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Published on Friday, May 25, 2012 by Common Dreams

Global CO2 Emissions at Record High

– Common Dreams staff

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported yesterday that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions hit a record high in 2011 and that the probability of reducing the average global temperature increase to 2°C is becoming more out of reach.

(photo: Nick Humphries)

Climate Scientist James Hansen has called even a target of 2 degrees of warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.”

“When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet,” Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief economist told Reuters.

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IEA: Global carbon-dioxide emissions increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to record high

Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).

The 450 Scenario of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011, which sets out an energy pathway consistent with a 50% chance of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 2°C, requires CO2 emissions to peak at 32.6 Gt no later than 2017, i.e. just 1.0 Gt above 2011 levels. The 450 Scenario sees a decoupling of CO2 emissions from global GDP, but much still needs to be done to reach that goal as the rate of growth in CO2 emissions in 2011 exceeded that of global GDP. “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close,” said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol.

To read original link, click here.

In the Easter story, Thomas asks to touch Christ’s wounds so he will know whether this is the same Jesus who was tortured a few days earlier. Jesus allows Thomas to poke the wounds. If the resurrection were a literal event, Christ’s wounds might mean that we would still carry our wounds into the afterlife. Eternity would not be as much fun if our risen bodies still carried scars and wounds. Heaven would look less like an idyllic home, and more like a hospital emergency room.

Because I believe all theological speech is symbolic, not literal, I believe we needn’t get snagged on such details. Resurrection stories are symbols of the life process. Such stories are not literal glimpses into another world, but symbolic revelations about this world. In scripture, a particular story is told to illustrate a universal truth about what it means to be human.

So what would it mean symbolically for the resurrected Christ to still carry wounds? Perhaps this particular story is addressing the universal pain human beings suffer in our own lives. Perhaps Christ’s wounds symbolize that our own pain is part of what brings us to fullness of life. Events that hurt us and even maim us can also bring us to a greater intimacy with others.

Perhaps resurrection means dying to our private dreams and rising to our common life with every other being. In that case, resurrection would be a symbol of something very real. It would symbolize the reality out of which we are born and into which we die. We are the sparks; life is the flint. We are never really separate, never really alone. We are always essentially that one life.

This does not mean that some invisible instructor named God sends pain so that we will learn a lesson, but it could mean that our wounds are not pointless. Just as the forest fire breaks open a pinecone to bring new life to the forest, so do our own broken hearts open up new possibilities of intimacy for humankind. When we realize the pointlessness of our own separate lives we can either choose despair or enlargement. We can wallow in our wounds or we can resurrect into the common life.

In the Easter story, Thomas asks to touch Christ’s wounds so he will know whether this is the same Jesus who was tortured a few days earlier. Jesus allows Thomas to poke the wounds. If the resurrection were a literal event, Christ’s wounds might mean that we would still carry our wounds into the afterlife. Eternity would not be as much fun if our risen bodies still carried scars and wounds. Heaven would look less like an idyllic home, and more like a hospital emergency room.

Because I believe all theological speech is symbolic, not literal, I believe we needn’t get snagged on such details. Resurrection stories are symbols of the life process. Such stories are not literal glimpses into another world, but symbolic revelations about this world. In scripture, a particular story is told to illustrate a universal truth about what it means to be human.

So what would it mean symbolically for the resurrected Christ to still carry wounds? Perhaps this particular story is addressing the universal pain human beings suffer in our own lives. Perhaps Christ’s wounds symbolize that our own pain is part of what brings us to fullness of life. Events that hurt us and even maim us can also bring us to a greater awareness.

Perhaps resurrection means dying to our private dreams and rising to our common life with every other being. In that case, resurrection would be a symbol of something very real. It would symbolize the reality out of which we are born and into which we die. We are the sparks; life is the flint. We are never really separate, never really alone. We are always essentially that one life.

This does not mean that some invisible instructor named God sends pain so that we will learn a lesson, but it could mean that our wounds are not pointless. Just as the forest fire breaks open a pinecone to bring new life to the forest, so do our own broken hearts open up new possibilities of intimacy for humankind. When we realize the pointlessness of our own separate lives we can either choose despair or enlargement. We can wallow in our wounds or we can resurrect into the common life.

A comedy group has put together a pretend PFA.
To view, click here.

