Prescient for his time, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House, which were removed by Reagan as our Nation continued to ramp up its reliance on fossil fuels. And over the past 40 years, given another opportunity to face the reality of a warming planet, Congress failed to ratify the Kyoto Accords in 1997.
A long time ago, but now with ever-increasing drought, we are paying for our neglect and bull-headed opposition to change. We pay for it through wildfire devastation. We gasp at the horrific pictures from California but we should not be so sanguine here on the East Coast. Remember last summer? We were just lucky, that’s all.
Politicians, buoyed by the fossil fuel interests, scoffed at Carter‘s prescience. We don’t usually think of Carter as a great president in the same way as Washington or Lincoln but he told us truths we did not want to hear. The Los Angeles fires are more than a warning – they are a consequence of what we have long ignored.
Prayer for the Day
Searching for truths you would impart to us, O God,
We place our hearts and minds before you this day;
Seeking to discern the meaning of events we do not understand,
We search for answers in our daily lives.
Teach us, O Holy One, to open our minds to change,
Enabling us to live in the future and not in the past.
In the name of the One who opens the future for us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The fire weather changes driven by declining Arctic sea ice during the past four decades are of similar magnitude to other leading modes of climate variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation that also influence fire weather in the western U.S.
From Nature Communications, by Northwest Atmospheric Laboratory
As the climate crisis escalates, the interdependent atmospheric, oceanic and ecological systems that constrain human civilization will lead to compounding and regime-shifting changes that are difficult to predict in advance.
Eric Holthaus, American meteorologist
Understand, O dullest of the people; fools, when will you be wise?
The One who planted the ear, hears, and formed the eye, sees.
The One who disciplines the nations,
Who teaches knowledge to humankind chastises us
The Lord knows our thoughts, that they are but an empty breath.
Psalm 94: 8-11