What If Climate Change Is a Hoax?
We’ve all heard that climate change is a hoax. Or that the science is too new. Or that there is no scientific consensus about climate change. Or that while climate change is real, it is part of a natural pattern that is not caused by human activity. Or that the weather in a particular place in a particular time disproves climate change. Or that environmentalists confuse the creation with its Creator. Or that the earth is protected by God’s promise to Noah (Genesis 8:21-22) to never destroy the earth and its living creatures again. What if any one of these statements is true? (Just to be clear at the outset, each of them either is false or irrelevant, as The Science of Science Denial argues.)
Underlying the debate about care for our home are at least three major issues. The first is what we live for. The second is our relationship to the world around us. The third is the value that we place on life.
But first, let’s consider a modified version of Blaise Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s argument is purely transactional: if we refuse to believe in God and He exists, the consequences of our choice are both eternal and catastrophic; if we believe and he doesn’t exist, there are no consequences, and we lose nothing. We can apply Pascal’s wager to climate change: if we believe climate change is real and act accordingly, and it is real, we’ve perhaps sacrificed something but ultimately lost nothing. If we believe climate change is not real and it is (and it has drastic consequences for the future of our common home), we become culpable for what we have failed to do, as the Confiteor reminds us. The consequences of failing to do something can be damning.
Underlying the view that our common home is not in danger is typically a basic contentment with our existing economic system. That economic system and the culture it’s generated, however, are deeply troubling. Ours is a throw-away society, where single-use products (especially ones made of plastic) abound, new and supposedly improved products constantly replace the old, and our personal convenience is highly valued. In this economy, we live for ourselves and our convenience. Waste, and particularly food waste, is a hallmark of this economic system. The problem here should be obvious: as believers, we are called to live for God, and as followers of Christ, we are called to take up our cross (Matthew 10:38) to become a people of sacrifice; instead, our economic system teaches us to live for ourselves and above all for our convenience.
The culture supporting our economic system also dictates a particular relationship to the world. We exist as consumers: we evaluate the world around us from the vantage point of its potential value to us. While we may profess gratitude to God for the blessings that He’s poured out on us, we are nevertheless disconnected from God’s creation and from those – and particularly the world’s poor -- who work to provide the objects that we consume. We see God’s creation not as intrinsically valuable, but merely as something that God created and over which he has surrendered control to us so that we may do with it as we please. We believe that God gave us a right of ownership over his creation. But as What Is the Meaning of Dominion? argues, this is a profound misunderstanding. Instead, God gave us stewardship over his creation so that we care for and nurture it. Psalm 24 tells us that the earth and everything on it belongs to the Lord; nothing in either Sacred Scripture, the Jewish roots of our Christian heritage, or the teaching of the Fathers indicates that he’s given it away. The implication of this is that we are an interdependent part of God’s creation, and not separate from or above it and in a position to dominate over it.
Finally, when we view the world around us in terms of its utility to ourselves, we begin to see life itself as transactional – valuable if it serves us, disposable if it doesn’t. Psalm 114:30 reminds us that all life has been created by the breath of the Holy Spirit. All life, whether human, plant, or animal, has a dignity unique to itself. When we allow a species to become extinct, we are silencing a God-given voice that we have no right to silence. When we choose to dismiss the significant dangers to life – and above all to the lives of the poor in coastal regions of the world’s poorest countries – posed by climate change, we are emphasizing the superiority of our lives over other lives. In the process, we forget that Jesus tells us that whoever would be great in the kingdom of heaven must be a servant (Matthew 20:26-28) and that we must love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39).
So even if climate change is a hoax, our faith calls us to reassess our relationship to the world around us as we recognize the interdependence and interconnectedness of God’s creation; to recognize the glory and dignity of God’s creation, and especially of the living beings He has created; and as imitators of Christ, to strive to preserve and protect the common home that God has entrusted to our care. In short, even if our common home is not undergoing catastrophic change, it should make no difference: we should live for God, live for the wellbeing of our neighbor, and reject the crass commercialism, selfishness, and waste engendered by world economic systems.