In a new British film about to premier in U.S. theatres, the opening narration cites news reports about extraordinary weather events: a 101 degree day in London, record breaking drought and fires in Australia, deserts in China expanding at the rate of 3 miles per year, 700 dead after record flooding in India, 18 million affected by flooding in parts of Africa, dozens of Antarctic ice shelves collapsing faster than anyone predicted. All took place in 2007 and 2008.
The film, set in 2055 and titled "The Age of Stupid" portrays likely scenarios in a world ravaged by worst-case impacts of climate change. Its message, Sean Pool's online post suggests, asks why humanity didn't heed the wake up calls and take needed action, "while we still had the chance."
Threats to human health from climate change [was] the subject of Vice President Gore's lecture [March 26th] at East Tennessee State University. The World Health Organization has sounded warnings about these long ago -- about spread of dangerous insects and other infectious disease vectors as temperature barriers to them retreat, about more cardiovascular mortality and respiratory illnesses as summer temperatures rise and heat extremes become more frequent, about malnutrition and heightened disease vulnerability as crops fail in droughts or are lost in floods.
In Copenhagen earlier this month, nearly 2000 scientists from 70 countries reviewed a large body of new research on the ongoing pace and impacts of climate change. Their conclusions might be summarized in a few stark words -- much worse than we thought. For instance, a 2009 peer-reviewed study in Science raises the specter of Antarctic ice losses driving sea levels up 21 feet in the Northern Hemisphere, threatening New York, London and Tokyo with total inundation. It looks as though worst-case projections are unfolding and risk of irreversible climate shift is increasing, rather than a milder and slower path as hoped for. Inaction now, so the scientists' message to decision makers, is inexcusable, especially as many policy tools and approaches are available to deal effectively with the challenge. Action must be pursued rapidly and vigorously, however, if worst health effects and other costs from climate change are to be avoided.
In his famous essay on population growth and food resources, Thomas Malthus postulated that effective preventive action "is peculiar to man, and arises from that distinctive superiority in his reasoning faculties which enables him to calculate distant consequences." In that the opponents deny or ignore the consequences of climate change, the "Age of Stupid" film seems rather aptly titled.
That tragic age need not and must not come.
A Commandment of Caring for Nature
For more than a century, as damage from increasing industrial use of its resources became evident, influential voices have raised warnings and admonitions of need for an ethic of caring for the natural world.
President Theodore Roosevelt spoke of a moral duty of "jealously safeguarding and preserving" the forests and waters, wild creatures and scenery, these being the birthright of future generations and the indispensable foundation of well-being for future people. Aldo Lepold, in Sand County Almanac articulated a vision of a "land ethic," with humans acknowledging themselves to be members of a community of interdependent parts in nature and, as individuals, holding themselves responsible for the health of the whole. Europe's Albert Schweitzer saw the command of this ethic to be one of love and respect for all creation, of a "reverence for life." It entails, he held, an obligation "to do as much good as we possibly can do to all creatures in all sorts of circumstances," without which no religion or philosophy could truly call itself such.
Another American conservation leader urged, even more directly, a religious duty of concern for the natural environment. Walter Lowdermilk, a high official in the Soil Conservatio Service under President Franklin Roosevelt, wrote of the need of adoption of an Eleventh Commandment to that effect. "Moses was inspired," he argued, "to deliver to the Children of Israel the Ten Commandments to regulate man's relation to his Creator and to his fellow men. These guides of conduct have stood the test of time for more than 3,000 years. But Moses, leading the Israelites in the wilderness, failed to foresee the great need of the future for an Eleventh Commandment to regular man's relation and responsibility to Mother Earth which must nourish all generations."
Could Moses have anticipated, he continued, such waste of land and manmade deserts as have resulted from forest clearing and bad agricultural practices in many parts of the world, including "our own United States," he would no doubt have set forth an Eleventh Commandment. It would "complete the trinity of man's responsibilities: to his Creator, his fellow men, and to Mother Earth." Under the Commandment's "Thou shalt" terms, man's inheritance of the earth would be conditioned upon being a faithful steward through "conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation." In penalty for failure of stewardship, man would see "the fertile fields become sterile stones and gullies, and his descendants decrease and live in poverty or vanish from the face of the earth."
Growth in human numbers makes it urgent to end inconsiderate use of the earth, Lowdermilk urged, since "fully two billions of souls" must be fed and no free land remains. Seventy years later, our numbers have tripled and cropland per person is shrunk to one-sixth of a soccer field. Now facing new, additional threats to the earth's water and food lands through forces in a destabilized climate, we humans, everywhere, must adopt the Eleventh Commandment if our prospects and hope for the future are to be assured.
A Country Rag
