How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Climate Change
Years ago, I first saw the clever bumper sticker that says: I’M ALREADY AGAINST THE NEXT WAR. It made me smile because, as a Quaker kid, I was already against the next war. Still am, actually. Today, it seems to me that the moral imperative of already being against the next war carries a special weight. If we are against it, we ought to prevent it. Verdad?
There are 110 armed conflicts in the world currently, according to the Geneva Academy. It’s not just Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine. However, somewhere, possibly quite soon (probably in my lifetime if I stay off of motorcycles), the planet will tip over two degrees of climate change into runaway climate chaos. Massive migration, food shortages, water scarcity, uninhabitability, epidemics, and economic failure will lead to an increase in humankind’s least useful response to crises—war. Huh! Good God, y’all. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’. Say it again.
[Incidentally, violent coups and war are NOT how national leaders suspend democratic process and extend their increasingly despotic and war-prone rule these days. Gradual erosion of functional government (I’m talking to you, USA), and the rise of a dynamic new leader who can exploit a crisis are the formula for dictatorship since the mid-20th Century. Any combination of the above climate generated crises might provide a leader with the conditions to suspend democratic process indefinitely. Or, they might just make up a crisis of their own.]
So, if we are already against the next war (I am!), we need to think prophylactically about the causes of war. And we need to think both inside and outside of “the box” of conventional ideas. A sustainable, war-free world isn’t just the world we have today with manageable climate, a tofu chicken in every pot, and not too much war. It is a paradigm shift; what used to be called a revelation.
Yes, it’s a transformed planet on the way, Friends. It’s a world that has grown out of the obsession with national boundaries, has a shared governance and agreements, where all nations have disarmed, where the global economy and society has been transformed into indefinite ecological thriving and we have outgrown racial, cultural, gendered, species, and religious enmity.
Perhaps you have known a small child, and watched them growing up. Do you remember one day when the child cried because another child had fallen down and hurt themselves and was crying? When the child you know offered to share the teddy bear instead of running off into their own corner with it? We’ve stepped through this developmental stage thousands of ways in different times and places, we humans. Now, it’s time for the whole earth community to do it collectively. It’s the end of the world as we know (and love) it, and I feel fine.
An evolutionary leap in consciousness is ripening in tandem with the rise of global harm and chaos fueled by fear and greed. If we are already against the next war, some deep, collective leading of the Spirit may be calling to us. Are we listening for it? Are we ready to put our faith into practice?