Stoking the Heat and Violence of Climate

Charles Keeling Curve showing the perpetual increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1958, Keeling started taking measurements of carbon dioxide at Manua Loa Observatory in Waimea, Hawaii. Courtesy NASA. 

June 2018 was extremely unusual. No less than three international conferences, two of them in Greece, addressed climate change. 

I attended one of these international conferences at the University of Patras in Peloponnesos. As usual, in large meetings like this, one cannot listen to every presentation. And, needless to say, one also hears objectionable things. 

One foreign scientist fooled the Greek reviewers and gave a propaganda talk, taking the mind of the audience away from the guilty petroleum, coal and natural gas parties. This person spoke primarily about personal things but avoided entirely the companies funding and creating doubt about global warming. 

I spoke about the unsustainability, indeed, the outright dangers of industrialized agriculture overthrowing ancient agrarian civilizations in India, China, Greece, Egypt and the Americas. At the same time, machine farming not merely adds teeth to plantations but becomes a huge source of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide -- CO_2. So, eating cheeseburgers cannibalizes a tiny bit of the future of the Earth.

Did anybody take me seriously? I don’t know. To complicate matters further, I spoke in Greek. This unpredictable play of ideas happens at most large conferences. Bureaucracy and scheduling often trump substance and timeliness. The result, however, was laudatory. Light overwhelmed confusion. 

A group of about two-hundred scientists from all over the world came to the University pf Patras warning the world it has to mend its ways. Enough with the burning of coal, petroleum and natural gas. Was anyone anywhere listening?

Strangely, while in Patras 16-20 June 2018, I did not hear anything about the other international climate conference that took place 5-6 June 2018 in Greece. 

Religion and global warming

This was primarily a religious affair. Patriarch Bartholomew is living in Istanbul that before the capture of medieval Greece by the Turks in 1453 was known as Constantinople. During the more than a millennium life of medieval Greek empire, Constantinople was its capital and the Patriarch of Constantinople had real power. 

In 2018, Bartholomew keeps the title of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In fact, he also calls himself Ecumenical (global) Patriarch. However, he has no power, save for spiritual influence among Christian Orthodox. He is an employee of the Turkish state. His honorary titles make him one of several Orthodox Patriarchs, religious leaders for the Eastern Orthodox Christians. These Patriarchs see themselves like the Catholic Pope.

Patriarch Bartholomew called his conference “Towards a Greener Attica: Preserving the Planet and Protecting its People.” Attica is greater rural Athens. However, Attica in the context of the conference became the world.

Bartholomew denounced the “deplorable landfills” in Attica, the trashing of the Attica mountains, the dumping of plastics in the seas of Greece. His solution? “creation care– the preservation of nature and the protection of all people.”

Who can disagree with these noble goals? Yet, he was silent on the main culprits – the petroleum, natural gas and coal companies. The international participants included theologians, climate activists, politicians and persons of wealth. These choice speech makers met in the luxury of the Saronic Islands. 

The Patriarch, true to his long-term commitment to environmental quality, urged restraint in the human activities causing global warming. But is that enough?

Nearly the same thing happened with the climate conference hosted by Pope Francis. He urged oil executives and money managers to do something about the climate crisis. In 9 June 2018, Francis invited these powerful business people to a 16^thcentury villa in the Vatican Gardens. There in the luxury and silence of ancient ecclesiastical traditions and power, the Pope confronted them with the bad news of continuing rise in global temperature. “There is no time to lose,” he said to them.

The vision of Pope Francis is no different than that of Patriarch Bartholomew. Powerless Bartholomew can go so far and that is not far enough. So, he deals mostly in platitudes. In contrast, the Pope has power. He is bold in saying hitherto forbidden things. He told his guests he envisions a transition away from fossil fuels to technologies that are both efficient and cause less pollution than petroleum, coal and natural gas. He asked the fossil fuel executives to act on that transition.

Anathematize the fossil fuel executives?

Bartholomew and Francis admire each other. Their courage to defend the abused planet brings them even closer. But they are also shrewd politicians who read correctly the strategic balance of terror governing the world. Fossil fuels fuel that precarious system of international relations.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia.

In a thousand ways, including the prestige of their office, the Pope and the Patriarch are trying to build some trust with the oil executives and thereby smooth any “transition” fossil fuel executives decide to take out of the mire reality of heating and poisoning the world.

However, both Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew have hidden powers that could make a difference. These ancient powers include anathematizing fossil fuel executives for risking the planet for personal enrichment. 

Anathemas are extremely powerful messages and policies for billions of people. The 1054 excommunication between the Pope of Rome Leo IX and the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Kerularios created a real Iron Curtain that divided Europe for about a thousand years. Patriarch Athenagoras I and Pope Paul VI lifted the curse in 1965. Yet residues of this schism remain.

But will Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew risk everything, including their lives, in anathematizing executives whose fossil fuel activities threaten civilization and the planet?

At the very least, Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew should bring the leaders of world religions in their climate plan, including those of Judaism, Protestant Christianity and Islam. Convince these religious leaders to act together to save the planet. At that moment, they can use their anathemas to speed up a transition to solar energy or to punish the guilty fossil fuel executives.