Mary Mallon survived typhus when she was young. She did not show any symptoms from the disease, but carried its bacteria in her body. Mary was a kindly person, but the problem was, she was also a cook. Over the course of her life fifty-three people may have died as a result of exposure to the deadly disease. Throughout her life, Mary piously denied any connection between her cooking and those deaths.

Bad religion also kills. The violent history of religion should call us all to a ruthless examination of our core ideas. Sometime back, a local seminary celebrated John Calvin’s 500th birthday by dedicating their monthly magazine to him. One of the articles wished to dispel negative beliefs about John Calvin, for example, the belief that he was sadistic. Calvin played a big role in the execution of the Unitarian Servetus. The article said, “Calvin argued that Servetus should not be burned at the stake. The conventional picture of Calvin cruelly twirling his moustache like Snidely Whiplash while Servetus burned is baseless. Calvin urged the courts to spare Servetus from burning, which Calvin considered a barbarous method of execution and to behead Servetus instead.”

I’m sure the author is a wonderful person, but it was disconcerting to see a kind person defend a beheading because it was kinder than burning the victim. It is not enough to cherry pick out the poisonous parts of a religion and pass off the rest as harmless. A good tree should not produce poisonous fruit in the first place. Even if we pick off the poisonous parts, they will grow back as sure as Typhoid Mary.

We are all born into worldviews that have traces of prejudice, superstition or sectarianism. We must treat these traits like we would an infectious disease. Religion that does not regularly exorcise those demons may want to be kind, but it carries within itself the disease it would seek to cure.

Hope

When we are young, hope comes easy. As searchers, we believe that we will someday discover some unalloyed truth. As artists, we trust that we will someday taste a fully blossomed beauty. As doers, we expect that we will be able to find some unsullied good, or at least reach some place of lasting happiness. After drinking from the bitter cup of experience, it is natural to question the maturity of our earlier hopes- to question hope itself.
Hope is not some wispy dream that may or may not be realized. Hope is our sense of the energy of life itself. Hope is the soul’s orientation into the future. It is our trust in the creative unfolding of the universe.
Hope cannot be defeated by any roll of fortune’s dice because it is not directed toward any object in life, it is aimed at life itself. Hope beats silently behind the ebb and flow of events. Buried beneath a sea of ashes the soul cannot but dream of beauty. Chained to the withered tree of sorrow, the soul still envisions some future happiness. Lost in a hopeless fog of lies, the soul cannot but squint for a beacon of truth.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery believed that no one has the right to despair. He said that all of us are messengers of a thing greater than ourselves. From this point of view, despair is the rejection of the larger life of which our little lives are but an expression. Hope is not deceived by the puppet figures dancing before us in the shape of success or failure. Hope is not some desired outcome, but the energy that drives the heart, and the stars as well.

Voices from the Vietnam War Memorial Wall

There are 58,267 names on the wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old.
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier was 15 years old.
997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam.
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam.

To love the troops is to hate war.

Is War Ever Just?

After church one Sunday, a member challenged my general condemnation of war. “War is sometimes justified,” he said. “because sometimes an act of violence is the lesser of two evils. Are you being fair when you always paint war as bad?”

It is a fair question and deserves a response. I agree that one act of violence may sometimes be necessary to prevent another. If an insane killer is breaking into an orphanage with a flame thrower, it may be necessary to commit one act of violence to prevent a greater violence. So, I concede that “just war” theory sounds good in principle.

”Just war theory” is the struggle to clarify rules of engagement when war seems necessary. The theory says things like “a war must be defensive”, “war must be confined to the combatants”, “war must not be more destructive than the evil it seeks to correct”, etc.

As I say, the theory works in principle, but it was designed for combat using rifles and canons. Our weapons are now so destructive that they punish unborn generations with radiation and pollution. Such horrifying consequences makes the idea of proportionate response impossible to measure.

“Just war” theory was designed for a day when armies met in open fields away from population centers. Modern war is often fought in cities which means more civilians die in a modern war than combatants.

A modern war is like a gun fight in a submarine. Modern warfare may label itself as being between two armies but, in truth, war anywhere in the world now affects us all. Modern war risks human survival in a clear and present way that eclipses most of the threats we use as excuses for going to war. When the vocabulary of just war theory was crafted there was no way of imagining a war that would injure the entire species, now it is very difficult to imagine a war that wouldn’t.

