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What Do We Owe Our Children? A Livable Climate, a Life-Giving Earth

1.  33 years ago the first report on climate change was issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warning that emissions, mainly from the coal, oil and gas, and cement industries, would threaten the climate and biodiversity stability that we need in order to thrive.  Since then, global emissions have increased by a whopping 54%, with the predicted effects of global warming, escalating frequency and severity of flooding, droughts, storms and fires arriving several decades earlier than the research showed.  Records going back to the 1850s reveal that July was the hottest month on record, worldwide, with scientists at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center stating that the next three months will likely be, on average, warmer than normal, contributing to negative consequences for humans.  Urge policy makers to work toward alleviating climate-induced suffering as they also reduce reliance on fossil fuels. 

 

2. According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, cases of disease linked to mosquitos, ticks, and fleas tripled in the U.S. between 2004 and 2016, due largely to warmer winters, autumns and springs that allow pathogens to remain active for longer periods of time.  As deforestation, mining, agriculture, and urban sprawl are contributing to biodiversity loss, ticks, mosquitoes, bacteria, algae, and fungi are expanding their historical ranges to adapt to rapid climate change.  At the same time, populations of species that humans rely on for sustenance are dwindling and getting pushed into smaller and smaller bits of habitat, creating hotspots for diseases that take a serious toll on human health.   Animals moving to higher, cooler locations bring diseases with them, and as they fill smaller niches diseases pass more easily among them, and eventually can make the leap to humans, according to the nonprofit Conservation International.  We will need governments, NGOs, medical providers, doctors, and the public to work together for a plan of action.  

 

3. Research on ice core samples, tree trunk rings, fossils and lake bed sediment are showing June and July to plausibly be the hottest months experienced in 120,000 years, according to scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere around the world, although this is not yet a definitive number.  Climate scientists at NASA find unprecedented, but not surprising, record-breaking heat and weather extremes in the U.S., Europe, and China, for example, that have threatened human and non-human lives from too much heat, rain, wildfires and smoke, and higher water temperatures.  Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes that temperatures in the atmosphere, Arctic and the world's oceans are at historically high levels, with over 1,000 fires burning across Canada.  Ask yourself: How can we help our wounded Earth, and make it sustainable for our children and grandchildren?  

 

4. Scientists widely agree that rapid and extreme climate change, with its impacts of wildfires, droughts, extreme rainfall and heat waves, and sea-level rise, could not happen without human-caused activity, mainly the burning of coal, oil and gas.  Journalist Jeff Goodell, long a chronicler of climate change, has written " The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet," which has two themes: 1) the planetary large-scale theme of heat as the driving force behind the climate crisis; and 2) the personal scale, which may make a difference in how people believe in or perceive climate change.  More heat will create demand for more energy for cooling buildings, which will make the climate change worse, while climate-aggravated conflicts drive the migration and immigration that is creating political instability throughout the world.  Climate change displaces some 20 million people every year, creating uncontrolled movement no one can prepare for, which will touch nearly everyone's lives as the effects of climate change worsen.  Goodell writes that people may be more willing to acknowledge climate change as a real thing when its effects come closer to them personally.  

 

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Laura Raedeke

EcoFaith Network NE MN Team
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, MN

Northeastern Minnesota Synod

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