Are we there yet?

In 1962, David Younk saw me going into the church.  He was home from college and wanted to talk.  He said his professor was lecturing about pollution.   "Water?" I asked.  "No, air."  He went on to talk about how Los Angeles always had smog.  We actually saw the nasty yellow haze over that city a couple years later when we drove out to see seminary friends in California.

Another David, a campus minister named Stephenson, just a few years later, warned our annual conference that we were approaching the point of no return for pollution and the survival of the planet.  He spent most of his ministry trying to help the campuses and churches he served to do something about it.

A decade later, I heard a local politician home during a break from his work in the legislature talk about how pollution was exacerbated by the way we wasted electrical energy.  I bought the newly invented light bulbs, turned off lights, and unplugged appliances.  So many people did that the power company had to raise rates in order to pay stock holder their promised dividends

Around then, I saw an odd thing.  The trees started to look weird.  Out east, trees were dying because of the exhaust fumes from cars and trucks.  In Wisconsin, where I was, the trees were actually growing faster.  Branches seemed to be reaching towards the road where I drove regularly.  The ends of the branch were always fresh growth, as if they couldn't help themselves.  While they took a break over the winter, the trees came back too enthusiastically, as I saw it.

Every car we bought over those years had much better mileage than the one we had owned before.  The smog in Los Angeles cleared as cars there burned less and less fuel.  The trees out east survived because of the change in formulas used in the fuels as well as with less being consumed by vehicles.  We now have a Prius that stops the engine by itself when we are waiting at stop signs.

Earlier this year, NASA scientists said we would reach the no return point with respect to global warming by 2030.  Al Gore's Oscar winning movie on global warming came to mind with its graphic of how that warming would shoot up extremely rapidly very soon.  And now, some scientists are saying we have 18 months.

Who is to blame for this pending disaster?  Putin with his dreams of world domination and the sale of Russia's oil and gas.  The Koch Brothers who also are into oil and gas and coal, besides.  Mitch McConnell who won't let government act unless it somehow means money in his pockets.  And Dick Cheney and both Bushes because of their ties to oil.  

And me.  I have been warned and made only minor changes.  In the right direction, but not really enough.  I've been mostly quiet despite the warnings.  Until it appears to be too late.  Now I'm speaking up . . . on a blog maybe twenty friends will look at over the next eighteen months.  And Facebook.  And letters to the editor.  And friends in the denomination saying we fuss over homosexuality and ignore global warming with its threat to the planet earth.

American optimism has blinded us to the fact that every major culture in history has had its dooms day.  But we've seen the future in Star Trek.  But then I recall how Capt. Pickard lived a lifetime in one episode where a planet faced its own end and had drawn him onto a fantasy so that he would be the bearer of their cultural memory once their planet died.

So our wonderful "tour ship" glides toward disaster with little chance to slow and change direction in time to prevent disaster.

In Biblical terms, God did not save Methuselah from the Flood in Noah's time.  In fact, God let humanity destroy its greatest achievement at the time, the Tower of Babel, by its self-absorption and loss of communication by adopting jargons that meant nothing to each other.  And the ruins of great civilizations scatter the jungles and deserts of the world and lie under its hills and plains seen only from satellites.

Do I have any suggestions on how to undo this human folly?  I'm not even sure which NGO is the most effective at working on environmental change.  All I know is that we have to elect people who really care and are willing to work on changing our policies to those which could save the planet.  And we have to somehow draw people away from their own major concerns about feeding their families and getting medical care and to look at what is coming if we don't find a way to change.  Rich and poor alike, we all have to do something different very soon.  

So maybe I can't offer a swift recommendation.  Maybe there is one possibility that might slow things down a bit.  That is to listen for and pass on the best ideas, large and small, in hopes that someone somewhere will do something with them along with us.

Are we there yet?