In one sense, climate change has always been with us. The receding ice in prehistoric northern Europe made it possible for cultures to develop farming. The Levant was once lush and green until severe droughts made it into a desert. These changes occurred over centuries, however, not like the increasingly rapid changes in sea level rise today.
And, of course, it’s not just the Florida Gulf or the Outer Banks that face aspects of the climate disaster we have today. Storms that were supposed to happen once in a hundred years now occur every decade or less. Vermont, flooded last year and in 2011 is a good example of the storms climate scientists have been warning us about.
We hear the fossil fuel lobby cry for more drilling, using the threat of job loss as part of its armor, but those workers are going home to places increasingly uninhabitable due to rising seas and stronger storms all over the country, not just in Florida or New England.
Prayer for the Day
We don’t like change, O God, especially when we’re responsible,
For we want the world to be the way we think it once was;
We look to those who promise that we can have it all,
Comfort without regard for what it will cost in the future.
Wake us up, O Lord, and transform our thinking
So we consider what we need to do so we have a future.
In the name of the One who moves us to action,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Nationwide, insurance premiums have risen 30 percent since 2019, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. In Florida, where homeowners already pay among the highest rates in the nation, premiums have soared almost 70 percent, equivalent to $1,332 annually.
Michael Core, in The Washington Post
Climate change impacts on SLWs [straight line winds, as in windstorms in Iowa] have long been elusive33. Combining multiple lines of evidence from kilometre-scale modelling, observational records and theoretical considerations robustly shows that climate change increases the frequency and intensity of SLW
Andreass F. Prein, from Nature Climate Change (November 2023)
For God makes the sun to rise on both the wicked and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.
Jesus in Matthew 5:45