TEMPERATURES ARE AGAIN breaking records around the world, a now grimly familiar annual event. During an early summer heat dome over much of the country, a much-shared video showed a car in Missouri go airborne as it hit pavement severely buckled by the extreme heat. 2024 was officially the first year that the world eclipsed a 1.5 degrees Celsius surface temperature rise above the pre-industrial standard — busting through the ceiling for temperature rise that was agreed to in the Paris climate accords. Worse, the Trump administration seems determined to reverse as many of the Biden administration’s climate accomplishments as possible — undoing progress that, while insufficient to the scale of the crisis, was still a step in the right direction.
Rather than despair, we can instead press forward.
As Christians, how do we reckon with the reality of the climate crisis, not as a future hypothetical but a present reality? A text that comes to mind is Psalm 24:1-2: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for God founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”
When I think about this text, I feel both righteous anger and grief for what human beings, each of us created in God’s image, have wrought upon God’s world. Yet at the same time, I have long believed that we have a responsibility as believers to be prisoners of hope — followers and instruments of a Lord and liberator who is alive and continually at work in the world to make all things new. As the recently departed Walter Brueggemann put it, “God is doing something lively in the world ... it may be slow, but it is very sure ... a new world is coming into being.”
From that perspective, I find it hopeful that in the U.S., and many other parts of the world, transitions to clean, renewable energy and technologies such as electric cars are now happening rapidly and in ways that no political leader can unilaterally reverse. While the U.N. now estimates the trajectory of expected warming to be between 2.6 C and 3.1 C by 2100, it’s worth keeping in mind that when the Paris climate agreement was signed, the Earth was on track for a 4 C temperature rise — far more cataclysmic than the path we’re on today.
Rather than assuming our climate future is hopeless because present policies fall short of what’s needed to address the crisis or are actively counterproductive, we can recognize the real impact that decades of work by climate activists, scientists, policy makers, and the decisions of everyday people have had and let it inspire us to keep going. This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Pope Francis’ seminal encyclical on the environment (Laudato Si’); let’s join with people of faith around the world heeding that call to each of us to work to reverse, or at least slow, climate change. Despite how we’ve so often ignored the cries of the Earth, God continues to love us unconditionally, extending the promise of doing a new thing on our ravaged planet through us. And that has the potential to change everything. Rather than despair, we can instead press forward, redoubling our commitment both individually and collectively — even as we push relentlessly for a sea change in policy and political priorities.
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on Bluesky @revadamtaylor.
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