Month: May 2019

The Road Must Travelled

I drew up this diagram back in 2016, when I was pondering the Presidential race in the backdrop of the growing Ecological Crisis (but I edited it to replace “Clinton” with “Gradualist” (which is the kind of Democrat who doesn’t really believe in a Green New Deal level approach): A key for my terrible scribbling as I “drew” this up:Starting Continue Reading

Facing our future with a dose of cold hard reality

“The planet on which our civilization evolved no longer exists. The stability that produced that civilization has vanished; epic changes have begun. We may, with commitment and luck, yet be able to maintain a planet that will sustain some kind of civilization, but it won’t be the same planet, and hence it can’t be the same civilization. The earth that Continue Reading

Global warming may be twice as bad as previously expected

This was posted to a blog 10 years ago, and I ran across it in McKibben’s Eaarth ( footnote 69, p. 27) , which I am re-reading. Couldn’t find it anywhere else (even on USA Today website). https://environmentalsupport.blogspot.com/2009/06/global-warming-may-be-twice-as-bad-as.html Global warming may be twice as bad as previously expected Global warming will be twice as severe as previous estimates indicate, according Continue Reading

Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben on “Falter”

Speaking of “Holy Conversation”: Here is one of the variety that we in the church need to have in a theological context. It was Naomi Klein’s 2014 book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate”, that launched me into a mission/calling from which I have not turned back (and won’t be for the duration). I went straight from reading this Continue Reading

Learning an “Eco Lingo”; how do we become fluent in EcoTheology?

For almost 5 years, I’ve noticed a distinct lack of “comfort” in being able to respond to news such as the Ecological Crisis. The list of other issues that Progressives are very willing to discuss (and I am also), racism, immigration, abortion, Islamaphobia, War and Peace, The Christian Right’s capitulation to the American Empire…all of these things are undoubtedly urgent Continue Reading

Watching our language in reference to the Ecological Crisis

My friend Tim Gossett tagged me yesterday re: an article in the Guardian on “language usage about the environment”with this:“You have some new phases to add to your vocabulary, Dale Lature “ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment I replied, which resulted in several comments , which I will post this morning as comments (as often happens in comments as people interact with me on Continue Reading

The ecological crisis “time limit”

More on my thoughts about the “soft denial” that permeates a lot of “Progressive/Liberal” thinking re: the Ecological Crisis. This quote from McKibben has a lot to say to illuminate my sense of how inadequate are all of our accustomed-to political language.  “The question of time is the question that haunts me. I remain optimistic enough to think that in Continue Reading

The “soft denial” argument

The typical “soft denial” argument: “You do know nothing gets accomplished in politics without compromise? What’s more important: your ideology, or actually doing something?” Me: Ecology doesn’t run on polls; it doesn’t “take into account” what we think. It merely deals with the balances or lack of it. We need to face up to that, and “adapt” (which means to Continue Reading

Drawdown Conference , Fayetteville , AR , April 27, 2019