A Moral Climate - Book Review
Charles Rue
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. 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.
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 facts 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 industrialized nations can address the climate challenge in cooperation with the developing world.
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. He also connects this prophetic tradition to the warnings of scientists and secular writers on ecology and climate.
He explores 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.'
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 motivation for the average believer to start action on facing the climate challenge.
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.'
Northcott reflects on 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.'
He will visit Australia soon and will give and open lecture at Uniting Theological College Parramatta on 6th May, 2008.
