Unfolding as it should?

An extremely worrying number: 389.47.

This is the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, in parts per million (ppm), reported by Mauna Loa Observatory in April. It is 2.31 ppm bigger than the measurement from a year before. Not only is the concentration going up, but the rate at which it is doing so is also going up. It is an accelerating process, because more CO2 means forests die, soils dry out, more CO2 still is released as a result, and round and round it goes.

The excellent booklet "A Green New Deal", which sets out the most sensible response I have so far seen proposed to the environmental and credit crunches we are experiencing, contains this sobering paragraph (p16):

"In April 2008 NASA's top climatologist, Jim Hansen, said feedbacks [such as the above] mean the sensitivity of the climate to the heat-trapping abilities of greenhouse gases is twice the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] estimate. He called for a global effort to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 ppm -- well below current levels. This would entail huge and rapid reductions in emissions and some physical removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, too."

In other words, if Hansen is right -- and he's probably the world's highest-profile climatologist -- then it's no longer a matter of trying to switch as soon as we can to a low-carbon economy to avoid concentrations rising to disastrous levels. We may well have already passed that point, and we now need not only to switch right away from fossil fuels but to undo past damage with geoengineering techniques. If we don't, we face indefinitely accelerating warming that will melt the icecaps, dry out the rain forests, make much of the planet uninhabitable and most of the rest of it no use for growing food. This will almost certainly mean the wholesale collapse of civilization and quite possibly the extinction of the human race altogether. If that seems like an extreme statement, remember that large-scale changes in climate, like those at the ends of the Permian and Cretaceous ages, invariably do appear to wipe out most large species on earth at the time.

And I have to say that I don't think our changes of avoiding this look very good. The Chinese are still building several coal-fired power stations a week. Barack Obama's attempts to move the US in the right direction are being watered down by senators funded by the oil industry. The British government is hell-bent on expanding the country's airports. And at the individual level, very few people seem at all concerned to reduce their own carbon footprint. It's all too far in the future, too far away, and they don't want to have to think about it. Individuals and industry say government should act, but governments (at least democratically elected ones) won't do anything significant for fear of upsetting their electorates. Perhaps we are just not the kind of species that can cope with a situation like the one we face.

A while ago, I wondered whether there is any kind of spirituality that makes sense in the face of what may well be to come. Can we come up with any perspective that still allows us to say, as the old poem has it, "no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should"?

I can only imagine two. One is the other-worldly one, in which some members of the human race (usually those who believe the tenets of a specific religion or sect) are promised eternal life well away from this troubled world, which is therefore not a primary concern. The last time I heard a church sermon, some weeks ago now, the preacher was arguing from 1 Peter that this world is only a temporary residence in which we are "aliens and strangers". He likened it to taking a walk in the park as opposed to being in our own home: it's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. He didn't mention what seemed obvious to me, that you are much less likely to bother to clear up the rubbish you see in the park than what lands on the floor in your own kitchen. Whatever the truth of the immortality or otherwise of the human spirit, I don't think such a world view has any moral integrity whatsoever today.

An alternative is presented by Michael Dowd in "Thank God for Evolution", which you can download for free. Dowd points out the good news of evolution in "deep time". Although extinctions do happen, the universe never seems to "forget" any genuine innovations. The disappearance of the dinosaurs opened the way for many mammalian species to evolve, including eventually ourselves. In human history, the Black Death of the fourteenth century eventually led to many of the shackles of the medieval world view being thrown off. He says (p56), on the basis of much more evidence than I can include here,

...the Universe seems resolutely determined to take bad news and turn it into new creativity. That is, on the other side of Good Friday is Easter Sunday. And so the first insight, the first affirmation of faith and confidence in the gospel of evolution, is that the Universe can be trusted. Specifically, it can be trusted to move in the direction of greater diversity, complexity, awareness, intimacy and speed of change. It can be trusted to preserve its breakthroughs. And it can be trusted to provide a wealth of problems and breakdowns that fuel the creative process.

I'm still only part way through Dowd's book, so I don't want to say anything more definite about it just yet. But he certainly is offering a message of integrity and hope that welcomes the truth, however difficult it is. And one thing I am sure of is that effective action to safeguard our planet is much more likely to arise from a place of hope than one of despair.