An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary and book by former Vice President Al Gore, frames global warming, it's causes and effects, and helps put this worldwide issue into perspective. Gore's supporting website tells us that, "Carbon dioxide and other gasses warm the surface of our planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere and temperatures are rising." Increased temperatures mean adverse effects on the earth in weather patterns, glacial meltdowns and plant and animal life which we are already witnessing. What we can expect is more heat waves, more drought and increased sea levels at our coasts that will force human beings and animals to migrate to less threatening areas.
Gore's premise in asking us to pay attention to global warming and its effects isn't to frighten us to the point of paralysis, but to nudge us to see the truth, assess our own contribution to the problem and to take action to change our own behaviors so that we can collectively reduce the amount of carbon we are dumping into our atmosphere. Gore's philosophy is two fold. We need to take global warming out of the political arena and focus on it as a moral issue. We also must realize that between denial of the problem and the despair of the destruction we have caused there is the simple phrase, "Do something." Global warming is reversible if we recognize the truth, claim responsibility for our part in causing it and correcting it, and then acting to correct it.
While talking about his work, Gore has mentioned that the Biblical truth of humanity being caregivers of God's creation resonates with him as a person of faith. "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth (Genesis 1:26)." While we are given dominion as caretakers, stewards of God's abundant creation, the earth is still God's domain. We are holding our planet in trust for each other and the generations that will follow us.
Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of what it means to pay attention to the rhythms of nature and what our mutual home has to share with all of us. We have become very adept, particularly here in the United States, at feeling entitled to take as much as we can get. We are three percent of our world's population, and yet we use twenty-five percent of our world's resources. Why? We persist in believing we should be able to have whatever we want when we want it, and this belief extends to our energy use across the board. A perfect example is our American response to rising gasoline costs. We alternately complain about the price of a gallon of gasoline and then say it won't affect our driving habits. We also seem to have no understanding that the rest of the world pays far more than we do for gasoline and all other energy resources. Many developing nations only have electricity sporadically through the day. Energy is costly, both for our pocket books and for the earth.
"We know that all things work together for good for those who love God who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28)." Paul's words to the church at Rome are never more true and applicable then they are today. I go back to Gore's understanding of where we are right now with global warming. We can deny the reality, despair over our misuse of God's gift of the earth to us, or we can do something. We can learn to walk and ride our bikes more often because, as my mother often said, "It won't kill you." We can turn off lights and computers when we aren't using them. We can eat fresh, local foods instead of frozen foods that take ten times more energy to produce. We can turn our thermostats down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer. Everything we do to reverse the effects of global warming will make a difference and heal the Earth. It is not too late. Yet.
We are each contributing to the problem of global warming and we must each contribute to the solution. We owe this to ourselves, each other and to God to care for what we have been given. We have a moral obligation and a responsibility to our faith to leave our earth in better shape then we found it. We know better and we must do better, or we will feel the consequences. And then it may be too late.