Climate Change

Holly Sickle

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The destruction of our environment and the drastic change in our climate are certainly serious but they are not the real problem, instead they are symptoms of an underlying problem. There are sinister forces on our planet working against peace and harmony; they are in open rebellion against God and His creation. We will discuss our degrading climatic situation, but first the underlying cause must be outlined.

Planetary rebellion

The primary reference for my book “Light of Truth: Anticipating the Triumph of Righteousness” is The Urantia Book. It reveals that in the past our planet did have a world leader, but 200,000 years ago our Planetary Prince, Caligastia, joined a rebellion against God. As a result our planet currently has no visible leader, nobody with planetary authority. More than that, there are those who are still working on his behalf seeking to disrupt society.

As a result of their machinations there are several areas where our society is in peril. One of these is climate change, another is the prevalence of guns and other examples of violence; even children in school are no longer safe from gunmen. Weapons of mass destruction are held by many nations. Excessive greed and an overwhelmingly materialistic society is another factor. Politicians and lawmakers have no incentive to correct these problems because they exist primarily to get reelected, not to serve the people who elect them as should be the case. They lack a moral foundation upon which to base their life work. Lying has become much too easy in our political environment because politicians, and indeed most of society, have little awareness of spiritual reality; most of our sisters and brothers are poor cosmic citizens.

Scientific assessment

The scientific community is unified in their assessment that our global climate is changing, getting warmer each year. There are some however who deny this, ignoring facts that do not coincide with their preconceived notions. They are fixated on protecting the big corporations who do a vast amount of the polluting. They feel that it is more important for materialistic corporations to gain wealth than for our native planet to remain inhabitable into the future. Their materialistic worldview does not appear to recognize the existence or the value of the vast number of our sisters and brothers.

The scientific reports on this subject are constantly being published; it is difficult to keep up with the latest proclamations of how dire our environmental situation is. The best we can hope for is to introduce awareness of how grim the situation is (for our climate as well as the other threats to our peace and well-being) so that our citizens will be motivated to rise up and do something to make our native sphere better for everyone.

The leading authority on this subject is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was established in 1988. It was jointly established by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Thousands of scientists active in this scientific study from around the world work on its reports. Its conclusions are authoritative.

For example their report states that human influence on the climate is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.[1] Generally they couch their conclusions in scientific terms such as this has a very high certainty or perhaps a medium certainty; however this clearly states human beings have had a strong influence on climate change.

Scientific illiteracy

There is however a problem with this because many individuals are influenced by factors other than the facts; there are companies and ideologies gaining more profit or more recognition by denying truth. Neoconservatives generally deny the facts of climate change. Big businesses gaining large profits from polluting our planet not only deny these changes but they also actively promote a campaign to spread doubt on these facts. For example, between 1998 and 2005 Exxon Mobil spent at least $16 million on organizations seeking to confuse the public about the facts of global warming science.[2] This is a similar campaign to the tobacco industry which also denied its product caused harm; the motive of environmental polluters is abundantly clear because in early 2007 Exxon Mobil announced that its profit for 2006, the preceding year, was the highest of any corporation in U.S. history.[3] Exactly like the tobacco industry claiming its cancer causing products was safe, this company promotes as benign its climate destroying products for its own profit.

Those in the industry knew about the facts of climate change; for example in 1991 Shell Oil made a film about the consequences to the environment from using their product.[4] In this film, titled “Climate of Concern,” it is reported research into climate changes had reached a new sense of urgency because of the realization that our energy consuming way of life may be causing climatic changes with adverse consequences for us all. In spite of this they continue to fund climate change deniers. Again this is an example of a corporation selling a product they knew to be harmful to life on our planet.

Carl Sagan stated there are dangerous consequences of scientific illiteracy such as ignorance of global warming or any of the other perils to our environment.[5] Each citizen has a responsibility to independently determine the facts of this or any issue; a responsibility to think and be aware of the issues rather than being the puppet of a particular ideology.

Indeed this is a moral issue begging to be understood upon its own merits instead of through the prism of whatever ideology one might view the world; this is a moral issue because failure to act could ruin the prospects of every generation following us. [6] Climate change is not a fancy, it is actually happening.

There are other indications our climate is changing permanently for the worse. The “Arctic Report Card 2017” has as its subtitle “Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent decades.”[7] They report that there are many strong signals indicating the Arctic environmental system has reached a new normal and that Arctic air temperatures are warming at double the rate of the global temperature increase. [8] This new normal means the Arctic will continue to melt, increasing the sea level considerably above current levels and the Arctic permafrost will continue to melt, thus releasing even more methane and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Climate change will certainly be with us for a very long time whatever the politicians might declare.

Ideologically or profit driven politicians and businessmen can obfuscate all they want but the consequences of these climate changes happen in spite of their denials, for example 21.5 million human beings have been driven out of their homes every year since 2008 by climate or weather related events. Another estimate is that nearly one billion people were affected by natural disasters in 2015. [9]

As our climate deteriorates we can reach a tipping point and once this is passed the downward slide will accelerate. When this happens there can be no turning back. The time to begin pushing back against the downward spiral of our climate, our environment is now. Tomorrow will be too late.

Further reading

“Light of Truth: Anticipating the Triumph of Righteousness”

Chapter 3 – Foundation, Section – Ideologically Driven Processes

  1. IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 152 pp., Page 40. ↑

  2. “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore, The Penguin Press New York, 2007, p 201 ↑

  3. Gore p 202 ↑

  4. Thecorrespondent.com/6285/shell-made-a-film-about-climate-change-in-1991-then-neglected-to-heed-its-own-warning, retrieved 8/11/19 ↑

  5. “The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan, Ballantine Books, New York, 1996, p 7 ↑

  6. Gore p 213 ↑

  7. J. Richter-Menge, J. E. Overland, J. T. Mathis, and E. Osborne, Eds., 2017: Arctic Report Card 2017, https://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2017, retrieved 8/11/19. ↑

  8. ibid ↑

  9. The Global Risks Report 2017 12th Edition, World Economic Forum, 2017, GRR17, the report can be downloaded from http://wef.ch/risks2017, p 17 ↑