Texts: Psalm 1471-11; Luke 2: 21-40
"The land is going away," said Shelton Kokeok, an older Inuit in Alaska, whose home is on the tip of a bluff that's been melting in part because of climate change. "I think it's going to vanish one of these days." In parts of Alaska, climate change has already impacted many small Inuit towns and villages. The indigenous people of Alaska have stood firm against some of the most extreme weather conditions on Earth for thousands of years. But now, flooding because of climate change is forcing several Inuit villages to move to safer ground.
The Denali Commission study of 187 native villages identified 29 facing erosion, 38 threatened by flooding, and 35 threatened by the melting permafrost. This past summer the village of Kwigllingok ended up totally under water, but it does not have a place to go.
The village of Newtok, home to the indigenous Yup'ik will relocate to new homes 9 miles away, up the Ninglick River, and it is not the only Alaskan community to be abandoned. Warming temperatures are melting coastal ice shelves and frozen sub-soils, which act as natural barriers to protect these villages against summer deluges from ocean storm surges.
These small villages in Alaska are not the only places threatened by a warming planet. We on the East Coast also face the same threats. We are looking at the probability of real sea level rise on our Jersey coast. The climate change crisis will displace 150 million people by 2050.
In our reading this morning from Luke, Jesus has already begun to think and act independently. He’s already feisty, and, in some households his retort would have been considered talking back, worthy of punishment or at least a reprimand. Adults, we of the older generation, have polite discussions while those of the younger generation move out into action. There are times when governmental or societal powers want to hold them back, have them behave like us, rather than going off and doing what we would consider foolish things.
Ah, how we forget what we were like forty or fifty years ago when burning issues of the day propelled us into action. Some of those burning issues are still with us: racism, government secrecy, corruption, environmental degradation, to name a few. For many of us living here in New Jersey, the issue of climate change as a result of global warming is not just a possibility that might take place in the distant future; it is a real and frightening probability as we see the sea levels rise along our own shoreline while greedy developers push for more so-called luxury housing with views of the water. They may get their views of the water, all right, possibly in their own living rooms.
The older generation at COP26 – that’s us – put together documents that spell out the danger and the reality of climate change. The younger generation is, quite frankly, fed up with our equivocating, catering to senators who are owned by coal and oil, and want action – real action.
We have been stuck in an old paradigm for many years. The 1997 Kyoto agreement called for the rich nations -- that’s us in the United States -- to cut carbon emissions. Called a treaty, the Congress refused to ratify it, citing “harm to the U.S. economy” so dependent on big oil and the coal lobby. There’s a reason these are called fossil fuels -- fossilized thinking among them.
Some of us have grandchildren and one has a great -grandchild, and most of us here want a world that is better for them than it has been for us. It is this that drives us into supporting alternative energy sources, which, quite frankly, if members of Congress from the coal producing states really looked into the future, they would see changing the economies of their states not just a necessity but a welcome benefit. But the minds against acknowledgment of climate change are short-sided, small, and probably stupid as well.
As we envision our future, we must take hold of this question, which is paramount to the survival of so many species on earth. And, more often then not, impertinent youth, like Jesus, are leading the way. Back in 2013 while I was waiting for a flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen, I began talking with a young woman who was volunteering for Greenpeace. You know that group – the ones who go after whalers and oil companies through direct action on the high seas. She was on her way to music festivals to sign up young people to alert us to the real dangers of climate change. In the Nordic countries, caribou and reindeer are heading further north earlier without the sustenance to support them.
The Nordic countries and Germany have moved towards total renewable energy. Some areas with solar and wind power actually sell their excess electricity. Wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and some low level nuclear have reduced the dependence on fossil fuels. Envisioning the future means planning for it. We can really do the same in site of the know nothings who seem to dominate our political landscape. We simply need to make those commitments to the kind of action that is required. We’ve done it before and with God’s help we can do it again.
Let us pray: Holy and creating God, you have given us this earth and its resources so that we might be stewards. May we have the willpower and energy to continue caring for it as ou care for us. Amen.