Facing into Climate Change: The Possible Impossible

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans (pause for mocking laughter) and heal the planet. MY promise is to help you and your family.” Mitt Romney, acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, 2012. Let us leave aside Clint Eastwood's speech at the RNC, 2012, which was anything but the ramblings of an elder in his twilight years, and concentrate on the single most troubling, misleading, false statement made in that evening; a statement made by the Republican presidential candidate himself, and said in way that was meant to bring laughs - in other words, addressing global climate change is not even worthy of direct criticism but rather only of mocking derision. Here is what is wrong with Mr. Romney's statement, in which he promises to help me and my family rather than address global climate change as our President, Mr. Obama promised to do four years ago: first, our president has done very little to fulfill that promise, and secondly, and more importantly, the best thing either candidate could do for me and my family and you and yours would be to make climate change the focus of our great resources of creativity now, this moment, and continuing for as long as it takes to minimize the catastrophe that is imminent. There is no need for me to try and convince you, or the American public in the main about the seriousness of the climate crisis. I say this because of how studiously we are ignoring the problem. Such paralysis and denial in the face of evidence supporting the reality of climate change, evidence which is abundant, even overwhelming, and which has been coming for decades, is proof not that we don't believe in the problem, but rather that we believe and are perplexed and afraid. We should wonder what is behind the social dislocations of states like Arizona and Texas. These states, as filled with great Americans as any, continue to make unaccountable social choices because, beneath these choices, relevant to us, within our species, is the terrible subconscious knowledge of being on the front line of climate change, with intolerable heat and drought setting in as the norm rather than the exception. And, rather than face the degradation of the earth where they live, these strange, out of character choices are made on the human level. The fine people of such impacted states are making odd choices because they are averting their gazes from that which makes their hearts constrict. There is no need for fear, even though the problem of climate change is unprecedented. We are a species whose capacity for inventiveness outstrips our tendencies for complacency and stubborn stolidity. We are a people who revel and take joy in meeting problems and solving them, more than we like lamenting the state of affairs. And we are a people who have a nearly unbounded capacity for compassion and love, for children, for the poor, for other species and for "this fragile earth, our island home." The brilliant scholar, Peter Kingsley, has written that for the ancient Mongolian shamans and for Tibetan Buddhists of the same time period, facing the fact that a situation was impossible was the prelude for finding a way through. As long, they believed, as we refused to call something impossible, we would go on with small, inadequate fixes for the problem. We look at the problem of climate change squarely and acknowledge that we have never faced anything like it in history, then we are ready to do the impossible. It is time to lower the levels of the oceans and heal the planet for you and your families. Marc Andrus Episcopal Bishop of California