God Grant Us the Wisdom to Act in Time

Narsasuaq, Greenland -- The bright blue icebergs that dot Eric's Fjord don't calve from a local glacier. They have been carried by ocean currents from the East Coast of Greenland all the way to this southwestern inlet where Norse settlement of Greenland began. Leif Erickson was seeking this harbor when he was blown off course to Newfoundland and "discovered" America. In summer, the icebergs from East Greenland sometimes pack the fjord and interfere with navigation. But in the winter -- until recently -- the fjord froze solid, making it Greenland's winter highway system for sleds and snowmobiles. In the last decade, however, the ice has softened and local residents are trapped in the dark polar nights in their little villages, unable to reach the outside world, visit their friends, or often get medical attention.

On this day, blue ice still glitters against green fields through the observation windows of our ship as Patriarch Bartholomew solemnly closes the six-day Symposium. As he speaks, I am struck by the varied journeys that brought people here to contemplate the fate of the climate. There is, for example, Massoumeh Ebtekar, one of the Iranian students who seized the US Embassy, and later became Minister of the Environment in the Khatami government. Now serving on the Teheran City Council, she watches as the current Iranian government, filled with hardliners, tries to roll back Khatami's environmental legacy. Svend Auken, former Danish Environment Minister, who worked closely with the Sierra Club and other NGOs to strengthen the original Kyoto Protocol, is now witnessing the new Danish government slash spending on environmental protection. Vandana Shiva, from Dehra Dun, India, is striving to undo the India-US nuclear agreement that she sees as a stalking horse for American nuclear manufacturers. Cardinal Emeritus Theodore McCarrick, representing the Vatican, spent most of his life in the parishes of the poor, in both Central America and Harlem, and sees climate change first and foremost as a threat to his flock and an affront to his denomination's mission to the weak. Jens Hansen, from the University of Aarhus, was here to report on his new findings that, across the Arctic, Inuit and other indigenous women are having twice as many girls as boys, probably because of very high levels of PCB pollution from emissions further south concentrating in the Arctic. Antonio Nobre, a biologist from Brazil, sees in climate change a huge threat to the biodiversity of his beloved Amazon, but also sees saving the Amazon as a way of curbing global warming.

Addressing the assemblage, the Patriarch is direct. He says climate change is our time's "kairos", a Greek term for a moment of eternal consequence. He compares this juncture in time to the other great kairos events in Christian history: for Paul, his conversion; for Mary, the Annunciation; for Christ, the crucifixion. A kairos, he says, makes its own demands: demands we are not free to ignore. We do not have time, he warns, to balance the need for action against its possible risks. "The sea is warming, the ice is melting, and the catastrophe already visiting the Arctic will not stop here."

He closes: "God grant us the wisdom to act in time."

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Comments

[oldpotsmuggler]

What's striking to me is that I realize how much the Sierra Club has to gain from our nation engaging in The Second American Constitutional Convention, yet the Sierra Club shows no awareness of this. The decision to be made to hold the Convention requires change flowing from the base upwards. However, what the actual purpose of the Convention is is to create change from the top down, and that is exactly what needs to happen for the new age of environmentalism in our country to be born.

The dynamic for this is actually more straightforward than might seem to be the case. I’m not sure if people are really less satisfied with public affairs than at any point in my life, or if we’re just bitching more. It strikes me that it is the former. If so, there is a lot of latent dissatisfaction available to be tapped into.

To rally support for a constitutional convention knowledge of the power that we will be taking back from organized government and temporarily depositing in the hands of the citizenry has to be broadly taught. Once properly understood, this dynamic can be counted on to have substantial appeal. To get a sense of control in public affairs that is currently lacking will be a hugely popular prospect.

It is because of this that the vast majority of people will become invested in the convention process, once it is underway, to the point of needing to have their daily report of progress. They will, through this exercise, become better observers and more accomplished thinkers, and that will redound to the benefit of all “causes” that rely upon a higher level of enlightenment for their popular support.

Sadly, the Sierra Club has a public perception of still being far more of a niche entity than there is really any excuse for. If and when we manage to raise the awareness level of the general society, the Sierra Club will finally take on the stature required for them to have the level of success that a healthy planet demands.

[veracitatus]

'He closes: "God grant us the wisdom to act in time."'

As I said, we are only human. Evolution has not granted us the kind of wisdom that it takes to think and act globally. But it may yet, in time.

V.