"Near the Arctic Circle, elders of the Inuit nation are seeing their lives disrupted by vivid consequences of global warming: deformed fish, depleted caribou herds, dying forests, starving seals, and emaciated polar bears… As the sea ice melts, rising water levels are washing entire villages and a way of life-into the ocean. 'These are issues of life and death,' said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. 'We go out to hunt on the sea ice to put food on the table. You go to the supermarket.'" So begins an article in the most recent issue of Amnesty Now, a publication of Amnesty International.

The article continued: "Half a world away, the ocean is inundating a small group of islands off the coast of…New Guinea; officials are currently relocating 40,000 residents. Two years ago, the prime minister of New Zealand offered to accept the entire population of Tuvalu, another island nation being submerged by the rising sea levels that global warming is causing. 'Climate change is a form of slow death,' said Tuvalu's President Leo Falcam."
("Slow Death by Global Warming," by Ross Gelbspan, Amnesty Now, Fall 2004, 6)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was created in 1988 and is comprised of 2000 climate experts. Each of the Panel's three reports -with a fourth due soon- have spoken with increasingly heightened concern about the impact of human activity on Earth's warming. In their third report issued in 2001 they predicted "an increase in the Earth's average temperature of as much as 10.4 degrees by 2100 -over 60% higher than what they predicted six years ago." (National Environmental Trust, www.net.org/warming/science.vtml)

Although the United States, of all the world's nations, is the single greatest contributor to global warming, in that we produce 25% -one quarter- of all carbon emissions, we've also demonstrated the greatest reluctance to address this issue. The Kyoto Protocol which is an international agreement calling on nations to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels required the United States to reduce its emissions by 7% by the year 2012. In 2001 the Bush administration withdrew from the agreement declaring they did not trust the science, that such a reduction would put too great a strain on our economy, and it was unfair for developing nations to be exempt from the requirement.

Of course, 42 of our states emit more greenhouse gases by themselves than do each of fifty developing countries. Initial implementation of the required reductions probably would place a strain on our country's economy. Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that our government's response is like that of the comic strip panhandler who sits on the sidewalk with his hat extended and a sign that reads: "Help! Not unemployed, just living beyond my means."

Certainly, we can justifiably point to our government as failing to provide leadership on this issue, and we should and must demand better of it. Yet, given what's already occurring -not to mention the dreadful predictions- why are so many of us, seemingly so blasé, about this matter, not just with respect to pushing our government to act responsibly, but with respect to our own lives?

While valuing all the benefits Western civilization has provided humankind, we seem unwilling to acknowledge, never mind remedy, what may be our civilization's greatest flaw- its destructive impact on the Earth.

It was Michele Gale-Sinex's desire to give voice to this concern that impelled her to bid boldly at our congregation's auction last spring for the opportunity to choose a topic on which I would preach this year. I hope she gets her money's worth. In our conversations Michele spoke of her frustration with our (the 'our' refers to U.S. citizens) unwillingness or inability to remedy the destruction our way of life is causing the Earth, especially with regard to global warming. Michele said that in spite of Copernicus and Darwin offering substantial evidence to the contrary, too many of us still believe humans are at the center of the universe. And being at the center instills a belief that we are the most important part of the universe. So, we can pretty well do as please, and nature be damned. Actually, that last expression is my paraphrase.

In one of her emails, using a metaphor particularly appropriate for this baseball playoff season Michele wrote that we humans had better be careful for, "Nature Says: 'Evolve, 'Cause I Bat Last.'" It's an intriguing statement. A New Yorker cartoon portrays the ascent of humanity with a couple of little creatures on lower steps, going past ape-like beings, leading up to a caveman and culminating on yet a higher step with a modern man in coat and tie. The modern man has an expression of uncertainty on his face, as he looks at even more steps above his. The cave man says to him: "I was wondering when you'd notice there's lots more steps." We speak of humans as being the culmination of the evolutionary process, at least here on Earth, and in doing so, we may mistakenly confuse culmination with conclusion.

