Book Review: Saving Us—A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katherine Hayhoe
How Should an Anabaptist Respond to Climate Change?
Climate change. Few words evoke as much emotion in current public discourse. Yet when we strip away the political and ideological baggage, climate change either exists, or it does not. Either the prevailing weather conditions of a region become different over a generation, or they do not. In her recent book Saving Us, the climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe says that to consider climate change a partisan issue is to miss the point. A thermometer is neither Democrat nor Republican. Weather phenomena affect us all equally.
But how can we know what or who to believe about the specifics of climate change? Is climate change a valid concern for me personally?
Regarding the last question, if we are like the majority of Americans, our answer is not a simple yes or no. In fact, Hayhoe lists six dominants responses. On one end of the spectrum are the Alarmed, people who see climate change as a “serious and immediate threat.” On the other end are the Dismissives, people who “angrily reject the idea” that climate change is a threat and even deny that earth’s climate is changing at all.
Most of us, however, fall between the two extremes into one of the following categories: Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, or Doubtful. Hayhoe’s goal is for all the groups to hear each other.
Well, almost all the groups. As someone who has spent a lifetime researching and raising awareness of climate change, Hayhoe dismisses the Dismissives out of hand. This past year, millions of Pakistanis suffered devastating flooding because of melting glaciers. For centuries summertime temperatures in Ireland and the United Kingdom rarely exceeded 20° Celsius (68° F), but now it happens regularly. The Mississippi River’s natural cycle of drought and flooding has become much more dramatic.
Most people, with climate change unfolding before their eyes, accept it as fact. Fewer people, but still a growing majority[1], also agree with climate scientists’ basic explanation for climate change: Humans are putting excessive carbon and methane into the atmosphere and this destabilizes living conditions.
But agreeing on the best response to the crisis is another matter. Should we all become vegans in hopes of lowering methane emissions? Should we assassinate the CEO of Exxon-Mobil in order to stop carbon dumps?
What about us as Anabaptists? As with most issues, our automatic response to climate change is shaped by our background. Given our reputation as Die Stille im Lande, we might resolve to carry on working quietly as craftsmen and farmers. Assessing the cacophony of differing opinions, we may turn and run for cover.
Self-sufficiency is admirable and a refusal to get dragged into partisan politics even more so. Yet, we are all affected by today’s web of changing geo-political and climactic conditions. Even in such basic acts as eating and driving, we cast our vote. To live is to respond. In the face of such a pressing and all-encompassing issue, is having no opinion a viable option?
Hayhoe asserts that although climate change is one of the largest crises humanity has ever faced, solving it requires a very simple formula: identifying and then acting on our shared values. What are the values she promotes? How are they lived out? How do they fit with the historic Anabaptist faith?
This review evaluates three of them: innovation, collaboration, and care for the earth.
Innovation
Surprisingly, Hayhoe exerts almost no pressure for invidivuals to change their everyday habits as a way to lower emissions. In fact, she underscores the utter ineffectiveness of guilt-tripping, and she scoffs at a Shell CEO who recently exhorted people to eat fewer out-of-season strawberries in order to lower transportation emissions. Hayhoe believes that with power and wealth comes responsibility, and that people in high places should act first.
However, breakthroughs in lowering emissions—whether in consumption, energy, or transport—can also come through ordinary individuals. Genius ideas that are later adopted en masse often originate with everyday citizens. As examples, Hayhoe tells stories of a Christian woman in Sierra Leone who mobilized believers to plant thousands of trees in order to stymie the increased deadly mudslides there, of an American graduate student who has found ways to draw carbon from the atmosphere and store it in rocks, of her own decision to install solar panels on her home in Texas and how this led to her neighbours following suit.
How does innovation fit with an Anabaptist worldview? A former Anabaptist boss had this slogan for the publishing house where I worked: “We probably can’t be the first to adapt, but let’s not be last.” While Anabaptists have been late adaptors in some areas, and I would argue for good reasons, we have also led the way in others. For instance, when I lived in Poland, I learned that in the 18th century, Mennonites were invited to farm the Vistula River Delta. Why? Because they had world-class methods for draining and cultivating the soil. Other examples of innovation include the Anabaptists’ approach to insurance and other forms of community.
In the right context, we should use our God-given abilities to innovate to the hilt. Why should innovation in lowering emissions and sharing earth’s resources be an exception?
Collaboration
Put simply, collaboration just means working together. But sometimes we interpret it as collusion: people working together in secret to do something dishonest. Anabaptists might hear a pitch for lowering greenhouse gases and instantly feel they are being asked to collude rather than collaborate. After all, human nature easily falls prey to profiteering from a crisis. We do well to proceed slowly where large sums of money are at stake.
But on the issue of climate change, it works both ways. Hayhoe documents gigantic oil corporations that have paid “experts” to promote their agenda and then publicized those “findings” in full-page newspaper ads. Driven purely by profit, these companies are openly undermining climate science that was put forward as early as the end of the First Industrial Revolution in the 1850s.
The choice is not whether we collaborate but how. For Anabaptists, whose primary contribution to history was arguably their insistence on separation of church and state, it should be taken as an axiom that our collaboration is not driven by party loyalty. The painting of Dirk Willems and the thief catcher has sometimes been referred to as the Anabaptist Mona Lisa, and for good reason. Historically, Anabaptists have taken Jesus’ command to love our neighbour literally, no matter if that neighbour is Republican or Democrat, no matter if that neighbour suffers from climate change or perpetuates it.
Non-partisan climate action that promotes the common good—what does it look like for 21st-century followers of Jesus? I propose that we, as Hayhoe seeks to do in her book, lay aside party allegiance and look at every weather phenomenon and each potential climate solution through the prism of collaborating to make this planet the best place possible—for everyone.
Care for the earth
When the topic of climate change comes up, it is not uncommon for Christians to respond, whether seriously or in jest, with, “It’s all gonna burn someday.” Indeed, the Bible alludes to the impermanency of the earth (Isaiah 51:6) or at least certain elements of the earth (2 Peter 3:10). But it also speaks positively and even reverently about the earth. Already in the first chapter God “saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good” (Genesis 1:31) and, in what was surely the most sacred charge ever given, asks humans to take responsibility over everything in it. As Hayhoe asks, “What is more Christian than to be good stewards of the planet and love our global neighbour as ourselves?”
Some may point out that this good earth was cursed by sin. Yet note the Bible’s high regard for the earth even after the Fall. Revelation 11 says that God will destroy those who destroy the earth. And of course, Psalm 24:1: “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Regarding the latter passage, the scholar David Bosch claims that “no biblical text appears more” in the early Anabaptist court testimonies than Psalm 24:1. Is a high regard for the earth an Anabaptist value? I will let the evidence speak for itself.
Conclusion
My message is two-fold: (1) Climate change demands a response and (2) Prudent action on climate change aligns with Anabaptist values. In the spirit of Anabaptism, I do not intend this as a coercive essay, but as an invitation to consider what Hayhoe has presented. As an individual, you are free to turn your back on innovation and collaboration in our use of resources, and you may even choose not to care for the earth.
All this and more you can do as an individual. I only ask that you think twice before doing so as an Anabaptist.
[1] About 57% of Americans, according to a 2022 Ipsos poll.
Comments ()