Climate Change!

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A 2015 poll conducted by Yale revealed that two thirds of American voters think that global warming is happening, yet two-thirds of Americans rarely or never discuss it. Mea Culpa, I am one of them. I haven’t preached on climate change in three years. But the latest UN and Federal reports and the results of the Paris Agreement’s most recent Conference of the Parties in Poland (COP24), as well as the mobilizing action underway by people of faith in Massachusetts inspire me to face my heart-break and break my silence to join the many voices in a growing cacophony for change.

Reading: A Vision/h3>
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here,
their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides,
fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear,
as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be green meadows,
stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened..
Families will be singing in their fields.
In the voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not
return, whatever the grief at parting.
Memory, native to this valley,
will spread over it like a grove,
and memory will grow into a legend,
legend into song, song into sacrament.
The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibilities.
─Wendell Berry

Sermon: Waking Up To Climate Change

Several years ago Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was asked why climate change is still questioned by certain political groups in the United States. Dr. Pachauri who is Hindu cited an old Vedic saying from his native India: “It is easy to wake someone up who is asleep. However, it is much harder to wake someone up who is pretending to be asleep.” I have a sense that Dr. Pachauri was talking about the vast network of corporate interests organized primarily by the Koch brothers, but his words rang true for me as well. There are moments I wake up to climate change, then pull the covers over my head, preferring to pretend to be asleep. I know that this congregation has been very awake to the reality of climate change working to change town energy policies. But I am wondering if you, like me sometimes want to pull the blankets over your head, and pretend to be asleep?

The IPCC as it is often called is a partnership between the World Meteorological Society and the United Nations, and it represents the largest group of scientists ever assembled to study any issue in the natural world in history. Every five-six years they issue a report to update the science and make recommendations about what the nations of the world might do to keep temperature increases below 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the new threshold for anticipated severe climate change impacts. The data show that worldwide temperature have already increased an average of 1.8 degrees (Fahrenheit), which may not seem like much but we have already seen dramatic changes in our weather around the world, including more ferocious tropical storms, and the melting of glaciers. I was listening to a environment reporter sum up the IPCC report by saying “the bad news is we should have done something about climate change 25 years ago, the good news is we can do something about now.” The report concludes that the greenhouse gas reductions pledges put forth under the Paris agreement will not be enough to avoid the 3.6 degrees threshold defined by the Paris agreement. Aromar Revi, author of the more recent IPCC report and director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements says “at 3.6 degrees warming we can expect a rapid evacuation out of the tropics that will render national boundaries irrelevant. No wall can stop 10 million people.” He puts today’s border wall debate in perspective doesn’t he?

The IPCC report calls instead for the industrialized nations of the world – and that means the United States and others – to make pervasive changes to our society and economy so as to reduce our carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel by 45% by 2030. That’s right: the report calls for the United States to reduce its emissions by almost half in 12 short years. I watch the leaders of one of our political parties practically tripping over themselves to deny the reality of climate change, and I watch our president encourage the oil and coal industry to continue with their wholly unsustainable business practices, and I wonder if this is even possible?

But it is the findings of the 2018 National Climate Assessment report released in November that brought home for me the impact of climate change. The Northeast, unfortunately is at the forefront of climate change in this country. By 2035 average temperatures in the region are expected to be 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the preindustrial era, threatening our moose with infections caused by parasites, and exposing our hemlock and ash to devastation by wood-boring beetles. Our beloved Gulf of Maine too is warming up faster than any other part of the global ocean. Shrimp have disappeared entirely, lobsters have disappeared from Southern New England and cod and other species are moving ever northward.

With just this bit of loss, I have a hard time maintaining focus. I get why activist say that our biggest problem is inertia. Sometimes I just want to hunker down and pretend to be asleep. And oh how hard it is to wake up again and again from a place of denial.
On Wednesday I attended a training about creating change in systems. The trainer suggested that when a system is stuck it helps sometimes to zoom in or zoom out. Last week, I zoomed in, wanting to make climate change more real to my day to day reality by understanding how it impacts Harvard specifically. I started by asking several apple grower’s in the area if they were worried about climate change and each were concerned in their own way. One grower talked about the devastating impact of weather extremes, particularly rain. He has reason to be worried. In the next few decades, the number of days with 4 inches of rainfall will increase two to three times, while during summer months the rate of evaporation will double. I learned that with too much rain comes the curse of the sooty blotch and fly speck diseases exacerbated by the fact that rain washes away the pesticides that control them. In my on-line searching, I came across a blog by Linda Hoffman, orchard owner and sculptor of our chalice, who shared words from a seasoned organic grower, Hugh, from upstate New York. Speaking of why they lost a crop last year, he writes “For us it was mostly poor pollination. There were no insects, even on the dandelions!” Citing the use of pesticides, Hugh continued, “ our farm is a temple precinct, and we cannot avoid the conclusion it is also the very sensitive canary in the coal mine.” After several conversations with growers, I got the sense that many felt this way but that no one wants to come out and say how bad it really is for if farms are really the canary in the coal mine, it does raise the question, what are we willing to do to save them and in so doing ultimately save ourselves?

