It is my view that the global climate crisis is in large part the result of human greed, especially the human greed in the industrialized nations of the world – not just the United States, although the US is indeed a major player in this tragedy of greed. For years we in the US told ourselves, and anyone else who had the audacity to question our use of 30% of the world’s energy consumption, that we what we were doing was ok, even good, because we were doing so much good with our disproportionate consumption of energy. We were pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, but when the rest of the world came together to try to address the crisis of global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocols, the Bush administration bowed to pressure from greedy fossil fuel interests, of which both Bush and Cheney were still closely tied, and refused to sign the document.
So, here we are with the ten warmest years in recorded history falling between 1998 and 2009, and 2010 looking like it will fall in the “top 10″ as well once the data are in. There is essentially no disagreement within the scientific community that global warming is here and that we face dire consequences if we don’t do something about it. There is also essentially no disagreement within the scientific community that human actions are contributing to this warming; the only “disagreement” is the degree to which human activity is causing the warming.
I fear that we may have already reached the “tipping point” where we will not be able to stop global warming. And if we haven’t yet reached that tipping point, we soon will. So, if as I said at the beginning of this essay, none of the actions that I mentioned alone, not even the sum of these actions will be able to stop or slow global warming, what are we to do? Well, I for one refuse to believe that we should just accept the consequences of our actions. I feel that if indeed greed is a major factor in what has caused and continues to cause global warming, we had better realize that physical actions alone will be ineffective because these actions are external to us. Greed is a condition that is internal within human beings. Energy greed is not based on survival needs, but rather on our desire to control the origin and consumption of energy. Greed is a disease of the heart, not the mind, and the greed disease cannot be cured by just changing those actions that are controlled by the mind. We must understand that greed can only be cured/healed by changing our value system or in the words of Brian McLaren, changing our framing story. And this change will only come about when humans stop believing that dominion over the non-human world does not mean that humans alone are the most important specie and that we have a God-given right to dominate all the rest of God’s creation to satisfy our greed. We must start realizing that dominion does not equate with domination, but rather it equates with a responsibility to care for the entire planet.
The global climate crisis cannot be solved by economic change alone. Not can it be solved by technology alone. We can’t “fix” this problem by simply replacing all of our incandescent light bulbs with compact flourescent or LED bulbs. We can’t fix it by driving more fuel efficient or hybrid automobiles and trucks. We can’t fix it by recycling and we can’t fix it by reducing the clearing of rain forests. All of these are necessary, but not sufficient. What we need to do is to to have all nations of the world reduce energy consumption of energy and the only way to effect that change is to mandate an Orwellian requirement that consumption of fossil fuels be drastically cut. But what country would, by itself, make that kind of change, especially if the two largest consumers of energy, the US and China, refuse to similarly agree? Well, we can’t do much about China, so what can we do is to get people and politicians in the US to change significantly our energy consumption? Since the US is the largest consumer of energy and only the third largest country in terms of population, I think we must look at this problem as an issue of greed. And greed is a malilgnant aberration of values. And if we agree, only tentatively for argument’s sake, then what we must do is to alter our values system.
If greed is a malignant abberation of our value system, then it is a life-threatening disease of the soul and, more importantly, a threat to the health of our planetary home. We have to turn our greed completely around and start believing that we must not have or even desire the same level of consumption as we now have. We must not want any more than we actually need. And changes of our needs and wants will require a change not just in what we do, but more so a change in our collective hearts. But how do we turn our hearts around? I can’t turn around the hearts of everyone, not even anyone else in the USA, but I can turn my heart around and I have already done so. But surely that is not enough. Even though I cannot turn around your heart, I must work to have you do that for yourself, and once that is accomplished, you must do that for someone else. It has to start with me, then move on to you, then on to all of us.