Discussing the topic of just war is also made more difficult by the fact that we live in a nation that has renounced the Geneva conventions and flaunts any effort by the world courts to hold all nations to the same standard. Theoretically, we could wage a just war, but what does that discussion mean in a nation that refuses to measure itself by universal standards and deems any effort at self criticism as a lack of patriotism?

I think some people want to hear me say that, if our nation were attacked, we would have a right to defend ourselves. I do believe that. But invoking that principle also means if we attack another nation unjustly, they have a right to kill our troops with the same methods we have used against them.

Talk of “just war” makes me uncomfortable because I do love our troops and, to me, supporting our troops includes caring what happens to the actual human being beneath the uniform. We have made a practice of plunging our troops, many of whom are teenagers, into immoral and illegal undeclared wars. Even the victors of modern warfare are permanently wounded, emotionally if not physically. To send our youth into that maelstrom makes most other forms of child abuse seem mild in comparison.

If “just war” theory was ever applicable, those days are now gone. Our alternatives are a world confederacy where every nation binds itself to international law based on universal human rights, or a splintered world of narcissistic police states plunging ever deeper into a spiral of escalating fear and violence. If we do not choose the former, we will inherit the later.

An Atheist’s “Prayer”

One of the greatest friends humanity has ever had was an atheist named Robert Ingersoll. Ingersoll railed against religion because he hated superstition and sectarian arrogance. He attacked religion with more precision than any of the new atheists because he actually understood and sympathized with the motives of the human beings caught in bad religion. He had none of the arrogance of those who simply enjoy ridiculing those less intelligent than themselves. I believe it possible to be religious without having the vices he deplored, but I am also moved by his passion on behalf of humankind.

Some years ago I ran across a passage by Robert Ingersoll that seems to show that there might yet be common ground between theist and nontheist. Although he was an atheist and I a person of faith, it seems we share the same hope for a different kind of church. Perhaps he was anticipating the kind of theology some of us are trying to do today. Here is an atheist’s “prayer” for a different kind of church:

“When every church becomes a school, every cathedral, university, every clergy, a teacher and all their hearers, brave and honest thinkers then and not until then will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist, and philosopher become a blessed truth.”

It is possible Ingersoll meant when the church is replaced by the school, but I hear a shared hope for a humanity that is both scientific and deeply reverential. Perhaps that’s what he meant by “blessed truth.”

Hear, O people of God, these words from an atheist and a prophet. Love with all of your mind as well as all of your heart and will.

Thimble Sermon
“Choose this day”

The scripture this week is the story of Joshua leading Israel into the Promised Land. Before Israel could cross the Jordan River they were asked to do three things. Joshua asked them to choose which God they would serve in the new land, the males were asked to be circumcised and then they were called to cross the river into a new life.

It is not coincidence that John the Baptist returned to that spot to do his baptism. When people asked what they needed to do to be saved, John called them to works of justice (Luke 3:3-14). John wasn’t baptizing into the Christian Church, he was trying to return Israel to its original calling. It was like he was saying, “let’s try this again.”

Joshua wasn’t asking Israel to worship a sectarian God, nor was John the Baptist. They were both asking the people to live out of their highest principle. And what is the highest principle? The highest value ever discovered by human beings is the common good of all people. Every other good must serve this purpose.

Circumcision was a symbol that we must cut off anything that makes that highest value impossible. When Christianity replaced circumcision with a baptism by immersion, it was being true to the prophets who call us to the “circumcision of the heart.” Both symbols mean dying to the past and being born into the future. They both symbolize giving up our habits, addictions and comforts so we can enter into the common happiness.

Finally, came the call to cross the line and go into the Promised Land. Many claim that Israel itself is the Promised Land. Today, many in the church claim that we are the Promised Land. Both claims are wrong. The Promised Land is wherever people live for the common good of all. To cross the line means to live today the way you hope the world will someday be. To cross the line means to be a diplomat for life as we are called to live it.

The Promised Land is not Israel, or the church, or Mecca. The Promised Land is wherever justice rules and all are clothed, all are fed and all are welcomed.

(texts: Joshua 24:13-15, Luke 3:3-14)