Dominion and Denial:

Ethics and Climate Change

Kent Price
UN Sunday, October 24, 2010 UU Congregation of Castine

The United Nations was established on October 24, 1945, exactly 65

years ago today. And each year on or around this date, people and
institutions around the world celebrate the UN’s birthday, though with
considerable differences in fervor. Indeed, only recently has the UN
risen in esteem in the US, after years of bashing and abuse by the likes
of the John Birch Society, the second Bush administration, and our
notorious former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Nor is this
attitude safely relegated to the dustbin of history. The Tea Party
people seem to have it in for the UN. Even here in Maine, the current
platform of the Republican Party directly disparages the UN and the
party’s anti-UN advertising sounds as if it were lifted straight out of the
1950s.

Regardless of, or maybe because of, right-wing antipathy, I am here

this morning as a cheerleader for the United Nations. Not only does
the organization serve as the focal point of international debate, a
platform for presidents and prime ministers, on dozens of fronts, often
at the risk of their lives, UN people work for justice, feed the hungry,
prevent epidemics, mitigate disasters, safeguard human rights, and
keep the peace. If it did not already exist, we would have to invent
something quite like the United Nations.

Unitarian Universalists need to recognize how much we share the

ideals of the UN. The Preamble of the UN Charter reads like our Seven
Principles, and a Canadian Unitarian, John Humphries, drafted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With a concern for the welfare
of all peoples and for the nonviolent resolution of conflict, the United
Nations in manifold ways is a secular extension of our most cherished
beliefs.

So it is not surprising to find that UU’s long have been associated with
the UN and that our national Association has been represented there
for nearly fifty years. I am here this morning as Vice President of the
Board of Directors of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office,
and it’s my privilege to tell you that we are making a difference, in
New York City and around the world--a difference far out of proportion
to our numbers.

Last year a delegation of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s)

approached the UU-UNO for help in revitalizing the NGO Committee on
Sustainable Development. As the delegation was interested in climate
change, our Executive Director, Bruce Knotts, had the perfect
suggestion—my colleague on the Board, Dr. Jan Dash, a Ph.D. in
Theoretical Physics with a long-standing interest in climate change.
Jan now serves on the CSD executive committee and served as its, and
UU-UNO’s, delegate to the major climate conference in Copenhagen
last fall. He has developed a comprehensive Web portal on climate
issues–see climate.uu-uno.org--and he has spearheaded a year-long
focus for us on climate change, including this UN Sunday theme—the
ethical aspects of climate change. Just last week he hand-delivered to
Al Gore a Committee on Sustainable Development statement on
climate change pegged to the upcoming conference in Cancun,
Mexico. A copy is in today’s order of service.

So, with that lengthy introduction, let me turn to the subject at hand.
Just how did humans get into this climate change mess anyway? I
begin at the beginning.

After creating Adam and Eve, God said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the
fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing
that moves upon the earth.”

“Subdue and dominate.” Given those marching orders, it’s no wonder

that humans immediately got off on the wrong foot. To dyed-in-the-
wool creationists, what God intended for Man, by which he meant
people, is crystal clear. Just what don’t you understand, Liberals?

“Dominion” does mean “Supreme authority,” according to a primary

definition in Webster’s. But implicit in all supreme authority is absolute
responsibility. “Dominion” does not necessarily imply “domination,”
let alone exploitation or extermination. Dominion can mean—should
mean—stewardship of the earth, a value shared by all faith traditions.

As Bill McKibben points out in a little book called The Comforting

Whirlwind,
“… most interpreters agree that God, who after all had gone to the
trouble of creating myriad species and who had called them ‘good,’ did
not understand dominion to include thoughtless destruction for short-
term gain.”

Yet here we are, faced with a slow-moving crisis that threatens all life
as we know it. Here are the facts.

In 1750, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, people lived in

communities that were largely self sustaining. Populations were more
or less stable, and people pretty much lived their whole lives not far
from where they were born. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere was 279 parts per million (PPM).

Today, after centuries of improvements in public health, with vastly

larger populations working in carbon-powered economies and driving
many millions of cars, carbon dioxide measures 389 PPM, at least 39
PPM more than the outside limits of what has assured life as we know
it.

Keeping in mind that one must not confuse weather, which is

immediate, with climate, which is long-range, and that perturbations in
trends can and do occur, still it is painfully clear which way the wind is
blowing, to borrow from Bob Dylan. Consider these current
developments.
• Much of Pakistan still is under water after the most destructive
floods in history. 20 million people were displaced and their lives
disrupted, perhaps for a generation or more.
• A chunk the size of Manhattan broke off an iceberg in Greenland.
• New York City experienced the hottest summer on record, in the
midst of the hottest year and the hottest decade ever.
• “The fire next time” came to Russia this year, with a heat wave
aiding and abetting unprecedented wildfires and choking smoke.
• On September 27, it was 113 degrees F. in Los Angeles—an all-
time record in a place known for warm temperatures.

All around the world we find extreme weather—floods, droughts,

hurricanes, and changing landscapes. Fertile land is becoming arid,
arid land is becoming desert, desert is becoming dust-bowl. The
evidence that climate is changing is all around us, and it will only
become worse. Indeed, it will persist, in our human terms, forever—
many thousands of years, according to Curt Stager, a sometime
colleague of Paul Mayewski at the University of Maine’s Climate
Change Institute.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Prize-

winning body of the United Nations grouping some 2,000 climate
scientists, is firm in its warning:
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident
from observations of increases in global average air and ocean
temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global
average sea level.”
Page 5, Summary for Policymakers, IPCC Science Report 2007

This assessment is no surprise, of course, as we have known about

global warming for decades now. Indeed, in 1978 I myself had a
 letter on the subject published in the Wall Street Journal.