While we currently stand at the apex of the evolutionary process in terms of our complexity, that doesn't necessarily equate to being the end-point toward which evolution or indeed all of creation points as its crowning achievement. In the Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's book, The Universe Story, the authors wrote: "That our western civilization should be the principal cause of such extensive damage to the planet is so difficult a truth for us to absorb that our society in general is presently in a state of shock and denial, of disbelief that such can possibly be the real situation. We are unable to move from a conviction that as humans we are the glory and the crown of the Earth community to a realization that we are the most destructive…component of that community."

What would help us bring about such a shift, moving us to assume personal responsibility for changing our self-understanding and our destructive behaviors? In posing that question I am asking myself as well. For while I turn off lights when not using them and include good mileage as a primary criterion when buying a car, my life has yet to reflect the depth of concern and love that I have for my home, the Earth, and for its inhabitants. What would help us make that shift in our understanding and behaviors? There's always the old stand-by of guilt.

While some believe guilt should never be a motivator for change, it can be appropriate if, in fact, we're guilty of a wrongdoing. The problem with guilt though is that it can take on a life of its own as occurs with a young woman sitting in a coffee shop with her mother when the daughter says, "I feel like a I need you less and less, Mom, now that I can make myself feel guilty all on my own." Guilt may have value by at least getting us to initially attend to a matter, and perhaps getting us to change some of our behaviors. But it's likely the changes will be short-lived and in the long run guilt is deforming to our humanity. So, let's consider another alternative. It's one toward which our religious tradition points us - evolving.

Our religious tradition's principles begin to point us in a direction. The last one known as the seventh principle calls us to affirm and promote, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." Essentially, that means we're neither separate from nor the center of all existence, rather our individual lives are another part of existence. Instead of existing as independent beings, as our egos would have us believe, our lives are interwoven with all other life and with all other existence.

As I have said before, our Western understanding of the universe, informed largely by Newtonian physics over the last three hundred years, has essentially portrayed the earth in a mechanistic fashion. According to this view the earth and universe are constituted of objects. As humans are the principle objects of creation, then, of course, all other objects are available for our use and exploitation. In the last century, however, quantum physics, has revealed a very different picture of the universe from that of Newton. It isn't that the conception of the Newtonian universe, with its absolute notions about matter and time, was wrong. It was simply too narrow and too limited to adequately describe the complexity and strangeness of existence.

We have yet to embrace this new way of conceiving our lives that tells us this seemingly solid and independent being we imagine ourselves to be is merely one manifestation of what is actually a fluid process woven out of and together with all that is. Again, in The Universe Story, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry tell us:

That the universe is a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects is [a primary realization of our present era.] Existence itself is derived from and sustained by this intimacy of each being with every other being of the universe… Indeed the Earth is so integral in the unity of its functioning that every aspect of the Earth is affected by what happens to any component member of the community. Because of this organic quality, Earth cannot survive in fragments… The integral functioning of the planet must be preserved. The well being of the planet is a condition for the well being of any of the component members of the planetary community. To preserve the economic viability of the planet must be the first law of economics. To preserve the health of the planet must be the first commitment of the medical profession. To preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine must be the basic concern of religion. To think that the human can benefit by a deleterious exploitation of any phase of the structure or functioning of the Earth is an absurdity. The well being of the Earth is primary. Human well being is derivative…"

When we begin to appreciate that the well-being of the Earth is primary, and when we begin to feel that and make that our lived experience, then we will begin to evolve into a new relationship with our home, the Earth and all its inhabitants. For the last two years, one of our members, Leslie Romer, has made a determined effort to introduce our congregation to our larger religious association's ecologically friendly program called Green Sanctuary. While she has had some success, we have not responded in a way that suggests we yet understand what it means to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence.

But don't fear we still have the opportunity to live into our values, for at our Association's General Assembly this past June, the delegates voted as its two-year Study Action Issue, the Threat of Global Warming. I am hopeful we will respond affirmatively to this invitation. I am hopeful, as well, that through our innate wisdom and love for the Earth and all its inhabitants, we will begin to appreciate the well-being of Earth as primary. And when we do, we'll acquire the will to make that understanding our lived experience.