Two cities begin with the letter C – Cape Town and Chattanooga. In February, it’s summer in Cape Town and winter in Chattanooga. But look at the weather forecasts for February 23. Here’s the forecast for Cape Town:
And here’s the forecast for Chattanooga – remember it’s winter there:
Your eyes are not deceiving you – it is warmer in Chattanooga in the winter than it is in Cape Town in the summer. Climate incidents like this make us wonder what normal means anymore.
The Washington Post published an article about where warming temperatures will result in more or fewer deaths. (Where more people will die — and live — because of hotter temperatures – Washington Post) The northern part of the Northern Hemisphere will have fewer deaths, while the Southern Hemisphere gets hit hard, especially in Africa and Australia. In Third World nations without air conditioning, the effects are particularly severe. Already some overheated cities perform outside work at night when it’s a little cooler and try to sleep in the stifling heat by day.
We once visited the ancient Roman city of Bulla Regia. It was so hot in the summer that the Romans built houses 16 feet underground, with a large central atrium for light. Will overheated cities have to result to tunneling to get away from the increasing heat?
A 2016 report states that only 6% of South African households have air conditioning, compared to the 90% in the U.S. (Global AC penetration rate by country 2016 | Statista) A study from Harvard University states that billions more people will require air conditioning to continue to live in nations with hot climates. (In a hotter world, air conditioning isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifesaver (harvard.edu)) And where is the increased electricity supply going to come from in a nation with 10-hour-a-day load shedding right now? Most of South Africa’s electricity comes from (you guessed it) coal.
Animals also suffer from increased heat. South Africa has colonies of the African Penguin living on its shores. Climate change means that penguin parents have to swim much farther from shore to reach their food and make it back before their chick starves on the beach. That doesn’t always happen. Further, when the chicks enter the water for the first time, they swim to areas with few fish. (fact_sheet_african_penguin_climate_change.pdf (cms.int))
Even if you’re not a penguin climate change can get you. In Africa, an increasing frequency and severity of droughts results in fewer plants, herbivores, and carnivores. When a forest becomes a grassland, there goes a big carbon sink. Severe environmental changes threaten African wildlife habitats – CSMonitor.com
James Gustave Speth, an advisor to President Bill Clinton, once said that he thought that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. Now he understands that the top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. Science alone cannot solve this problem. A spiritual response is required to face the destructiveness of climate change.
Climate change is an existential threat right now and more ‘right now’ in the poorer parts of the world. When we say we care for creation, we have to mean all of creation, not just our little corner of the world. Where will the spiritual response come from to stop the catastrophic effects of these human-caused heat waves? It has to come from us, all of us.
