By Lee Van Ham
“It’s too late,” she said. That was an 8-year-old answering the question: “What do you want to do about climate change?” I am trying to imagine what it’s like to come of age in a world like today’s.
The climate disasters pile up. They are not abating. Is she right? Is it too late?
She is if MultiEarth habits, patterns, and money have their way. They are shielding their eyes from the ecocide they are fomenting. Scientific information has become powerless to tear aside the veil that hangs in front of their goals of profit. Financial advisors see only the ways that increase the wealth of their clients. Corporations cannot hear the cries of creation nor accommodate the science. Like heroine addicts hellbent on their next fix, corporations are hellbent on Increasing their wealth.
The 2022 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spoke with alarm about the few years we have to reverse the disasters that are about to take us beyond anything human beings have ever known. This report of over 2500 scientists from 130 countries has been ignored. So scientists have become activists. They have glued and chained themselves to structures. Well over a thousand have turned to civil disobedience and have been arrested. But how about us, the public, can we see? Can we hear? MultiEarth ways have been our source of solutions for generations. But in these crises, their proposals are bankrupt. Their ads work overtime to convince us that their solutions will work. But their promises are delusions that can bring profits to their promoters, but death to broad swaths of life on the planet. We can feel the dark.
And yet ….
… there are solutions. And it is not too late. But there’s a big IF.
If …
… we rise up and stand with the scientists. If we rise up and stand with the thousands of entrepreneurs, educators, faith leaders, and Indigenous people who know about OneEarth living. They know about life with less profit, but more real wealth. Life with less excess and luxury; but more joy in our cores.
Religions everywhere have those who advocate living within the generous boundaries of our planet. But to choose an example: the ways of the biblical Jubilee could never work for wealth accumulators and hoarders, nor anyone greedy for control. It could never advance Big Pharma, Big Oil, authoritarian government, or centralized power. But it has a great record of working for resisters, rebels, lovers of dirt and planet. It has real solutions. Our challenge is to live them even when the price to our own lifestyles is high. It is the cost of discipleship. The investing in the real wealth of our planet. Returns on our investments are excellent.
Stand with us in Jubilee. Work with us. Jubilee shows us ways to simplify our lives. Truth is, we’re better off when we do. Jubilee reshapes society to vitalize us instead of draining us. Visit our website, oneearthjubilee.org, and help us go beyond the pursuit of happiness to joy and deeper love. Let’s tell our 8-year-olds that there is a way. Invite them into circles of Jubilee where we learn about living the Way.