I love Hugh’s concept of a temple precinct, and I’ve been noticing how often people who stay awake to climate change do so from this sense of knowing a place they love. There is this group of amateur entomologists in Krefeld Germany who have measured the biomass of insects in a municipal forest since 1860. It was their paper in 2007 that documented an 80 percent decline in insect bio-mass in their park since the mid-1980s. That paper inspired other amateurs from around the world to sound their alarm about measured decreases of insect bio-mass in their towns. Though their news is dire, I love how the observations of a growing network of amateurs are making it possible for scientists to understand the complexity of our natural systems. It makes me realize that all of our observations, each of our voices, and every action we take matters.

The Latin root of amateur is lover and I wonder, do you have temple precinct, a special place from where you can find the love to stay present to the hardship of climate change? My husband Ben speaks his truth about climate change from his beloved Gulf of Maine, and I from the forests I love. And I wonder, if we together can create here, within our bodies, our hearts our minds, within this sanctuary, an ever-expanding temple precinct from which we can sound the alarm. A place where each of you can find the passion and compassion to not only work to mitigate the impact of climate change on the places you love but to then zoom out to see how climate change is devastating the most at risk populations across the globe? Can we in this temple precinct, not only sound the alarm but keep the focus to make the necessary changes to our society and economy so as to reduce carbon emissions? Can we admit that the hardships being experienced around the world is caused by us, and in that admission discover the collective will to realize the possibilities?

Take a moment, and consider the graphic on the front of the order of service that depicts the anticipated in our state climate. With 10 more frost free days now in our year, it is likely we as a state are already shifting southward. The higher emissions scenario is a future where people—individuals, communities, businesses, states, and nations— allow emissions to continue growing rapidly, and the lower-emissions scenario is one in which societies choose to rely less on fossil fuels and adopt more resource-efficient technologies. The graphic is from a 2007 report written by the union of concerned scientist in Cambridge, MA. Friday’s New York Times reported that America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years. Friday’s paper also reported that our oceans are warming up 50 percent faster than what scientists anticipated 5 years ago. I was so tempted to pull the covers over my head and pretend to be asleep. But I had to stay awake, and write this sermon. I had to engage in the reality of our situation and find a vision for what could be – what needs to be – not just what is.

My colleague Jeff Barz-Snell as well Eric and David, helped me discover such a vision. A vision of a country where the cost of carbon emissions is factored into the business plans and spreadsheets of every corporation, company, and municipality. A vision where an economy-wide carbon tax supported by liberals and conservatives pays dividends out to every American taxpayer. A vision where 100 percent of our town and state electricity is sourced in renewable energy. A vision where wind farms just off our coasts provide enough electricity for the whole region for much of the year. A vision of vibrant sustainable agriculture in Harvard and surrounding towns. A vision of what needs to be, and of what can be, which David and Eric will detail for you in a few minutes. This vision raises the question, can we create a society not dependent on fossils fuels and what does that society look like? Close your eyes with me for a second to imagine this society. I imagine a kinder society, one that respects our collective home, a just society grounded in the worth dignity of all beings, a society that respects hardships being experienced around the world is caused by us, and in that admission discover the collective will to realize the possibilities?

My colleague Jeff Barz-Snell as well Eric and David, helped me discover such a vision. A vision of a country where the cost of carbon emissions is factored into the business plans and spreadsheets of every corporation, company, and municipality. A vision where an economy-wide carbon tax supported by liberals and conservatives pays dividends out to every American taxpayer. A vision where 100 percent of our town and state electricity is sourced in renewable energy. A vision where wind farms just off our coasts provide enough electricity for the whole region for much of the year. A vision of vibrant sustainable agriculture in Harvard and surrounding towns. A vision of what needs to be, and of what can be, which David and Eric will detail for you in a few minutes. This vision raises the question, can we create a society not dependent on fossils fuels and what does that society look like? Close your eyes with me for a second to imagine this society. I imagine a kinder society, one that respects our collective home, a just society grounded in the worth dignity of all beings, a society that respects the interdependent web to which we all belong, and one that knows the values of our farms. What do you imagine?

I want to know if we, as Unitarian Universalist, will be at the forefront of creating this society? After all, Unitarian Universalists have been at the forefront of every major social movement in the history of this country: the abolitionist movement, the suffrage movement, the labor movement, and the civil rights, the gay rights movement and the women’s movement. I want to know if we will build on what been done so far, and realize this moral calling?

Reduce our carbon emissions by almost 50% in 12 years and by 80-90% within a generation is a herculean task. It will require a historic mobilization effort and campaign on par with what happened at the beginning of World War II here in the US and the creation of the Marshall Plan after the war in Europe. Just out of curiosity, is there anyone here who was born before 1936? I am looking for anyone in their 80’s and 90’s who can tell the rest of us what it was like when the United States entered WWII in 1941. For that will be the type and scale of response we need in the coming years. But make no mistake; we can do this if we really want to. We need to convince people like us to stay awake and not despair, that there is hope. I am reminded of the words of the novelist Barbara Kingsolver who wrote, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

Living inside our hope means feeling the pain, holding the hardship of climate change. Let us hold in our hearts and prayers those who left their homes in Syria because of drought, those starving now in Somalia and Yemen and Russia. Those who have lost homes and lives in the monsoons of Pakistan, India, and the typhoons of the Philippines. The people of the the island states who are loosing their land, their culture, day by day, and those in who have lost lives and homes to the floods and the fires and our farmers who risk their crops, their livelihood. I hope and pray that we find the courage of our convictions, and in response, embrace the vision and hope that leads to a more sustainable – and peaceful – future. Amen