Sunday morning’s sermon centered a theme of showing God’s love in the world. It frequently does, this being a favorite topic of Pastor Karen – and a source of nourishment for me, reliably, now these many years together.
By Sunday morning, the scale of destruction by Hurricane Helene was emerging with reports of power outages, property damage, and dozens of people killed with many more (hundreds? many hundreds?) missing or unaccounted for.
Pastor Karen rightly told us that in the coming days we would be called to put our love into something tangible for the people affected by the destruction and reminded us of how our church responded in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina (2005). My memory immediately went to a photo I saw, of our previous pastor in a mask and a sweat-stained tee, lugging out sodden and mold-stained drywall in the oppressive Louisiana heat.
And then she continued with the sermon, and I don’t remember much of it because I was distracted at that point by the missed opportunity to even briefly mention the hurricane’s destruction connection to the climate crisis and then to say (as I know she knows) that addressing the climate crisis is itself a matter of showing God’s love.
Don’t read this as a criticism of my pastor. She has a full plate and gives of herself beyond all reason in shepherding our church. I acknowledge that I am hypersensitive about this. I have said in this space and will continue to say that the climate crisis is here and mitigating and reversing the effects of climate breakdown is the most urgent work of humanity right now – making it the most urgent work of Christianity, particularly our western brand of Christianity embedded as it is in a culture of consumption, disaffection, greed, and indifference.
The destruction by Hurricane Helene is merely a recent data point in the accumulating case for why this should be obvious. Flooding in Nepal killed roughly 100 people at the same time on the other side of the globe.
By Tuesday morning, climate scientists were circulating an analysis indicating that “that climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall during hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas” and that “. . .the observed rainfall was made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” Read more here.
As the authors note, their early analysis is both preliminary and likely to change, but it has the hallmarks of scientific reliability in a general sense because its being circulated by credentialed climate scientists who understand this stuff. It is consistent with the rigorous scientific consensus (notably the IPCC), and it was produced by scientists who have demonstrated their scientific expertise through peer-review and they show their work (with links to the data, the methods, and the analytical model (peer-reviewed) in the report). Yale Climate Connections has an article up about how an unnaturally warm climate contributed to Helene’s damage by making the storm stronger, more intense, and wetter, with a stronger storm surge.
Reports on Wednesday morning estimated the near-term costs at roughly $34 billion, apart from the longer-term costs such as “lost worker productivity, health care costs, excess deaths and other macroeconomic effects.” Recent estimates are 162 dead and many hundreds unaccounted for.
When you hear someone complain about the cost of moving to a carbon-free economy, you might ask where those costs go. Again, Helene is one of an accelerating number of yearly billion-dollar climate-related disasters in the US (storms, floods, fires, droughts, etc.). The source for that figure is a post from Katherine Heyhoe. The link for the source she cites is NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. I would’ve tried to retrieve more recent data, but ironically the NCEI is in Asheville and currently off-line because of the flooding from Helene.
Media Matters reported on Wednesday that there has been a combined 22 hours and 35 minutes of coverage of Hurricane Helene across 468 news segments on corporate broadcast and cable news shows (September 25-27) and that only 15 of them (3%) mentioned connections to the climate crisis. Predictably, none of those occurred on Fox News.
I can extend my Pastor some grace here. As Media Matters demonstrates, the very real effects of the climate crisis remain a cultural blind spot despite decades of warnings from activists and scientists. Cynically, it’s no wonder why. Very powerful interests and their political allies profit wildly from selling you a high-emissions lifestyle with the subtle and not-so-subtle assurances that it can continue indefinitely. It can’t.That’s a silly and dangerous fantasy. You see this in Christian circles where creation care is often viewed as a benign boutique interest rather than a central concern for faithfulness. An informed Christianity needs to confront climate realities whenever it feels compelled to talk about love and justice.
