400 ppm Response

As predicted for the month of May, carbon dioxide levels as measured at the Mauna Loa observatory have reached 400 parts per million for a daily average. An article from the New York Times yesterday reported the discouraged and discouraging reaction of scientists to the news; they note our failure to reverse the upward trend in these readings, the catastrophic results we face from this dramatic change in our atmosphere, and the fact that the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high on the earth, human beings were not yet here.

We know the reaction of the news media: there are some reports about crossing the threshold, including statements from the scientists, but reporters are not giving this the attention we usually give to national catastrophes or calamities. And the reaction so far from the majority of our political leaders is silence.

The Episcopal Church just finished participating in a short conference on “sustaining hope in the face of climate change”.  Our leadership acknowledges the problem. I wonder how many parishes, though, will include special prayers this Sunday after we have reached this mark, how many preachers will feel a need to address this the way we have addressed 9/11 or mass murders or large scale natural disasters, how many people visiting at coffee hour will talk about their feelings about this being the week we reached a reading of 400 ppm.

The church has an opportunity to break the great silence of the media and political leaders; the church has an opportunity to do what our faith equips us to do best, to help people look at the reality of what is happening and process its meaning and go out prepared to deal with this new world with its new needs. The church can recognize this and name this for what it is: a tragedy, a worldwide emergency, a shared grief.

When The Book of Common Prayer was written in 1979, a small number of scientists were beginning to get an idea of where we were headed with greenhouse gases and climate change. Most of us knew nothing about any of this, though, and our prayer book has no prayers or collects for reaching unthinkable thresholds of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. We do, however, have many prayers for people in need of healing and food and water, for the welfare of our nation and the world, for our leaders, and for our own strength and courage and wisdom. We can pray these in light of where we are now, mindful of new needs in the world and old needs of human souls that got us where we are now and can also repent and get us headed in a better direction.  And we have prayers such as these:

For the Conservation of Natural Resources

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (p. 827)

For the Future of the Human Race

O God, our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (p. 828)

And so that we might preach the truth and be mindful of our priorities, remembering that nothing less than our own future and the future of our children and grandchildren are at stake and that Christ gives us the strength we need to do the work before us, we might pray for the church:

Gracious Father, we pray thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen. (For the Church, p. 816)

There is so much beauty in the living things around this; aware of what we may lose yet in our lifetimes, sharing our love for the beauty of the earth and thanking God for these gifts is also part of our prayer:

"Do we want to be made well?" addendum

399.68

399.68 ppm was the May 4 daily average reading for atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The Keeling Curve: A Daily record of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego posts the latest reading along with various historical charts to help in understanding the significance of the current number.

The chart for the past week shows that some hourly readings already had reached 400 ppm.

From http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/co2_400/mlo_one_week.png

It may well be that this week, with the "Do you want to be made well?" question from Sunday's Gospel (John 5:1-9) still fresh in our thoughts, that we will hit 400 ppm for a daily average.

The Keeling Curve website includes a page describing What Does 400 ppm Look Like? .  The last time carbon dioxide levels were  this high was during the Pliocene period (3 to 5 million years ago). This is the first time in human history that carbon dioxide levels have been this high; we have changed our biosphere in a way we are only beginning to understand. What we know about temperatures and sea levels in the Pliocene period can help us understand what we may be experiencing.

Here's a spiritual exercise for today: Ground yourself in prayer and Christian hope and take a look at what 400 ppm looks like, then decide your answer to the question: "Do you want to be made well?"

Do we want to be made well?

6th Sunday of Easter and 400 ppm CO2

“Do you want to be made well?” is the question Jesus asks in the story in John (John 5:1-9)  about the healing of the man who had been lying next to the pool by the Sheep Gate for 38 years. Unlike other stories of Jesus healing people, neither this man nor anyone else acting on his behalf approaches Jesus or calls out to him to ask for healing. Instead, Jesus approaches him and asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

In answer, the man offers an explanation of why he has not been healed: he has no one to help him be the first one to get in the water when it is “stirred up” and thought to have healing properties. After 38 years of this, he doesn't sound as if he has any expectation that he will ever make it into the pool at the right time, and yet he keeps doing the same thing day after day. Could he not imagine any other alternative?

Jesus gives him an alternative, and in giving the alternative, also gives him his healing. Jesus doesn't lay hands on him or pray over him or cast out demons. Instead, Jesus simply tells him to get up, pick up the mat he has been lying on all these years, and walk.

As May begins, we are hovering around atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of 400 ppm. The home page of CO2Now.org shows this graphic today:

The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide scientists tell us we need to reach for climate stability that supports life as we have known it on the Earth is 350 ppm. (See the CO2 Now website or 350.org for more information about that number.)

