Hilton Head Island, SC – October 1, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Genesis 1:26-31; Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-5
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:5 (RSV)
For all the years I have been preaching, I have had my sermon themes planned ahead for at least two or more months at a time. Because that is the case, had I known all that was coming, I would have called this sermon Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, Climate Change, and Flood Insurance. This has been the worst year in history for Atlantic hurricanes, and it isn’t even over yet. Incidentally, if you think “Flood Insurance” was thrown in just for laughs, it is the most alarming part of this sermon for people living on a fragile barrier island on the coast of South Carolina.
Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi River delta coast and flooded New Orleans in 2005. It arguably caused the greatest amount of damage of any hurricane ever to strike the US mainland, because of its enormous assault on one major city. New Orleans lost close to half its population because of Katrina. That is a colossal loss in every respect. Will it happen to Puerto Rico?
In 2017, Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which landed on American shores within a single month of one another, were the next three most-damaging cyclones in our nation’s history. The storm called Sandy was not even technically a hurricane when it pummeled New Jersey and New York City November 27, 2012, causing billions of dollars of damage by its powerful winds and widespread flooding. It is important to note that the five most devastating storms in American history all occurred between 2005 and 2017, and three of them happened in this year alone.
Climatologists are agreed on two primary factors about why this trend is happening. Statistics indicate that the world is getting warmer. When that happens, they say, there will be more Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes, because the water is warmer over which the storms move. Secondly, as the air temperature above the ocean rises, the clouds are able to absorb more water vapor. That means more rain falls as a result of the storms, which means that flooding is greater.
In the past, this overall trend was described as “global warming.” The problem with that term is that there are parts of the world that are getting cooler, while most of it is getting warmer. That reality is easy to quantify numerically. And of course some years are warmer than others, and some are therefore cooler than others. But the present trend unquestionably is toward warmer.
Currently, the preferred term has become “climate change.” There is no doubt that the world is experiencing climate change. There are factors for denying that, but none of them is valid. Reams of statistics will confirm it. But haven’t there been periods of climate change before? Yes, there have. The world climate has gone back and forth between warmer and colder far longer than there have been humans living in the world.
However, records indicate there has never been a warming trend such as the one that has been transpiring since the Industrial Revolution. The primary reason for that is the rapidly increasing percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. That makes the air get warmer. And that causes ice on the two polar caps to melt faster. When that happens, methane gas trapped in the ground beneath the ice and snow is released, and it rises into the atmosphere. Air temperatures in the two polar regions are rising much faster than in the temperate or tropical climates. In fact, there may be more damage to the atmosphere caused by the natural release of methane than by the man-made production of carbon dioxide.
But why is the polar ice melting so relatively quickly? To repeat, that is because of the increase of carbon dioxide in the air. And humans are responsible for most of the CO2 there.
By now you are probably asking yourself how any of this can or should possibly be included in a sermon in a service of worship. And if you aren’t asking yourself that, you should be.
Here, therefore, is the answer. According to the Genesis creation story, and according to many other passages in the Bible, God created the human race to be the primary stewards of the earth and its resources. Animals, plants, fish and other organisms living on the land and in the seas, lakes, and rivers also instinctively do their part in maintaining the balance of nature. Nevertheless, God intended human beings to be the main caretakers of God’s earthly creation.
For reasons known only to Him, God chose not to be the earth’s caretaker. He does nothing directly to sustain life on our planet. He created the resources necessary to keep the earth operating in perpetuity, but God works only indirectly, through us, to keep things humming. And we have seriously begun to fall short in our responsibilities as the world’s stewards.
Chapters 1 through 3 of Genesis were never intended by the writer or writers to be perceived as an historical account of how Planet Earth came to exist. It is a story, a myth, a theological explanation; it is not hi-story. It is a way of setting down in writing what ultimately is unknown and inexplicable. Still, we want to try to understand it if we can.
According to the story, God made the whole universe and the earth itself, with the oceans and the dry land. Then He created all the creatures. Lastly, God created humanity. God told us, says Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
But in order to have dominion over nature, we have to respect nature. We can’t continually degrade the only environment we shall ever have. That is like a spider tearing down its web and being unable to weave another web. We can’t fool Mother Nature. She won’t put up with it.
When there were not nearly so many humans, we did fairly well as God’s earthly stewards. Now there are over seven billion of us, and the multitudes are seriously damaging the earth. Climate change is one of the major illustrations of our stewardship-deficiency. It is quite possible we are killing the planet, although obviously that is the last thing we ever intended to do.
Chapter 3 in the Genesis creation story gives a mythological explanation of how humanity started to go wrong. We were told, Genesis tells us, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that is the very first thing Genesis says we did; we ate the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve had not done a single thing until they did the one thing they were told not to do.
If you start to get a big head, either about yourself or about the human race, think about that. It isn’t meant to be taken historically, but mythologically, theologically, it says we have the capacity to be the stewards of the earth God wants us to be, but we also have the freedom severely to botch our primary job. Is that what we doing? Have we become a race of botchers?
Since 1980 there has been a steady rise in natural disasters caused by weather (wind), floods due to storms, landslides, and forest fires, and climate change (extreme temperature rises, droughts, and forest fires). Collectively, those kinds of natural disasters are three times worse now than forty years ago. Furthermore, in the same period, there have been more than four times as many catastrophic precipitation events which caused severe flooding throughout the world. That is because the atmosphere is warmer, which means the clouds can hold more water vapor, which means that when it rains, it rains harder than since humans have been on the earth, etc.
