Hilton Head Island, SC – October 2, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Hosea 4:1-6; Genesis 1:26-31
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was morning and there was evening, a sixth day. Genesis 1:31 (RSV)
(Introductory Note: How ironically apropos it is that this sermon was planned months ago for this date, when two days ago Hurricane Ian passed close to Hilton Head Island.)
The word “anthropogenic” is a scientific word. It means “human-generated.” Therefore what is being implied by this bleak sermon title is that human beings will destroy nearly all the life of all the plants, animals, and people on earth. We are the primary cause of the current climate-change crisis. If we keep doing what we have been doing, we may succeed in destroying everything, so that Planet Earth will become like all the other planets in our solar system, with no life at all.
With that dour introduction to a dire theme, let us proceed to the content of this unhappy homily. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which started in the early eighteenth century, the average yearly temperature of the Earth has risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. It cannot go any higher than 3.6 degrees, the scientists say, or worldwide catastrophe will follow.
Frist, it needs to be said that we are making progress to avoid this calamity. Some of the most highly developed nations (who thus also are among the highest producers of carbon dioxide) are scaling back their bad habits. Newer automobiles and trucks get better gas mileage, and electric cars emit no carbon dioxide at all. California, always the leading state in combatting climate change, has decreed that by 2030 all new vehicles sold in the Golden State must be electric. Far more solar and wind power is being generated now than was thought possible even a few years ago, because the cost of solar panels and wind turbines for renewable energy has come down so dramatically.
Nevertheless, the climate keeps changing for the worse. On Hilton Head Island, we have minimally experienced that personally in the last three days. Although the hurricane season in the USA was surprisingly calm until now, Ian made up for it in one enormous assault. We were not badly affected here, but watching the news clips on Thursday and Friday, it is obvious that the damage in Florida will be in the tens of billions of dollars. There is no way that insurance will be able to cover all the financial losses, and everyone’s insurance rates will go up to cover the costs of future losses. For hundreds of thousands of Floridians, life will never again be the same, and we who live on the South Carolina coast may also discover that to our sorrow at some point. A cartoon in last week’s New Yorker shows a man standing with his young son on the deck of his beach house, looking across the dunes to the ocean. He says, “Someday, son, this will all be yours --- and underwater.”
Moreover, the world needs yet more food every year, and warmer and drier climates are taking away the ability of the land to produce enough food. The world needs more electricity each year than it needed the year before, and so the old means of generating power ---fossil fuels --- are required to meet the shortfall. World population continues to rise, but at a slower rate, so more carbon dioxide is rising into the atmosphere, which raises temperatures, which causes the ice caps in the far northern and southern hemispheres to melt faster, which causes the sea level to rise, which causes floods, and bigger hurricanes, etc., etc. etc. Some things are improving, but not fast enough. If everyone around the world had started to take the steps twenty or forty years ago that we are taking now, the future might not appear to be so bleak. But we didn’t, so it is what it is.
What can you and I do to make our infinitesimally tiny contribution to slow climate change? We can buy electric cars, we can drive fewer miles in our internal combustion cars, we can ride bicycles to get around (although people our age should not consider that option), we can turn the thermostat up in summer and down in winter, we can pay thousands of dollars to better insulate our homes if we haven’t already done that, and we can recycle everything that is recyclable.
Most of us, however, are going to do few if any of those things, and here, in a nutshell, is why we won’t; we conclude that unless everyone does all of those things, almost no one will do any of those things. So what difference does it make if we do our infinitesimally tiny bit to save the world? It would only come to a halt an infinitesimally tiny fraction of a second later if we did everything we could. So, we tell ourselves, why bother?
The first two chapters of Genesis are among the most important passages of the entire Bible. They are a theological explanation for what God intended when He created the world, and what is the significance of humanity in the great scheme of things. The creation story isn’t based on science; it is based on theology, which literally means “the study of God.” What did God have in mind when He created ever-expanding space: the heavens, the stars and planets and moons, and Planet Earth, and the seas and dry land, and all the animals, plants, fish, and so on, including humanity? What was, and is, His plan?
Genesis is not cosmology or geology or history. It is a story, an earthly story, and it should not be taken literally, although the story is a fairly accurate description of how the universe actually was created. It didn’t take six days; it took seventeen and a half billion years. In the case of the Earth, we started our story of creation four and a half billion years ago, but the sequence Genesis suggests is surprisingly accurate, for the most part.
As far as humans are concerned, though, Genesis said that God said we were to be fruitful and multiply. We have succeeded in that, big time. There are seven and a half billion humans living on this planet. If there were half that many, or even three-quarters, for another century or two, climate change wouldn’t be the World’s Number One Issue. However, far too many of the seven and a half billion don’t think it’s Issue No. 1 right now. They’re just trying to live their lives as best they can, and many of them are too stressed or hungry or poor to think about anything else. Mother Nature is resilient, but we may have pushed her beyond her limit to repair our damage.
Furthermore, said Genesis, we were to fill the earth and subdue it. It’s the subduing part where we have really failed. Because there are too many of us, we have upset too many natural processes. Nature has done its best to keep the Earth orderly, but humans have disturbed the natural balance. Ultimately, anthropogenic climate change is why we’re in the fix we’re in. We did this, you and I, individually, and all of us together.