These readings are taken at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai’i. Ralph Keeling, a geologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography that operates the observatory, said, “I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat.”

On the Climate Progress blog today, Joe Romm’s post Into The Valley Of Death Rode The 600, Into The Valley Of 400 PPM Rode The 7 Billion compares our staying on a “self-evidently suicidal” path to the charge of the British light cavalry in the Crimean war that Tennyson remembered in The Charge of the Light Brigade.  Romm writes:

Certainly as we hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence, with not even a plan to avoid 600 ppm, 800 ppm, and then 1000 — not even a national discussion or an outcry by the so-called intelligentsia – it is worth asking, why? Is there something inherent in homo “sapiens” that makes us oblivious to the obvious?

Along with those questions, we might ask ourselves the question Jesus asked the man by the pool: Do we want to be made well?  This is a question about our priorities. Choosing health over sickness, holiness over sin, life over death is really a matter of putting first things first.  The things that help us continue to grow toward greater wholeness and the fullness of life that God desires for us are not always the comfortable or convenient things or the familiar things. It’s usually easy to find excuses for not doing the right thing; when we choose to stay stuck instead of making the effort to move forward, we can rationalize that choice so well that we often manage to convince ourselves that staying stuck is our only option or the best option or even the right thing to do. This time the consequences of staying stuck are the most far-ranging and dire we have ever approached.

We know that changing the trajectory of our carbon emissions will require some significant changes in the way we do things. Even though what we are doing is making climate change worse and worse, doing something about it, especially doing anything that requires political courage or inconvenience or change of any sort is not a priority for very many people. Doing the deep spiritual work of really seeing what we are doing to our planet, ourselves, and all living things and keeping ourselves spiritually whole and grounded in faith as we figure out how to respond seems to be an especially low priority.

Do we want to be made well? Do we want to change the path we are on? The choices are either to continue just what we are doing, or to get up and walk into a very different but healthier future.

At the beginning of May, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Wejryd and ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson signed a statement celebrating a commitment to hope in the face of climate change. The statement includes a commitment to “walk a different course”:

As Christians, we do not live in the despair and melancholy of the tomb, but in the light of the Risen Christ. Our resurrection hope is grounded in the promise of renewal and restoration for all of God’s Creation, which gives us energy, strength and perseverance in the face of overwhelming challenge. For us, this promise is more than an abstraction.  It is a challenge to commit ourselves to walk a different course and serve as the hands of God in working to heal the brokenness of our hurting world.

Scientists, engineers, economists, and political leaders are better prepared to address big pieces of the work we must do if we are to cut carbon emissions enough to make a difference. People of faith can offer a new kind of hope. Perhaps most importantly, we can ask the important question, “Do we want to be made well?” and empower ourselves and others to get up and do the work that needs to be done.

Faith in Action: Comment on Keystone XL Pipeline

Tomorrow is Earth Day; in our liturgical calendar, today was the Fourth Sunday in Easter. In the Gospel reading for today (John 10:22-30), Jesus answers a question about whether he is the Messiah by pointing to his actions: “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me”. He goes on to talk about his followers, his “sheep”, those who know who he is. Jesus says his sheep hear his voice and follow him. Just as Jesus’ identity was revealed in his actions, our identities as Christ’s own are revealed in our actions, in our following him. Our actions are important.

Tomorrow is also the deadline for submitting comments to the State Department about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Many people testified in opposition to the pipeline before a State Department hearing in Grand Island on Thursday. Written comments are still being collected.

Bold Nebraska has a page devoted to collecting comments to send to the State Department; the page includes links to background resources to help find a focus for your statement and check the facts before writing, and also includes a form that makes it easy to submit a comment.

Anyone can submit a comment. Doing so would be a fine way to observe Earth Day, and doing so to defend the integrity of God’s creation and the welfare of God’s people is a fine way to put our faith into action.

My statement is centered on moral and spiritual issues; others are writing about particular concerns about the impacts on land, water, and agriculture, about landowners’ rights, and about other issues. Focus on whatever piece of this project strikes you the most. Here’s what I wrote:

Statement of Opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline
  

I’m a resident of Hastings, Nebraska and an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church serving as Deacon at St. Stephen’s Church in Grand Island, Nebraska, and as Archdeacon of the Diocese of Nebraska. My general area of ministry is environmental stewardship and how that connects with our spiritual and physical well-being. As the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere increases, the amount of Arctic sea ice decreases, and as we continue to extract more fossil fuels from the earth, my ministry focuses increasingly on the moral and spiritual aspects of the climate crisis caused by our ongoing use of fossil fuels. The effects of climate change, including droughts, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and melting permafrost all have ill effects on people, often on some of the poorest people in the world who can least stand these added stresses. These effects along with the disregard for the integrity of God’s creation bring this argument into the sphere of religion and ethics.
 

