We were discussing candidates. My active, intelligent friend was talking about one particularly thoughtful, intelligent candidate, who had a good plan to address climate change but then said, “Yes, but…” his stance on Israel wasn’t as good as she could wish. The unspoken question echoing inside me was, “Are you considering supporting candidates who have less effective climate plans … or even supporting the current United States leader?”
The current US leader adamantly ignores the apocalyptic changes underway via climate change. These changes are rooted in unalterable facts and observations, not cultural values. For nature, cultural values are irrelevant.
But at this point, having grown up in a conservative Christian household, I feel the need to slide from the language of politics and science into the language of God, even if it falls uneasily upon Christian ears.
Polls indicate that although most people understand that climate change is occurring, many choose to ignore or deny how fast and apocalyptic those changes will be for themselves and their children – or simply pretend they can do nothing about it. All of these excuses are sins that God will not ignore.
Rather, such people support the current leader for cultural values that reflect their own tribal beliefs, whether Christian, Republican, and/ or conservative – or simply for the single value of “pro life” for every fetus, which they believe God supports.
And here is where there is a fatal flaw of logic, for they are ignoring a far more potent and massive message from God.
If God is omnipotent, then nature is the conduit of God’s messages. How nature reacts to the actions of man is essentially a message from God for theists, couched in the language of physical laws that is part of God’s creation. It is the most potent language of God in existence. Prayers reflect our wishes; physical reality reflects God’s response.
The message? If you persist in wrecking the climate and diversity of helpful species that you have been given, you will kill off most of your children and descendants, and extinguish many more species, speeding your own demise. If God cast Adam and Eve out of paradise, then under current changes God has begun the process of casting their descendants off the planet for the sin of greed.
We can detail the various levels of the ensuing hell – floods, wildfires and melting permafrost are just the beginning - but that is superfluous: we don’t want any of it. But what will we do to avoid this wrath of God?
This physical, easily observable, message is one of ever faster, more massive and destructive changes culminating in an apocalypse from which no people will experience an afterlife, because they choose to ignore God’s ultimate message, thus becoming God’s unchosen.
Furthermore, the size and and potency of this message overwhelms any message God might have on abortion, for billions of fetuses will die in the resulting apocalypse, far more than those succumbing to abortion. And their deaths will be just as deliberately executed through short sighted, overreaching human greed.
Equally eliminated will be the central treasures of all other tribes, from spiritual awareness to sports, from music and arts to partying, to surfing the net, to exploring and inventing, and more. All will be gone.
But, the forgiveness and mercy of God lies in allowing us to recognize our sins and atone for them. Here, it means resizing our populations and consumption to fit the God given climate and array of species on our planet. It will be challenging, but if we treasure life and respect God’s message, we have no choice.
And this is where we come back to politics, for here we are given a chance to start respecting God’s message by supporting those who have heard it and are trying to act on it. Support and vote for those candidates who have heard God’s most potent and massive message to date. Vote for those who have a plan to address climate change with all the urgency demanded by God, and share this message.
For atheists, of course, addressing climate change is addressing the logic of survival. And the message remains the same: the candidate most likely to effect the best climate change plan is the one most likely to save all our tribes.