"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Romans 15:13)
It's easy to be pessimistic about the future health of our planet.
After all, the news that we've received in recent years doesn't make one optimistic that we humans will take seriously the sickening warning signs that we are killing God's creation. I mean, just look at the large number of people willing to deny that anything bad is actually happening to the earth.
But we faithful people are supposed to be a people of hope. ... So the news out of the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates that representatives from nearly 200 countries approved an historic agreement that stated their aims to transition away from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal that are heating up our planet should be celebrated!
“Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end,” said U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell in his closing speech. “Now all governments and businesses need to turn these pledges into real-economy outcomes, without delay.”
Granted, the agreement doesn't have the full weight of law, and the United Nations, which hosted the climate summit, has no authority to enforce what the countries agreed to, but there still is cause to celebrate, as even just days earlier, climate advocates wondered whether it was possible to get an agreement that even mentioned the words "fossil fuels."
There are many world leaders who pushed for stronger language in the agreement, in effect committing nation's to a complete phaseout of fossil fuels. And while I certainly would have supported such an agreement, I also hold to my philosophy not to let perfect be the enemy of good. So I'll celebrate this achievent in human cooperation and good will, and cling to my faithful hope that it produces positive results.
The most fruitful result of the summit is the "global stocktake," which essentially is an agreed upon assesment process of the progress each nation has made toward limiting global warming since the Paris Agreement was ratified in 2015. Importantly, the stocktake "recognizes the science that indicates global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But it notes Parties are off track when it comes to meeting their Paris Agreement goals," according to a U.N. press release.
It is this stocktake that "calls on Parties to take actions towards achieving, at a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030," according to the U.N.
Frankly, the agreement comes none too soon, as 2023 will go in the books as the hottest year in recorded history.
And I'm not here to argue the politics of global warming and climate degradation. If you don't believe in the science, then it'll be difficult to find common ground on the issue. But, as faithful people, there is entirely another view we can take about the stewarding of God's creation.
And this is my faithful take ...
Even if we can't agree on the science, for a moment, let's set aside the debates over whether global warming is manmade and whether the earth can shrug off our naegative actions regardless of the damage we inflict.
Without those issues as obstacles, can we at least agree that scripture demands of us to be stewards of God's creation. ... For instance: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." (Genesis 2:15) ... And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to scriptures dealing with ecological stewardship. We could name plenty more examples to bolster the argument as well.
Secondly, can we also agree that Jesus exhorts us to love our neighbors -- all of our neighbors! -- calling it the "Great Commandment." Found in the Gospel of Matthew: "36 'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' 37 He said to him, ''You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.'" (Matthew 22:36-40)
So ... if we were to put this into an equation form: Care for creation + Care for the neighbor = ????
Doesn't the natural answer to the equation come out to a directive to care for all of creation, and stop crapping in our neighbors' yard, so to speak?
If we are faithful people, faithfully following what God the Father, and Jesus his son has directed us to do: That equation should read: Care for creation + Care for the neighbor = Taking care of the planet.
Period. ... All politics aside, I don't see any way that we can refuse our obligations to care for the world.
The climate debate doesn't have to be about science; the climate debate should be about loving our neighbor and not about "Big Oil," "Big Coal" and "Big Gas." ... Given the obscene profits we are talking about here, at the expense of pillaging God's creation, we cannot count on corporations to live faithfully.
That is why the onus falls to us each, individually and collectively, to live out God's commandment to care for creation. That is why the COP28 agreement gives me hope that the agreeing nation's "are encouraged to come forward with ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases, sectors and categories and aligned with the 1.5°C limit in their next round of climate action plans (known as nationally determined contributions) by 2025." ... Amen.
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