Have faiths contributed to climate change, if so what actions
should we take?
From the “Science of the Discworld” of the late Sir Terry Pratchett, comes the
concept that we are pans narrans, the storytelling ape,
rather than the boastful homo sapiens or supposedly wise
man. We seem to have this primeval urge from our
earliest days to try to explain all we see around us and
incorporate even the most random of events into a story
or narrative. This equally lies at the centre of our faiths
and their texts and in our modern science and technology
which seek constantly to devise ever more theories to
explain life, the universe and everything.
The Judaic faiths are exhorted to have dominion over the
earth yet to exert stewardship. We are also enjoined to go forth and multiply.
We have now become the dominant species on our planet, with our livestock
and crops occupying, 6 of the 7 continents and now modifying the oceans and
the atmosphere. Developing from mainly hunter gathers to modern agriculture
and industry in a little over 10,000 years.
Yet climate change has been a feature of our planet since its creation. It is
embedded in the tilt, wobble and orbits of the earth and the moon around the
sun. Life itself has been changing the planet since it emerged, for example
bacteria and plants being responsible for producing all the oxygen that we
breathe.
Asteroids, volcanoes and other cataclysmic events have periodically shaped
the earth and redirected life into entirely new directions and expressions.
These events define the geological epochs and are etched into the strata of
the rocks, forming distinct and very different layers. One of the most recent
theories put forward is that our dominance is such that we have now started a
new epoch to be called the “Anthropocene”.
When this commenced, is subject to intense debate and how its boundary will
be marked in the rocks. Will it be a thin layer of radioactivity from the nuclear
testing after WW2 or the increasing CO2 signature from the Industrial
Revolution? No it is much more likely to be far earlier, a layer of ash and
stones, back to the time when we discovered fire and weapons. Even in small
numbers of tribes, we then became able to dominate the world, by killing the
megafauna or giant animals and reducing the unbroken swathe of forests by
setting fires.
It is now our prodigious consumption of the Earth’s resources, not just oil, gas
and coal for fuel, but the other elements and the produce of the land and sea
that we need for our population of over 7 billion and their escalating demand,
which has become increasingly unsustainable, leading to projections of a
series of crises.
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