Tim Flannery, in a 2005 book entitled The Weather Makers, wrote,

“In effect, 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth’s
carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the
environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is only
sustained by plundering our capital base. The plundering takes the
form of overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing pasture until it
becomes desert, destroying forests, and polluting our oceans and
atmosphere….”

Nor is this sort of warning solely the province of organic farmers

who vote for Green Party candidates. In February this year the
Department of Defense issued its Quadrennial Defense Review, a
periodic assessment of national security issues facing the United
States. The Pentagon stated:
“The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal
agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already
being observed in every region of the world, including the United
States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are
increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level,
rapidly retreating glaciers, and thawing permafrost…

“Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that

climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the
world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the
further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will
contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of
disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.”

And let me add that the changes we are talking about also are all but
sure to lead to wars for access to natural resources. Many observers
think that conflicts over water may dwarf those over oil.

So why have we humans more or less continued on in a march toward

suicide? Part of the answer lies in our nature. As British writer George
Monbiot points out, “we can contemplate a transformation of anyone’s
existence but our own.”

Part of it is economic—oil and natural gas industries comprise the most

profitable undertakings in all of history, and fossil fuels are part and
parcel of myriad other products and industries, such as plastics and
fertilizers.

Part of it is philosophical—the creation story come home to roost.

Many individuals, businesses, and associations really do believe that
they have the right—indeed, the obligation-- to amass whatever
resources they can, and that it is legally and morally right so to do.

And related to all this is politics. If people are reluctant to hear that
they need to radically change their lives, that oil and gas will have to
cost more, that they can coast along and bury their collective head in
the sands of complacency, it’s a safe bet that politicians will seek to
pander to delusion and denial.

Climate change denial is not wholly a creature of the Right (Alexander

Cockburn comes to mind on the Left), but from George Will on down
the IQ scale it seems that Republicans are leading the charge to defeat
any attempt to address the clear threats of a changing climate.
Indeed, did you know that not a single one of the 37 Republicans
running for the U.S. Senate supports climate action, despite science,
despite the Pentagon, despite natural disasters all around the world?
Not one, not even John McCain, who a few years ago did favor climate
action. Such is the power of short-term self-interest.

Here at home, gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage reportedly calls

climate science “a hoax.” What is one to make of this willful ignorance?
Sooner or later, reality will come crashing down. As theologian Sallie
McFague writes,
“Regardless of where one lives on the earth, and regardless of one’s
status, everyone and everything will be affected, for climate is the
quintessential example of interrelationship and interdependence. It
may well be that the threat of global warming will be the opening for
Westerners to begin to see themselves differently: not as self-sufficient
individuals who can barricade themselves safely in gated communities,
but as creatures dependent on a temperate global climate, as are all
living things….
This new picture of ourselves is especially at odds with those who
suppose that ‘according to Genesis’ human beings are to subdue and
dominate all others. This picture reminds us that we have been de-
centered as God’s darlings, and re-centered as God’s partners, the
ones who can help work for a just and sustainable planet.”

Underlining this observation is Albert Einstein, who wrote:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole of nature in its beauty."
This sounds like a simple task, but it’s a hard sell in today’s America.
As Andrew Bacevich notes in his current hit book, Washington Rules,
contemporary America has a meager concept of what it means to be a
citizen. He says, “That conception privileges individual choice above
collective responsibility and immediate gratification over long-term
well-being. For Americans today, duties and obligations are few.”

Our civic religion, it seems, is defined not by citizenship but by

consumption. As Bill McKibben points out sardonically, nearly every
politician on earth agrees that economic growth is the bedrock of
civilization. But this notion could not be more wrong headed. Instead
of infinite growth, says McKibben, “we need quickly to figure out ways
to guarantee decent lives for everyone without needing constant
expansion.”

After all, said Kenneth Boulding, himself a former president of the

American Economic Association, “Only mad men and economists
believe in infinite growth in a finite world.”

At the UUA’s General Assembly in 2006, in St. Louis, Mark and I and
about 4,000 of our close personal friends gathered to do the
association’s business, including adopting a Statement of Conscience
on climate change, which concluded like this:
“Given our human capacity to reflect and act upon our own lives as
well as the condition of the world, we accept with humility and
determination our responsibility to remedy and mitigate global
warming/climate change through innovation, cooperation, and self-
discipline. We undertake this work for the preservation of life on
Earth.”

That’s our task—not dominion over all other life forms on the planet,
not denial that we face an enormous challenge for millennia, but care,
compassion, and preservation, to the very best of our ability.

*****
Let me conclude with a plea for your support of the UU United Nations
Office. Launched as a continental membership organization by Adlai
Stevenson nearly 50 years ago, the UU UNO is growing in impact and
influence within the UN community and we are aiming at growing
within Unitarian Universalism, as well. We are an independent
membership organization and we receive no annual subsidy from the
UUA. We do enjoy the enthusiastic support of UUA President Peter
Morales and his administration, however, as you will note in the insert
in today’s Order of Service, and I hope you will join him in keeping our
flame alive. We need your support as a member, both financial and
spiritual, if we are to continue our important work in human rights, in
education, in peace and justice, and in confronting climate change.
Thank you.