself to watch this episode. It contains information that the world sorely needs to being taking as seriously as the portended consequences according to the scientists who uncovered this information, through decades of painstaking measurement, research, and peer review.
As you all know, I have maintained here that this information is more than enough for us to begin to take serious theological stock in the kind of theology that has enabled us to get here, where human civilization is in the process of rendering human civilization increasingly less habitable. And this problem REALLY DOES pose a larger threat than ANYTHING else we face.
Economic , racial, theological differences are all, of course , important and people have been working on these tirelessly for centuries. But all of those problems had the “luxury” of time. Humanity has confronted them, and had successes and failures, the latter of which has tragically cost lives. But humanity, in many cases driven by a vision of The Kingdom of God, and that a “Better world is possible”, has won justice (and , tragically, also, has seen ebbs and flows as various reactionary movements chip away at hard fought gains).
But there is a REAL limit to the time we have to work on this problem before it really is too late to stop it. This renders this problem of particular and unprecedented significance and moral weight.
Two hours pales in significance to the unprecedented nature of this threat, and also in comparison to the amount of time we will be spending battling the effects that are now sure to come (and have already begun). Even those who believe we have an ecological crisis on our hands and have read the science and heard the warnings, will benefit from this very well done, accessible documentary, backed by the best in Climate Science available. YOU OWE IT YOURSELF , and , effectively, to all of the rest of life, since this problem needs YOU; we need *all hands on deck*.
And for this group, we desperately need this information to inform our theological task. What the churches do now, and the decades ahead, to address this will have a huge impact on our ministry to the age of the Anthropocene.
