Month: March 2019

‘The need to keep the wheels of capitalism well-oiled takes precedence even against a backdrop of fires, floods and hurricanes.’ Photograph: Fire & Rescue NSW/AFP/Getty Images

Incompatible

“Climate change is the result of our current economic and industrial system. GND-style proposals marry sweeping environmental policy changes with broader socialist reforms because the level of disruption required to keep us at a temperature anywhere below “absolutely catastrophic” is fundamentally, on a deep structural level, incompatible with the status quo.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending-climate-change-end-capitalism Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Continue Reading

Taking it all in

I want to reiterate again how important I think David Wallace-Wells’ latest book “The Uninhabitable Earth” is. It should be read by everyone. It’s best value is in how extensive it is in laying it all out there for us: the intricate, interconnected flow of ecological life, and how this has supported human life for tens of thousands of years Continue Reading

Prayer and gnostic fallacy

Of course they did. To challenge the idea that “praying” somehow “absolves” one from actual action is going to get push-back from those who wish to, in effect, live “religiously vicariously” rather than upset any patterns of living. It’s one of those social consequences of the “Gnostic” fallacy that our “religious life” is a private, “internal” matter; and that our Continue Reading

The real nightmare is worse than “economic”

“Not only do we believe this is unrealistic, we fear it could permanently put the American dream out of reach from millions of Americans,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), ” https://buff.ly/2Y1SGqG NO, it’s to avoid as much nightmare as possible. MoveOn had this to say about this on their share of this article: “If he wants to talk about genocide, let’s talk Continue Reading

Churches failing to help us process Eco-crisis

Finished David Wallace-Wells’ book “The Uninhabitable Earth”. It’s something everyone should read, if only to get exposed to the myriad of interlocking problems we face, and the problem of our avoiding the problem. Wallace-Wells does this quite well, although I found myself disagreeing fairly strongly with a few of his comments (not many, but there were a few). I do Continue Reading

Ecological crisis and income inequality

Income inequality and the Ecological Crisis go hand in hand it seems. The powerful are so drunk that they fail the reality test. My earlier years 2011-2014 as occupytheology.org (domain is still active, ends up here) lead logically to ecoecclesia.org “In 2017, the same year the United States pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the country also approved a $2.3 trillion tax cut—primarily Continue Reading

The deeper recession

A brief but still scary enough summary of the previous much longer quote: “most of the time we measure economic fluctuations in ticks of decimal points—2.9 this year, 2.7 that. What climate change proposes is an economic setback of an entirely different category.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 118). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

Count the true costs

Scary to ponder, and yet another blow to what is perhaps the most common denier argument against full-scale (or much of any) transition to renewables and other ecological reversals and transitions we must correct: which is, “it will cost too much” and “wreck the economy” and “hurt the poor”. Consider the costs if we stick close to the status quo: Continue Reading

Capitalism and the path of carbon emissions

On “Capitalism has lifted people out of poverty”: “In 2018, the World Bank estimated that the current path of carbon emissions would sharply diminish the living conditions of 800 million living throughout South Asia. One hundred million, they say, will be dragged into extreme poverty by climate change just over the next decade. Perhaps “back into” is more appropriate: many Continue Reading

On “Alarmism”

One of the most frequent push-backs I get from Christians is that I need to be more “positive and hopeful”; to suggest more things that individuals can do. ( I got this from a denominational news person when I was suggesting that they cover an upcoming local Earth Care conference hosted by a large church of their denomination. They implied Continue Reading

Overshoot via hubris

Somehow, we as a church need to find our way through to the recognition of how this crisis has unfolded through a long, but even more so more recent history of human trespassing of limits, through hubris and pride. This takes us back, theologically and existentially, to “the fall”, to the eating of the fruit of the tree of the Continue Reading

Considering our footprint’s effect on the mortality of others

Ash Wednesday lifts up “mortality” for reflection. It is an ironic theological twist to consider how a relatively small portion of humanity is hastening the day of mortality for the rest of the world (and , eventually, our own or our children/grandchildren). I don’t think the rest of the world appreciates our lifestyle that essentially tells **them** “we all gotta Continue Reading