A Moral Climate - Book Review by Charles Rue
Charles Rue
(7 July 2008)
Michael S. Northcott, A Moral Climate: the ethics of global warming, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007, 336 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-57075-711-2
‘Global warming is the earth’s judgment on the global market empire, and on the heedless consumption it fosters’. Thus says Michael Northcott, a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church and professor of ethics at the University of Edinburgh.
In the introduction he says. ‘Australia is a microcosm for what is happening to planet earth in the present ecological crisis.’ This sentence flags that the book is relevant to Australians and all people living in modern economies.
As a framework for his book Northcott uses an inter-play between the prophetic tradition in Scripture and scientific findings on human induced climate change. This interplay gives a clear structure for the reader to follow and provides logical spaces to easily introduce a range of relevant materials from economics, church traditions and elsewhere.
Over nine chapters he sustains a comparison between the geo-political crisis of ancient Israel and the eco-political crisis which faces the modern world. He writes clearly and argues well in a book with an index and 37 pages of notes and references.
Northcott challenges Christian consciences to add moral conviction to the urgency needed in creating a new future for humanity in an age of rapid climate change. In a foreword, Sir John Houghton, co-chair of the scientific assessment section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1988-2002, writes, ‘debate about the basic scientific is over. What remains are technological (what is the best action to take?) and economic questions (can we afford not to act?).’ The big question for Northcott is why and how industialised nations can address the climate challenge in cooperation with the developing world.
While this book cites multiple examples of worldwide climate related problems and details scientific options in addressing them, Northcott addresses deeper considerations in answering the climate challenge. His focus is morality, equity (international and intergenerational), justice, attitudes and motivation – the moral climate: hence the name of the book.
‘At the heart of the pathology of the ecological crisis is the refusal of humans to see themselves as creatures, contingently embedded in networks of relationships with other creatures, and with the Creator. This refusal is the quintessential root of what theologians call sin’.
The role of the prophets in Israel was primarily to point to the consequences of tuning away from Yahweh’s revelation. Jeremiah features large in Northcott’s book, especially his religious reading of lessons offered by the land itself as judgments given by God. In developing this prophetic tradition up into modern times Northcott cites Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonhoeffer, Wendell Berry and others. Rightly he also connects this prophetic tradition to the warnings of scientists and secular writers on ecology and climate.
Northcott reserves the greatest prophetic role for earth itself – hurricane Katrina, floods in Bangladesh, forest-fires in Spain. And it is the scientists who have deciphered for us this ‘Message from the Planet’, the title of Northcott’s first chapter.
His next chapters explore the consequences for earth and people as climate change kicks in. These consequences are directly connected with distorted human ideas about the universe, society, politics and economics which Northcott calls ’moral myopia’. He conducts a continual dialogue between these ideas and the Christian tradition suggesting that ‘witness and truth-telling are vital modes of moral response to global warming.’
Humanity is called to re-situate itself on earth. While exploring climate change agendas to do with energy efficiency and human acceptance of earth as our dwelling place, Northcott also explores how a Christian response might become a microcosm of light. In an age of frantic pace and travel, insights arising from the pilgrimage tradition might remind us to slow down, to simplify our baggage and humbly remember that we are but pilgrims on earth. Northcott weaves together climate agendas and Christian beliefs, using language such as Christ the Easter light to challenge Christian communities to become examples of ‘good work and moral character.’
Liturgical references throughout Northcott’s book culminate in several chapters connecting climate change, food and meals. He notes that the prophecies of Jeremiah use the imagery of farming and food to speak of desolation – crops, animals and wilderness. Northcott relates these to what some anthropologists have called the ‘moral economy of food’ and also points to the importance of meals in the life and ministry of Christ.
Insight into the importance of meals in the life and ministry of Christ may well be the greatest contribution Northcott’s book makes to a Christian response of the climate challenge at the pastoral level. Celebration of the Eucharist is central to all parish life. Looking deeply at the meaning of the Eucharistic might be the real motivator for the average believer to start action on facing the climate challenge.
Northcott develops his exploration of the economy of food and climate change in the light of the Eucharist which ‘in the early Church was also associated with redressing the wrongs against the poor and the land in the food economy of imperial Rome.’ He argues that reducing the Eucharist to a token ritual meal is, at the level of meaning, symptomatic of modern people eating on the run or eating prepackaged meals alone in front of the TV.
It is not only personal relationships which are diminished by such practices. He goes on to say, ‘food is politics … so a Eucharist practice that fails to challenge the profanation of the creation represented by modern agronomy is equally flawed.’ He asks Christians to challenge the modern food economy – production, transport, sales, nutrition, social sharing.
Northcott’s final chapter uses the liturgical language of remembrance. Human induced climate change is earth’s physical remembrance of the story of human folly. Even those who deny the evidence, and also those who hang on to the hope of technological fixes, give remembrance to human foolishness. Christians today are called to remember differently, even ready to suffer with the crucified Christ in action of remaking their lives as a ‘hopeful witness to climate justice.’
While the writings of women are quite sparse in Northcott’s book, it is significant that they are used to exemplify human responses to climate change. He cites Mary’s response, ‘let it done to me according to your word’, and says that in our age, the earth is an authority more present to us than the angels and one we must heed.
Listen to the earth and make a Christian response is ultimately the message of Northcott’s book. He argues the case with convincing detail and with faith based on scriptural and theological depth.
