Al Gore's film Inconvenient Truth drives home one of the most horrific truths facing humanity for the next few centuries. We are a unique species able to have profound effects on the whole planet earth. Global warming is our own fault.
This is not new to the earth's history. It happened before. For example, we know it was the early plants on primitive earth that released most of the oxygen we breathe. It was these living forms that fundamentally changed the chemical profile of the planet's atmosphere. So now, what's all this fuss about?
This time, the change being unwillingly engineered on the earth's life-supporting atmosphere has come about through the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels over the past two to three centuries... and this is just a hiccup in terms of the geological time clock.
Global warming due to the release of greenhouse gases will shake up our future. Its effects are already evident, and it is the world's poorest nations that will have to pay the highest price for the excesses of the rich countries. There is an increasing number of glacial lakes, and a drop in ice cover at the poles, evidence that the melt-down has started. Shifts in the geographical distribution of several animal and plant species is most likely due to such global warming. These include the introduction of new and invasive species in the Mediterranean from warmer regions.
Over the past few years, several regions on planet earth have been drying up (like several south-western US states, and possibly even within the Mediterranean and Africa). Rising temperatures, modified patterns of rainfall and changes in human settlements and population densities have led to low water supplies in such regions. This will lead to increased pressures for people to move away from dry and famine stricken regions, and we are to expect an increase in uncontrolled and "illegal" migrations of millions of people. This is the inconvenient truth Mr Gore is talking about.
This is not just a doomsday scare, but a growing reality. The low-lying Pacific island state of Tuvalu has reached an agreement with New Zealand to accept its 11,600 citizens in the event that the rising sea levels claim their country completely. Between 1996 and 2001, over 2,000 Tuvaluans have been forced to emigrate to New Zealand because their land has been submerged.
As this world drama unfolds, there will always be the doubters. Initially, the predicted greenhouse effect was a scientific hypothesis that still had to be proved. Doubt in science is healthy and, indeed, necessary. Scientific ideas need to prove themselves through predictions and experiments and against doubters. In science, tolerance means the ability to always allow for a margin of doubt in our models and predictions. But scientific ideas are ultimately judged by their ability to explain changes in the real world, and the greenhouse effect has now been accepted beyond reasonable scientific doubt, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the foremost scientific forum on the subject).
And, yet, there is still room for doubt... indeed highly convenient doubt. For if a rich country is responsible for most of this mess and if it is meant to clean up its act, then it is most convenient to cast doubt on its own responsibility for global warming... while continuing unabated with its activities. If we are well off and would like to keep on enjoying our energy-hungry lifestyle, certainly doubt comes in handy. If we want to keep on blaming the fate of Third World countries on their own ignorance and their inability to "do things right", as we have already managed to do in our glorious past, then we just need to keep on doubting our own contribution to this global problem, and our own guilt.
The strong oil industry cartel has invested a lot in trying to trivialise this worldwide concern and further this convenient doubt in order to maintain the uncontrolled and unjust exploitation of resources. One of its successful ploys - that has even filtered among the clergy - was that of portraying efforts to control CO2 emissions as hidden communist propaganda aimed at destabilising society.
Certainly, the official position of the Church does not seem to share this stance. On April 26-27, 2007, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace organised a study seminar to examine climate change and development. In a message sent to the participants (experts, politicians and religious authorities from around the world), Pope Benedict XVI invited everyone to adopt "a way of living, models of production and consumption marked by respect for creation and the need for sustainable development of peoples, keeping in mind the universal distribution of goods, as is so often mentioned in the Church's social doctrine".
Consistent with its belief in the Risen Christ, the Church is not focusing on gloom casting but on finding ways how moral principles and Christian values should play a key and leading role in helping humanity overcome this crisis. Indeed, humanity in the third millennium may be more prepared to meet the challenges of global warming than we think. Democratic principles, rational arguments and the ease with which we can now access information and share our ideas (through the internet, etc.) may sweep away the convenient doubters and the indifference and mobilise humanity, particularly believers, towards the resolution of this problem.
What role will the local Church play in all this? Will the local Church authorities rise above the convenient doubts and the inertia of indifference to lead us to face this crisis? Will they lead by example and by proper and opportune proclamations and teachings? Let us all pray that this will indeed happen... and that it will happen now. On our part, the Environment Commission of the Archdiocese of Malta will do its very best to shift in the right gear!
Dr Axiak is writing on behalf of the Environment Commission of the Archdiocese of Malta, which he chairs.