Our existential denial of global warming – accepting the science intellectually but going on with life as if climate change were not happening – is one of the puzzling responses that point to a spiritual danger.  If we know what causes global warming and what we need to do to mitigate its effects and how very soon we need to stop burning fossil fuels, how can we even entertain the thought of building something to enable the release of the amount of carbon in the Alberta tar sands? What does the fact that we are considering approving the project say about the state of our souls and the state of our national climate policy?  The very real effects of extracting, processing, and burning the tar sands on humans and on the ecosystems that sustain all life on this planet is reason enough to deny a permit for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
 

Reading the Environmental Impact Statement, I’m struck by a sense that this study was carried out in a state of existential denial about climate change and many other things. That there are real people living in Nebraska whose livelihoods depend on the integrity of the land and water that they have conserved and protected for generations because their lives depend on doing so seems to be another reality that is ignored. It’s as if the EIS were developed in a world where fossil fuels area the ultimate good, the only thing worth considering, while they are in fact the biggest threat to the future of humankind.
 

We are well aware that there are always people who will do just about anything – even sell their own souls – if they’re offered thirty pieces of silver, even if the offer of the silver turns out to be an empty promise. I’m proud to live in a state where our ranchers and farmers keep their priorities straight and stand up for the stewardship of our land and water that Nebraskans have practiced for generations. The land and water not only sustain our agricultural economy, but they ground us spiritually. The threat of this pipeline to our land and water is reason enough to deny a permit for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Even though people opposed to the pipeline talk about climate, the Ogallala aquifer, the fragile Nebraska Sandhills ecology, tribal rights, and the rights of landowners, when we talk about a project of this nature we are in the end talking about ultimate things. We usually look to theology to figure out what we believe about ultimate things, but when we consider projects that put profits and the possibility of some short-term gains for a few ahead of all else while pushing the agricultural economy of Nebraska and the survival of life as we have known it on this planet toward the brink of disaster, we can look at our political decisions to learn about our true beliefs about ultimate things. It comes down to a moral question, perhaps the most important moral question humankind has ever had to ask ourselves: Will we set aside business as usual and do all we can to mitigate the warming of our planet, or will we continue to act as if the will of the fossil fuel industry is the ultimate authority in our lives?
 

We have a choice to make between death and life. Deny this permit and choose life so that we and our descendants may live.


Respectfully submitted,

The Ven. Betsy Blake Bennett
Hastings, Nebraska

  

Easter Week: Mistaken Identity, Keystone XL Pipeline, and Alleluias

In the Gospel lesson for the Tuesday in Easter Week (John20:11-18), Mary Magdalene is so caught up in her grief over Jesus’ death and her despair over the disappearance of his body that when she turns around and sees Jesus, she doesn’t recognize him. Instead, she mistakes him for the gardener. She comes out of her grief and despair enough to see what is right before her eyes when she responds to hearing the risen Jesus call her by name.

We can get so deeply into grief and despair that we miss signs of hope that are right in front of us. Just as the mismatch between the sorts of hopes and expectations Mary Magdalene had imagined and the reality of Jesus’ resurrection led her initially to fail to recognize the wonderful reality standing before her, the mismatch between our imagined expectations and a wonderful reality can keep us from recognizing that reality even when it is unfolding. Those of us who pay attention to the degradation of the earth and particularly to the discouraging math of global warming find ourselves at times grieving the plants, animals, eco-systems, and way of life we know and love that are beginning to disappear or change, and we can feel despair when we see the enormity of the challenges we face compared to the lack of political will to do enough soon enough to make much of a difference to a our future.

One of the many joys of Easter in our tradition is the restoration of the alleluias that disappear during the somber Lenten season. Some parishes do a sort of ceremony of burying the alleluias on Ash Wednesday to help children grasp something of our Lenten practices. When Lent ends, our alleluias at the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist and at the dismissal bring notes of joy and hope and renewed energy that can remain with us as we go into the week to love and serve Christ.

Most of us experience the return of the alleluias as a welcome return to a spiritual norm of joy, while others, especially in times when we have faced a great loss or difficult challenges, when we are grieving or in despair, may find ourselves more in tune with the quieter but no less faithful wilderness walk of Lent. But Easter comes along whether or not we are ready for it, even when we are so deeply into grief or despair that we can’t imagine finding hope or joy again.