Why would we do such a foolish thing? It is because humans are more me-centered than we are us-centered. Self-centered life is a particular tendency of Americans. We think too much about what’s good for each American and for America, and too little about what’s good for the world. Jews are better than Christians in thinking about the benefit of everyone, but too many of us are too self-centered for the wellbeing of the planet. Presumably we are the most advanced species on Earth, at least according to Genesis. Still, we leave a lot to be desired. As the top species, we have made too many “subduing” mistakes, and we must ask ourselves, is it too late to repair our misjudgments? God created millions of solar systems and planets before and after He made our solar system, and presumably He will continue His space-expansion, maybe forever. But for our little terrestrial ball, with the only inhabitable planet in our small collection of eight planets (which used to be nine, until astronomers recently yanked Pluto out of the lineup), we may be turning the world into an enormous handful of cosmic dust.
Most corporations are also unwilling to diminish their carbon footprint. Their bottom line is always about getting the highest dividends possible for the stockholders, and it costs money, lots of money, to take the measures necessary to mitigate their environment-wounding procedures. The best way to force them to cooperate is for governments to pass laws that require their adherence. Courtesy of the US Supreme Court Citizens United decision several years ago, though, corporations can contribute unlimited funds to politicians’ campaigns and pay high salaries to their lobbyists to get government to do what they want done, so little or nothing gets done that slows climate change.
In the middle of the eighth century BCE, the prophet Hosea was concerned about human despoliation of the earth, but from a very different perspective. He declared that God had a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, meaning the land of Israel. Things were falling apart, and it was happening, said Hosea, because there was no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land. Too many people were sinning too much, he said. “Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, and even the fish of the sea are taken away” (4:3). (Think of how many millions of fish have been killed in the Baltic Sea because Vladimir Putin ordered the natural gas pipelines to Germany to be blown up.)
When God finished creating everything on Earth, He saw that it was all good, but humanity had spoiled it, according to Hosea, and so the land, the soil, the earth, mourned. And that’s what the Earth is doing now; it is in mourning, because it can no longer produce what it once did, and it knows it is dying.
This month’s National Geographic had an article about ice caves in the Alps. These limestone and dolomite caves have had water seeping into them for at least ten thousand years, but now the ice is melting. In some caves all the ice is gone. Another Geographic article years ago said that in fifty years there will be no more glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana.
Every year thousands of animal and plant species become extinct. There aren’t enough bees to do their pollinating. We, or other bee enemies, have killed them off. We read about rhinoceroses being shot into extinction, but thousands of insect species in the Amazon no one ever knew about are also disappearing every year. Millions of Amazonian trees are being cut down at the order or a Brazilian president who has no regard for the future and only for his own re-election, which he is already saying will be a fixed election if he loses the election today. He takes his cue from another president in another country. The little Amazonian bugs are crucial to keeping the balance of nature in the Amazon forest going, but there won’t be a forest if it continues to be cut down to create apace for huge cattle ranches, that create huge amounts of methane, and the Amazon rainforest is the largest natural manufacturer of oxygen on the globe.
Individuals can do a little to prevent further climate change, but governments are the main means of stemming the tide of destruction that is becoming ever more evident with each passing year. The problem is that politicians in democracies are more interested in getting re-elected than in passing the laws to raise the taxes to pay for the changes that need to be made to slow or halt anthropogenic climate change. Too few politicians try to convince their constituents that climate change must be halted now. Were it to happen, however, it would mean a lower standard of living for citizens, and politicians believe they can’t risk that, even though they can’t afford not to risk it. Politicians in autocracies are dictators, and almost no dictators are benevolent dictators; they have always been in very short supply. They don’t care what the future holds; they are interested only in the present, and how much they can enrich themselves, or how much they can help their fellow plutocrats to get rich and keep them in office. It is a depressing picture; it really is.
Trillions upon trillions of dollars must be spent in the next couple of decades to take the necessary steps to slow and then reverse climate change, but national leaders fear the public will oppose those increases in taxes and will vote or force cooperative leaders out of office. Without question, there is a limit beyond which the taxpayers will not go. We have not reached that limit, but many citizens have shown great resistance to the halting steps which have been made thus far. It is indeed depressing.
Sin is ultimately why human-caused climate change is occurring. We refuse to do what we know needs to be done. Simply because we are alive and our carbon footprint is too large, you and I are adding to the problem. I shall say it again: self-centered sin is the primary reason why climate change is destroying the Earth.
The first verse of our responsive reading said this: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). God made human beings the stewards and caretakers of His Earth, and we are failing in our assignment. God is feeling both anger and sadness, perhaps in equal measure. For decades scientists have figuratively been protesting on sidewalks all over the world. Their placards declare, “The End Is Near!” Politicians and political parties and most people have denied it, but it is coming, unless….
I hope I am wrong. I would be delighted to be wrong. But under present trends, I am sure we are killing the planet of which God made us His primary caretakers. But why, you ask, do I keep preaching sermons like this? – Because I believe it is irresponsible not to do so.
Maybe you will finally get the message if I express it in more personal terms. Those who now own property on Hilton Head Island and hope they or their heirs will be in possession of it twenty years from now are going to lose a lot of money because they didn’t sell now. Anyone who buys property now and plans to keep it in the family for fifty years or so will lose the entire investment. This island is doomed; it will be underwater before this century ends. But Hilton Head property owners won’t be alone in their fiscal losses; hundreds of millions of other people within a mile or two of the ocean all over the world will also lose everything.
Other than all that, have a nice day. Emoji.