The Risk on Climate - The Austin Common

24 Jun The Risk on Climate

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The Risk on “Climate”

Dear Reader — this blog was first written for the First Baptist Church of Austin's bi-monthly newsletter. Though this is not a religious piece, per se, you'll see religious references throughout.

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Regardless of where you fit into the spectrum of concern on climate change, this might be a good time to clarify the risk of doing nothing about climate change. Consider:

“Global warming is to blame” for the string of unprecedented worldwide weather events, since 2010 (United Nations)
“Climate change is here and getting worse” (Obama Administration)
First Baptist Austin member Linda Thompson's essay on "Extinction" (attached below as PDF)

Shifting Religious Views
First Baptist Austin’s pastor, Dr. Roger Paynter, had strong words about the need for climate action last Fall. His wife, Suzii Paynter, Exec. Coordinator at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has been outspoken about climate change since 2007. Truly, the number of climate-concerned faith leaders and followers worldwide is growing. The intensity of concern is growing, too. On May 29, 2014, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to the EPA calling climate change “America’s No.1 pro-life issue.” The list goes on.

What’s The Risk
It’s simple: climate change and unsustainable economic development threaten ALL LIFE. We are at that point. The “risk” environmental stewards are talking about is whether or not we Earthlings will lose 50% or more of the Earth’s biodiversity by 2100 A.D. (During the next 85 years). A loss at that scale would not just affect the world's poorest citizens, it would completely disrupt the integrated biological systems ALL members of this grand creation rely on.

Yes, this sounds too bad to be true but that’s the science, folks. It’s believed that the only way to slow this trend is to reverse the impacts of climate change and unsustainable economic development. Here’s one more thing to consider. Some perspective from First Baptist Austin green team education leader Linda Thompson’s OUTSTANDING paper on extinction science:

“Five previous mass extinctions have occurred in life’s history… It is thought that glaciation ended the Ordovician epoch; catastrophic (volcanoes), global warming and ocean acidification ended the Permian epoch; the impact of a massive asteroid off the Yucatan Peninsula precipitated the end-Cretaceous extinction; possibly ocean acidification also played a major role in the end-Devonian and Triassic extinctions… The sixth or Anthropocene extinction (called Holocene by some) is not the consequence of some poorly understood external or geological event. The Anthropocene is the consequence of a single earthly species: Us.”