There’s something hollow about asking to channel God’s love only after the disaster when you know what contributes to the disaster in the first place, but do nothing to prevent it or reduce its severity – or even to acknowledge it. Is there (should there be) a theology of preemptive love whereby we show our love to future generations by working now to prevent leaving them a dangerous and degraded planet?
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Postscript: Maybe you’ve noticed that this is an election year. The League of Conservation Voters is a non-partisan group that ranks and scores candidates based on their campaigning and previous votes. The scores reflect favorability on creation-care topics including climate. You can enter your zip code and evaluate your choices by clicking here:
Absolutely sobering! Thank you for your reasoned, persistent warnings, Tim. I am just now reading Brian Mc Laren’s LIFE AFTER DOOM. His message echoes yours. Not if but when.
I cannot help but reflect on the pettiness of specific sin management, inflation, politics,and denominational rules in the face of relational and existential disaster.
My sin theology and even my interpretation of prophecy has evolved over the last decade. We are clearly punished by our sin rather than for our (very specific) sin. Humankind persistently insists on eating the forbidden fruit of self- indulgence and excess to the self-induced point of extinction. Perhaps God’s “judgment” was there before the fall as one of creation’s pre-ordained principles. ” There’s something hallow about asking to channel God’s love only AFTER the disaster….”
I’m reading McLaren’s book too. I recommend it. Thank you, Tim. This is beyond urgent.
We need you to not get tired of repeating the message that God has given you.
THIS. 💯
Tim, thank you for being such an articulate speaker of the hard truths we, the Church, need so desperately to hear.
Communities of faith could be playing a hugely important role in education, local and larger-scale activism, and the pastoral work of holding and channeling climate grief.
One group doing important work are the Quakers – I recently came across EQAT and their campaign against Vanguard, the world’s biggest funder of climate destruction. https://eqat.org/campaign/
“Preemptive Love.”
Terrific title for living.
Another wonderful work of writing here.
Thank you again, Tim, with all the other prophets who are warning of the doom that is already here. I too can get cynical about prayer for relief when we are so unwilling to carry our responsibility. There’s a saying about God’s answers to prayer: one is Yes, one is No, one is Wait, and one is Do it Yourself. Let’s stop asking God for relief from the damage we are causing.
Relative to my wife and myself, and the other members of our congregation being “disaffiliated” from the Denomination (CRCNA) because we will not comply with Synod 2024’s decisions and their consequent impacts upon individuals and families (including children -baptized and yet to be baptized) as well as congregational and CRCNA owned or connected educational institutions, their Boards and employees.
There are many, many opportunities for us all to address the “environment”: the impacts of contaminating/accessing northern lakes, rivers , muskegs through “mining”, diverting “natural” water flow … and in both Canada and the United States by our being face-to-face engaged with First Nations peoples who are insisting that their United Nations and Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission affirmed rights are both affirmed and ENABLED by our respective Provincial/State governments
and National governments.
Thanks, Tim, for continuing to emphasize the importance of addressing climate change right now, not later. I had hope for change in our denomination when the CRCNA Synod in 2012 adopted our task force (chaired by your eminent colleague, Cal DeWitt) report on Creation Stewardship. I had hope for change when the Office of Social Justice took on climate change as one of its core issues. Now, a decade later, watching the infighting and change that has occurred in the CRCNA, I have little hope that the CRC in the United States will do little but oppose anything that ameliorates the climate change that is already upon us. It is ironic that I do research (primarily on geoengineering) with a non-Christian ethicist at the University of Washington whose primary interest on the moment is intergenerational justice. I can only hope that the Christian church begins to see its commitment to intergenerational justice more clearly.
So important to understand. How do we love our neighbors as ourselves? Should we love our future neighbors in the same ways?
One act of preemptive love would be to stop funding future fossil fuel exploration and extraction. Most retirement funds are heavily invested in fossil fuel companies. And JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are major funders of the fossil fuel industry. Taking care for how we invest, where we bank, and which credit cards we use is one way to stop contributing to the climate crisis.
Right on, John!