Yesterday evening I attended one of the planning meetings for people opposed to TransCanada being given a permit to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to transport Alberta tar sands through the central United States, including Nebraska, to Gulf Coast refineries. The purpose of these planning meetings is to help pipeline opponents be well-prepared to testify at the State Department hearings scheduled to be held at the Heartland Event Center in Grand Island on April 18.  The pipeline fighters face huge odds given the money and political power of the oil industry. It’s one of those daunting challenges that could make our alleluias ring hollow.

And yet when I listened to leaders from the Sierra Club and Bold Nebraska, and when I heard the discussion by those who plan to be at the hearings either to testify against the permit or to support those testifying against it, it felt like an alleluia response. We know that grassroots opposition to the pipeline has delayed its construction so far. We know that landowners, environmental activists, people of faith, and others will keep fighting the construction of this pipeline and the expanded mining of the Alberta tar sands. There is something very good and life-giving here.

Even if President Obama denies the permit to build this pipeline, the challenge of keeping greenhouse gas emissions to a level that gives us a chance of a sustainable future is a huge challenge. If our expectations and hopes are of a future that resembles today’s business as usual, we may not recognize whatever signs of a realistic hope we might encounter. That doesn't mean that hope isn't there; it doesn't mean that grief and despair are the only valid responses to our situation.

When Bill McKibben’s Do the Math tour visited Omaha, he said that he became discouraged at first when people pointed out that he was involved in a David and Goliath situation, but then he remembered how that story ends. Easter tells us the end of the bigger story, and it calls for an alleluia response.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

St. Stephen's Crane Celebration

Traditionally the Fourth Sunday in Lent has been a time to remember that the discipline and somber tone of Lent is in preparation for the joy of Easter. We call it Rose Sunday or Refreshment Sunday. A little over halfway through Lent, it’s a time to look through Lent to Easter. Once again this year, what has become an annual crane migration celebration at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island falls very appropriately on Rose Sunday.

A couple of days of predicted warmer weather before the weekend should bring more of the Sandhill cranes into our area by the weekend. St. Stephen’s worship on March 10 at 8:00 and 10:30 is planned to help us celebrate the wonder of the cranes’ return and to reflect on the spiritual meaning of this and other wonders as we prepare for Easter.

Sunday’s Gospel text (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32) is the parable of the prodigal son. In this parable, the repentant prodigal son returns home, where his father welcomes him warmly and extravagantly simply because this is his long-lost son and he has come home. The parable illustrates God’s unconditional love for all of God’s children; simply because we are God’s children, God loves us and rejoices when we return to God.

The parent-child relationship is deeper and stronger than any circumstances or conditions that strain that relationship. The prodigal son’s father cares very much about this young man who has strayed, but has no special concern for other young men who bear no relationship to him. We care most for those with whom we have an established relationship. Going out and becoming acquainted with the world around us, including the birds migrating through the Platte valley in the spring, establishes a relationship between us and the land, water, plants, birds, and other animals in our ecosystem. As we spend more time outdoors, that relationship grows, and our care for the environment deepens. Since all of this is God’s creation, strengthening our relationship with the natural world around us also strengthens our relationship with God.

Weather permitting, the St. Stephen’s Green Team invites you to join them on Saturday evening, March 9, at the Crane Trust Nature and Visitor Center (just south of the I-80 Alda interchange) at 5:00 for a guided footbridge tour to view the cranes on the Platte River at sunset. The tour is open and accessible to everyone ages 12 and up. People are free to leave the tour at any time, but cannot go back to the bridge once they have left. Cost is $15 plus tax. These tours fill up on weekends, so reservations should be made as soon as possible by calling 308-382-1820.  We will begin gathering at 4:00 for a short evening prayer service at the nature center, either outdoors on the patio area behind the building or indoors in their conference room.

Letting Our Little Lights Shine

Forward on Climate Rally

“They report the number at the rally, but seldom mention the number who will starve to death, who have no voice other than ours.”

Among the thousands of people gathered in Washington, DC, for the Forward on Climate rally last Sunday were Chuck and Nancy Peek. Below, Fr. Peek and Nancy graciously share some of their impressions of the rally and some reflection on their reasons for being there.

Jesus taught us not to hide our lights under a basket, but to let them shine out into the world. In our culture, many voices encourage us to hide our lights, telling us it is futile or destructive or dangerous to let our lights shine. The Peeks counter those voices, telling us why it’s important to let our lights shine in this warming world.