Are we concerned about this? Many are, and many apparently are not. Those who are not say that there have always been up-and-down trends in the climate. No doubt that is correct. But like this? Like THIS? Nobody knows it for sure. But what we do know for sure is that it hasn’t been like this in recorded history, or else somebody would have recorded it. Localized disasters have been recorded, by the droves, but no one ever suggested that the earth itself was threatened with disaster the way that claim is being made now.
The word “conscience” comes from two Latin words, which mean “knowing with, or knowing together.” Conscience thus is not really formed within us, but is something formed by knowing something outside us that we yoke with what is inside us. Conscience isn’t a little inner voice. It is knowledge from without that tells us what we ought to do.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Cowardice ask the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right?”
Conscience should prevent us from foolishly continuing to question whether climate change is real. It is. To deny it is ideological obduracy. Whether the climate change we are now experiencing is worse than at any other periods of geological history we may never know. But it is real now, and now is the only time we will be alive in the world as the world’s caretakers.
NASA has declared that last year was the third year in a row to set the record for the highest global average surface temperature. The ten years of the greatest loss of sea ice are all in the past decade. Houston has been inundated by three “500-year-floods” in the last three years.
Allowing a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords is like diving off the only ship that is still visible on the surface of the ocean, but that is what Congress has meekly accepted. Will we survive? I don’t know. No one knows, or can know. But if we don’t do something big, and soon, a viable planet may not survive. We can no longer continue moving the deck chairs on the Titanic, thinking t something big is happening. It isn’t. All of us must act, or all action will be withdrawn from us. Political action, coupled with voluntary actions, is the solution.
And that brings us to flood insurance. Here is where Hilton Head Island, South Carolina is at Ground Zero of climate change. Tens of millions Americans live within a few miles of the ocean. Several million of them live on land that is only a few feet above sea level. Everyone living on Hilton Head Island is among that latter group. In fifty or a hundred years, Hilton Head Island may no longer be habitable because of the rising level of the ocean.
So what happens in the meantime? Very soon Congress is mandated to approve new national flood insurance rates and regulations. Congress is loath to raise the rates on anything, and more than half the members of Congress absolutely detest regulations regulating anything. But for the fiscal health of the USA, Congress needs greatly to raise the cost of flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program. It is completely unfair that people who live in areas which never flood should subsidize people whose property is occasionally or frequently damaged by floods from hurricanes or periodic ordinary deluges. To state this another way, for fairness everyone here should be paying very high flood insurance rates. That includes people whose homes shall never be flooded, because we live in multistory condominium retirement homes.
The flood insurance rates of businesses along the coasts should rise the least, because they provide jobs for people who must live along the coasts, and the country needs to have ports. It also likes resorts. Flood insurance rates for workers who must labor in the businesses along the coasts should be less costly than for everyone else, and that is a nightmare, because how do you administer such a complex situation? I am referring to many large issues very quickly, because I don’t have much time here, so you must listen carefully to follow what I am attempting to say.
Eventually the only non-working people who will be able to live along our coasts will be extremely wealthy people, who are self-insured. Because they are very wealthy, whenever a hurricane blows their houses away or floods them beyond repair, they will build another house. The rest of us, people like you and I, will not be able to afford to live on the coast. That’s okay, because most of us live here by choice, not by occupational necessity. Most of us moved here when climate change wasn’t a widely understood issue, but now it is. And now countless Puerto Ricans will be wanting to move here, and then what? They can’t be kept out; they’re Americans.
The National Association of Realtors would be incensed by this sermon. They want to do everything to keep the government subsidizing people like us to live along the American coasts.
That is understandable, but it is not sustainable. The coasts must be cleared of many millions of Americans. But where shall we go? And when? And how? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know this: it is unjust for all Americans to keep underwriting the costs of coastal Americans to continue to inhabit the coasts. The Houston area is home to six or seven million people. Many of them should leave. But it won’t happen soon, if ever. Then what?
Real estate values along our coasts shall soon begin to fall, perhaps precipitously. It is in your interest to keep that in mind. The cost of flood insurance will be a major factor in that decline. So will the increasing number of inevitable high-force hurricanes. Laws may be changed to prevent people from moving to the coast. It may be the only just way to prevent coastal overbuilding.
Progress IS being made. The Environmental Eschaton Clock is slowly slowing. If Barack Obama gets his way, by 2040 all cars will be electric, and that’s good. Then, much less carbon dioxide will be in the air. The Paris Accord is still being observed, but probably not in the USA.
Human beings are very smart, and very resilient, and we have always managed to muddle through in the past. We can still do that in the future, but all of us must become far, far more intentional citizens and voters. Have fewer children. Turn out all unnecessary lights. Recycle. Drive less. Buy less. Think more, do less. God surely wants us to lower our standard of living, but He won’t force us to do it. Only we can accomplish that. However, we need to do it quickly.
A New Yorker cartoon. God is speaking to an angel way above the earth. There are nuclear explosions all over the earth. God says to the angel, with a sober grimace on His face, “Pretty good. The ending was a bit predictable.” It could end that way, or it could end with a world no longer able to sustain itself because humans destroyed the earthly environment. But it doesn’t have to end in either manner. It doesn’t have to end at all. It is up to us. God is watching.
In the beginning, the sneaky serpent says to Adam and Eve, “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat (the forbidden fruit) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So we ate, and we know. And now what?