World Holds Its Polluted Breath

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World Holds Its Polluted Breath

by Arthur

" Snowy Hope " © 2000 Ginger

The latest failure of the world's industrial nations to sign the 1997 Kyoto

Protocol, drafted by 170 countries to reduce greenhouse emissions by 5

percent by 2012, simply reminds us that our world is on the brink.

Carbon dioxide is deceptive. It is clean. And unlike carbon monoxide, write

Marjorie Hope and Young, carbon dioxide cannot kill humans directly.

It will kill indirectly, they write, through global warming. And if global

warming isn't checked, it will kill on a massive scale.

The release of the Hope-Young book (Voices of Hope in the Struggle to Save

the Planet, Apex Press, Council of International and Public Affairs)

coincides with the collapse of the recent U.N. Conference on Global Warming

at The Hague.

Now the world will hold its polluted breath until October when the

industrial giants will try again in Marrakech, Morocco.

The collapse of the conference -- in what became a Europe-versus-U.S.

contest -- brings home forcefully that the global enterprise is actually a

rather ad hoc undertaking. The globe, despite the sometimes-magnificent

attempts of the United Nations, is not a manageable entity. There is no

final voice of authority, only the sometimes strong and more frequently

feeble voice of public opinion.

Consequently, there will be no significant gains anywhere on the major

environmental/ecological front until there is a crisis severe enough to

alarm nations to take action. Global warming is not yet a crisis. Here in

the United States, we deal with global warming by stepping up the sun block

from 15 to 60 while skin cancer treatment, practically unheard of two

decades ago, becomes a health care staple. Polluting countries like ours may

choke on their own emissions but they deal with the effects of the

thinned-out ozone layer by printing ultra-violet index warnings along with

the smog alerts.

We're mad, we might say. And that's correct. But we're not frightened enough

to take mass remedial action. The killer is within our reach, on the hook by

the door, the hall table, the coat pocket. It's the car keys, and we won't

do without them.

We can rail against the polluting industries and national policies that give

us our " cheap " affluent standard of living, but the industries and policies

are really our proxies, our stand-ins. They're a reflection of our culture's

selfishness, our concern for lifestyle, convenience and profit, our

I'm-all-right-Jack outlook.

The people of the United States, lulled by easy credit, working frantically

to meet those monthly payments, commuting through the traffic of our

megalopolises -- where the average speed will drop from 31 miles an hour to

23 miles an hour within a decade or so -- and who spend a minimum of 12

hours a day outside the house, have little energy for considering the

environment on the weekends or during the five hours between arriving home

and going to bed.

But our shorelines aren't about to be inundated with tidal waves and half

the population washed away. If they were, we'd just move to higher ground

until the free market system prices high ground beyond our reach.

People might wonder, where are the organized religions? Why aren't they

doing something? But they're us, too. The United States probably has more

organized religions than any other country in the world. " Religions all over

the world are facing crises of survival and relevance. Dwindling flocks

generate fear, " write Hope and Young. " Institutional religion generates

passivity: 'The Lord will provide,' or 'The Buddha taught us to accept a

world that is full of suffering.'

" To convince a religious congregation that concern for the earth and its

creatures is a concern for people of faith is difficult. But the religious

leader or lay person who has taken a long walk in the woods and fields is

likely to be the one who can best lead people back to the primary experience

of seeing the divine in the natural world -- an experience increasingly rare

in the ersatz world of television, Internet and Disneyland. "

A walk in the woods as a solution to global warming? Alas, no. Only a

temporary balm for the soul. But the woods and fields are remarkably good

places to start thinking, yet again, how personal concerns can translate

into the personal response that may still make a difference in a world so

large and on problems so complex.

National Catholic Reporter, December 8, 2000