                       Braving the Cold to Stop the Fatal Warming 

                                     By Chuck and Nancy Peek

         “Read My Lips, No New Carbons” (sign at D.C. rally)

One person told us there were as many reasons for joining the Forward on Climate Rally as there were people there.  So maybe there were 35,000 reasons, maybe there were 50,000 reasons.
 

However many the slope from the Washington Monument down to the Ellipse will hold…it was full.  It was full of cold people, with temperatures under 20.  It was full of bold people, with a message that only their presence could speak.  Some of them were from Bold Nebraska.
 

Many had come with a smaller carbon footprint by joining together for the grueling ride on the Nebraska bus.  Some of the reasons arose from love of the created world. Others’ reasons arose out of the politics surrounding global warming.
 

The Sierra Club’s Michael Brune, the good cop, there because the President’s inaugural said, in effect, come help me do the right thing.  Bill McKibben, from 350.org and fresh from his arrest, the bad cop, challenging the President to stand up and be counted, to act.
 

There were religious reasons that brought Sojourners and Green Faith and churches and their signs.  Several of the “occupy” this or that movements.  Defenders of property rights.  Hispanic leaders and advocates for women and children.  Tribal elders and ranchers…the new CIA (Cowboy-Indian Alliance).  A polar-bear-clad marcher trying to save the arctic (See Deacon Betsy Bennett’s Green Sprouts February 16 post for more about ice)  

If the pipeline goes through – No! No!—IF the pipeline goes through—No! No!—IF, IF the pipeline goes through, Nebraska becomes the center of the environmental universe! 

Solar advocates, wind proponents (“windmills, not oil spills”), vegans, seekers of truth in government, the end of grid-lock—old, young, and in between.  Many too young to be remembering civil rights or anti-war marches, many too old to be without environmental sin.  The two of us remembering how Jane Kleeb and Randy Thompson spoke at St. Stephen’s Episcopal and, unbeknownst then to any of us, started us on the road to this rally. 

A movement of people meeting people:

    Hi, I’m Juanita Rice from Fairmont. (Hadn’t she been in theater when we  were in school?)
 
    Are all of you students from Wesleyan?
 
    Brit with his new adventure in filming events, whose daughter studies prairie restoration. 
 
    Brock, the Omaha Marathon runner, from our hometown.
 
    Shelley Clark, poet and teacher—some of her students were there.
 
    Our good friend from New York, Tom Gallagher.
 
    Someone in former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s Halloween Costume—a packing barrel looking like a leaky pipeline. 
 

From the far-off stage, or over the jumbotron, the extraordinary wit and zeal of the Hip-Hop Caucus emcee, The Rev. Lennox Yearwood, kept a freezing crowd moving.  Next to us it was up with the blanket and the children’s snacks and the children, then hip, hop, move; hip, hop, move. 

More speeches, more moving, clear from near 14^th Street until we were centered on the White House. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island urging his colleagues to listen to the science, to start acting.  (Why can’t we all have Congressional representatives who care about the future?) Billionaire investment counselor Thomas Steyer explaining why wind and solar are smarter investments.  The challenge to President Obama—be the first world leader to say “no” to a project simply because it is bad for the environment.
 

Then finally off down the slope to Constitution Avenue, following the banners, where a band of drums and tubas and trumpets joined us and soon attracted a dancing second line. Over to 17^th, up 17^th, to Pennsylvania Avenue, then down to the White House, shouting our slogans.   “Hey, hey, ho, ho; the XL Pipeline’s got to go.”  “We are unstoppable, a better world is possible” soon morphed into “We are responsible, a better world is possible.”  

The band struck up “This Little Gospel Light of Mine” just as we got to the inauguration viewing stand.  All around the whole wide world: the homes of family and friends where we were graciously hosted for dinner in the DC area, back in Nebraska where friends and family were cheering us on, down to Florida where the President was golfing with Tiger Woods, clear to Bangladesh where, if we don’t act now, there will be 40 million victims of climate change by 2050. 

They report the number at the rally, but seldom mention the number who will starve to death, who have no voice other than ours. 

We gave them our voice in speeches and slogans and songs.  We had done what little we could to make our little light shine.  As Senator Whitehouse said, “We are going to look at our grandchildren and say, ‘Yes, we did!’” If Van Jones was right that 20 years from now this will be the only presidential decision anyone remembers, then we thousands there and tens of thousands at home can say, we helped the President make the right decision. 

At the pub that hosted our evening preparations for the Sunday rally, a writer from Minnesota (seems they are building or expanding pipelines everywhere these days) said, “This is not a battle.  It’s the last battle.  Lose now, and we are all lost for good.”  All around the whole wide world.