FOR MANY OF us, this summer felt like a cosmic wake-up call about climate change. Fire, floods, hurricanes, and other cataclysmic signs of our rapidly heating planet seemed to offer near-apocalyptic warnings that we’re approaching a make-or-break point, especially for those already vulnerable because of poverty or geographic location. We almost didn’t need the scientists—such as those who produced the dire U.N. report in August—to once again sound the alarm, as they have done so many times over the past several decades, nature already having done the job in her impossible-to-ignore fashion.
Anger seems an apt response to global warming, given that the world’s climate crisis isn’t an unavoidable act of nature; rather, it’s rooted in intentional actions by people seeking power and wealth. The main perpetrators—including ExxonMobil and its GOP enablers—knew about the causes of climate change more than four decades ago and, as Scientific American put it, “spent millions to promote misinformation” and manipulate public opinion. Some might call such duplicity “crimes against humanity” and “indictable behavior.”
Given the immensity of the challenge before us, and the severity of the threat, it’s not surprising that Christians are among those asking (if, for some, belatedly): “What can I do?” Individuals, congregations, denominations—church bodies at all levels—are joining, and sometimes even leading, their secular counterparts in seeking out things they can do that can make a difference. One such action is “the pledge”—a promise to ask the question, as part of every single decision that is made, and before every action: Will this take us toward, or move us away from, the use of fossil fuel? The climate pledge echoes a commitment made by some U.S. Catholic bishops in the 1980s to predicate every decision with the question, “How will this affect those who are poor?” Now, with the Earth itself in peril, we must apply the spirit of that commitment to protecting all of humanity.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that we turn away from the many intersecting issues of our time, from battling racism, police violence, and militarism to seeking justice for people who immigrate, who are poor, or who are otherwise marginalized. All these “issues”—all these people—are threatened by climate change, and often more so because of their already vulnerable status. Our task, even as we continue our work on all issues, is to ask that a priori first question: Will this move us away from fossil fuel use or toward it? That question can and should be applied to decisions large and small: from choosing to bike to work on a drizzly winter morn to divesting from the fossil fuel industry, from the type of car I drive and the way I vote to whether a city or state builds a new road or invests in alternative transportation. Every decision.
Obviously, the pledge is mostly a matter of consciousness, of in-the-moment awareness of the accumulated consequences of our actions—especially, of course, the actions of corporations and governments. And just as obviously, efforts like this will continue to be opposed by those who have made enormous profits from fossil fuels. But until that question becomes as natural as breathing, our fate is very literally in the balance.
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