18 Christianity, Creation, and the Climate Crisis …
351
influence over the environment reach a tipping point?” To define a new epoch, scientists need to find a ‘signal’ in the geologic record around the world, recently settling
on the nuclear bomb tests from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Prior to the first
nuclear explosion, radionuclides such as long-lived plutonium-239, do not appear
naturally in the geologic record. It is not until these tests occurred that we can identify undeniable human influence on the global environment. The chair of the AWG,
Jan Zalasiewicz, said it is very clear in the data that “the most significant event in
humanity’s life on the planet is the Great Acceleration, the period of rapid global
industrialization that followed the Second World War” (Meyer 2019, para. 7).
In relation to climate change, scientists have computed the absorption of energy
by the Earth brought on by the human release of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses to
be “equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per
year” (Hansen 2012; cf. Braasch 2013; Cook 2013). Annualising this daily energy
release reinforces the point that change is occurring on an order of magnitude not
previously witnessed; “exploding 146 million Hiroshima atomic bombs annually
makes it quite clear that anthropogenic climate change is likely to have severe longterm consequences that may well have … ‘apocalyptic’ end results” (Luetz et al.
2018, p. 64).
Taken together, changes now underway progressively threaten to destabilise vital
Earth systems, and alarmed scientists have repeatedly and solemnly warned of their
disequilibrium, chaos or even collapse (Kendall 1997; Diamond 2005; Ripple et al.
2017). As human-induced global warming continues unchecked, so do increases in
global temperatures, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, heat stress, bushfire
risk, human health problems, species extinctions and rises in the impacts of disasters,
among others (MEA 2005; Hanson 2009; Deryng et al. 2014; Matthews et al. 2017;
Kinney 2018; Ashbolt 2019; IPBES 2019; Lou et al. 2019; Luetz 2020, pp. 158–
163). Such changes, attributable to the interplay of the Great Acceleration and the
Anthropocene, have created a multi-dimensional and complex historical situation
that we now confront as a species. In this era, climate change is no longer a ‘onedimensional challenge’ of achieving piecemeal reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades while continuing along the same unsustainable perpetual
‘global growth’ economic paradigm (Luetz and Walid 2019). Climate change is
already a ‘wicked problem’, one of ‘a family of interlocking problems’ that have
combined to create the ‘phenomenon of ecological overshoot’ by humanity. Our
challenge now is to intelligently manage both the Earth and our resources (food,
water, land, population) to solve the problems that will inevitably emerge as we
move forward (Chakrabarty 2016). This challenge is so formidable and unprecedented that it requires a new strategy and a new ally, to which we will now turn our
attention.
351
influence over the environment reach a tipping point?” To define a new epoch, scientists need to find a ‘signal’ in the geologic record around the world, recently settling
on the nuclear bomb tests from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Prior to the first
nuclear explosion, radionuclides such as long-lived plutonium-239, do not appear
naturally in the geologic record. It is not until these tests occurred that we can identify undeniable human influence on the global environment. The chair of the AWG,
Jan Zalasiewicz, said it is very clear in the data that “the most significant event in
humanity’s life on the planet is the Great Acceleration, the period of rapid global
industrialization that followed the Second World War” (Meyer 2019, para. 7).
In relation to climate change, scientists have computed the absorption of energy
by the Earth brought on by the human release of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses to
be “equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per
year” (Hansen 2012; cf. Braasch 2013; Cook 2013). Annualising this daily energy
release reinforces the point that change is occurring on an order of magnitude not
previously witnessed; “exploding 146 million Hiroshima atomic bombs annually
makes it quite clear that anthropogenic climate change is likely to have severe longterm consequences that may well have … ‘apocalyptic’ end results” (Luetz et al.
2018, p. 64).
Taken together, changes now underway progressively threaten to destabilise vital
Earth systems, and alarmed scientists have repeatedly and solemnly warned of their
disequilibrium, chaos or even collapse (Kendall 1997; Diamond 2005; Ripple et al.
2017). As human-induced global warming continues unchecked, so do increases in
global temperatures, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, heat stress, bushfire
risk, human health problems, species extinctions and rises in the impacts of disasters,
among others (MEA 2005; Hanson 2009; Deryng et al. 2014; Matthews et al. 2017;
Kinney 2018; Ashbolt 2019; IPBES 2019; Lou et al. 2019; Luetz 2020, pp. 158–
163). Such changes, attributable to the interplay of the Great Acceleration and the
Anthropocene, have created a multi-dimensional and complex historical situation
that we now confront as a species. In this era, climate change is no longer a ‘onedimensional challenge’ of achieving piecemeal reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades while continuing along the same unsustainable perpetual
‘global growth’ economic paradigm (Luetz and Walid 2019). Climate change is
already a ‘wicked problem’, one of ‘a family of interlocking problems’ that have
combined to create the ‘phenomenon of ecological overshoot’ by humanity. Our
challenge now is to intelligently manage both the Earth and our resources (food,
water, land, population) to solve the problems that will inevitably emerge as we
move forward (Chakrabarty 2016). This challenge is so formidable and unprecedented that it requires a new strategy and a new ally, to which we will now turn our
attention.