Edwin Salter examines why we find it so difficult to deal with climate change and suggests things we should do.
Originator of our planet and its life, the Sun is the great god among many explanatory spirits of nature and weather. The pairing with the enigmatic Moon is often masculine-feminine, stereotyped even in sound: Ra-Yah, Helios-Selene. Thus we personify and attribute, assert or project, at worst dividing others into the strong and right, the loony and worthless.
Virtually all living things are sustained by the productive solar photosynthesis of plants. The cycle of day and night fixes our rhythms as dawn greets and sunset farewells; and theology makes much of light. Perhaps it should not be surprising that the Sun also directs how the challenge of global warming may be met. My purpose here is to attempt some connections of practicality with how we think in religious and moral terms, and to suggest why rational response is so difficult.
We humans developed in small groups amidst nature that, unsurprisingly, we therefore find beautiful. We adapted to resources and perils, immediate and obvious, and it is misleading to ignore these familiar adjustments, for example the cognitive biases, that arguably explain supernatural thinking, affect decision making and mislead us in a digital world. Language, especially writing, extended awareness over time and space, allowing also the endurance of ancient authority of suspect relevance. Now we are constantly swamped by intrusions from afar and by news selected as strange and dangerous. Against remote threats, the individual flight or fight response is irrelevant and, frustrated, we endure an epidemic (as the World Health Organisation asserts) of stress.
Our so troubling consciousness of mortality has made eternities of heaven or hell very effective controls over society, behaviour approved or condemned by the institutions of religion. If there is no other sure grounding for self-worth, we may fall back on faith identity and such givens of birth as race, sex and nation.
Impatience and evangelism have often predicted the end of times with opposition destroyed and those in the right (‘us’, however minuscule in the history of contradictory faiths) validated and rewarded. The Great Disappointment of 1844 merely shifted expectations, and these currently regain impetus. We have, far better than comets, climate signs unmistakably warning of an apocalyptic resolution.
Human institutions seek to prosper, so witness and evangelism come along with faith, together with the multiplication of children and control of their upbringing. Complementary is the suppression of doubt, the chief danger an awareness of alternative beliefs and explanations, the chief sin abandoning the faith. In about a dozen countries apostasy and atheism are capital offences, and in many places the wrong beliefs, even if held privately, bring harm. When faced with a change utterly unfamiliar to us – living memory of climate has seemed consistent for almost all generations of our kind – rigid convictions disable our interpretation and response.
The notion of dominion justifies an exploitation of nature, taking from Genesis that Adam, created from earth, became by disobedience alienated from Earth. It is interesting to distinguish harmonious belonging with from dubious (benevolent or abusive) belonging to, for example in Milton's account of Christianity's great banishments, first of th'infernal Serpent and then of our Grand Parents. But if some blame sinners and seek their own righteous salvation, many accept the obligation of stewardship that improves the one life in one world which we all share, and Christian examples occur at all levels (the Pope in 2015, my local climate group Anglican-led and Quakers campaigning).
If, accepting the evidence, the British incline to join in blaming others, it is salutary to remember that we led both the Industrial Revolution burning of carbon and the population explosion of child survival (Victoria’s 9 children). Globally, over 200 years both individual energy use and population have increased about five times.
A morally disturbing side-effect of all this human activity is the pace with which ecosystems and other species – diversity also of much practical value – are being eliminated as we risk adding to the five great extinctions known to geology. It is also a fair complaint that scientific purism can ignore needs or disregard consequences (seeking extended lifespan), and that fear of seeming alarmist has muted warnings despite clear evidence since the 1980s. A celebration of money through consumption and display is much to blame, though in principle most faiths condemn these as self-exalting. And the violent greed for oil has obviously inflicted huge ruin and regression, as has the profitable exploitation of addictions (the unnaturalness of junk food, computer interactions, drugs).
Part of the solution to the environmental problem is therefore simplicity, modesty and restraint. To achieve a circular economy that wastes nothing is a moral aim, and there is also delight in the clever efficiency of much from little. We could cease the extinction of species and the ruin of rare and beautiful places, end the many damages to our own immediate environments. Unfortunately, even being all ideal citizens who accept population restraint and exemplify the frugal is now insufficient to save us. The existing greenhouse blanket of inescapable water vapour and of carbon dioxide, will continue its effect. To remove the excess of stable carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a task of incredible magnitude beyond this century. The accumulated heat storage in the dark oceans will melt much shiny ice that well reflects away solar radiation, and further feedbacks such as forest fires, sea level rise and methane release will drive both overall temperature and unpredictable extremes.
The Sun's heat comes from fusion. The high energy collisions of hydrogen produce larger atoms of helium: a tiny amount of mass is lost, which translates into a very large amount of energy (Einstein's famous E = mc² where c, the speed of light, is very large). Much research has not yet recreated this process to yield energy for us, but if it can be achieved it could meet that need almost entirely. Meanwhile we must pursue the many ample renewables, from sunlight itself to the sun-driven winds and tides, energy that can be widely distributed as electricity.
To prevent the rise of global temperatures towards an irreversible tip into catastrophe I believe we now need a sunshade, a way to increase the proportion (albedo) of sunlight reflected back into space. Even a small reduction in the overall gain by solar radiation would stabilise. Our Christmassy images recall a clue from 1815 when a volcanic dust cloud caused several cool years, perhaps contributing to the snow experienced by young Dickens and immortalised in his writings. It is probable that a similar effect led toward our species when a great impact (likely an asteroid 65 million years ago) redirected evolution to promote mammals.
The dispersion of sunlight out in space (where pulls of gravity balance) has been proposed.
More plausibly, we could rocket a haze of particles into the high atmosphere. We might increase the reflectiveness of clouds by boats seeding fine droplets. At surface level we could add white and shiny wherever possible, by urban planning, ocean rafts … especially in daytime and as insulation for the so vital ice whose melt exposes dark surfaces.
Perhaps many people need a personal sense of alarm to recognise the fearful acceleration of change through feedback processes that multiply both environmental problems, from drought to inundation, and human responses, from migration to war. We simply lack adequate global institutions to share fairly the burden of change, but the huge efforts of the World Wars and the great pace of technical change exemplify what can be done. And, properly informed, the natural cooperation of many can defeat the shameless selfishness and disinformation generated by an over-privileged few.
History provides a moral warning. The European invasion of the Americas brought death to most of the indigenous population by incidental disease and subjugation as inferior. The abandoned agricultural land then reforested naturally, a locking away of carbon that is a likely cause of the ‘Little Ice Age’ around 1500 when temperatures in Europe dropped about one degree.
Action brings its own uncertainty and initial expense, though we must compare that with the world’s vast military expenditure and the grotesque burgeoning of wealth for a tiny elite.
Money spent now will certainly be far less painful than the ruin and violence likely if panic sets in.
Astronomy’s placing of the Sun at the centre of the solar system was hugely dismaying to a Christian faith guaranteed by God’s focus upon ourselves; and later observation of spots on the symmetrical solar disc destroyed the notion of perfect creation. We again find ourselves in dialogue with the great originator and regulator of life. There are safety criteria – that interventions be gradual, measurable and reversible – to give control and assurance. Best of all, the changes necessary to reverse our disastrous exploitation of the world would actually bring many improvements to human and natural life.
Saving the world we belong with is surely to be hoped for as our greatest achievement. It is a task of mythic dimension.
Dr Edwin Alan Salter has had unduly assorted work, adding climate and humanism as enduring concerns.