“We” Most Probably Won’t Do It

For decades now, I have had high regard for Al Gore, who served as vice president of the U.S. from 1993 to 2001 and who barely lost the presidential election in 2000. Since then, Gore, who celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year, has been known primarily as an environmentalist.

Logo of Climate Reality Project
(started by Gore in 2006, new name in 2011)

An Inconvenient Truth is the name of Al Gore’s film about his campaign to educate people about global warming. in July 2006, June and I went with friends here in Liberty to see that powerful new documentary, which includes Gore’s slide show about environmental issues.

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

In January 2008 I had the privilege of hearing Gore speak (and show slides), and I was highly impressed with not only what he said (and showed) but with him as a genuine, insightful person. I thought again how it was such a shame that he didn’t become POTUS in 2001.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is Gore’s 2017 film documenting his ten years of effort to combat global warming after his first film that had garnered so much publicity. (I can’t explain why June and I hadn’t watched this until last week; it certainly was well worth watching.)**

The climax of this documentary is about the Paris Agreement reached at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 21). On Earth Day (Apr. 22) 2016, 174 countries signed that agreement.

But Gore’s joyful hope soon turned to feelings of despair as the Trump administration announced in 2017 that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Agreement as soon as possible (in 2020).

The film, of course, doesn’t show how Pres. Biden announced on his first day in office that the U.S. was rejoining. Since then, Biden has continually pushed measures to counteract the steady and detrimental increase of global warming, in spite of constant opposition from the GOP.

But has he done enough? Perhaps he has done about as much as he could have done because of the climate change deniers, but no, he has not done nearly enough to stem the coming collapse.

Al Gore remains hopeful that “we” can solve the problem of climate change, etc. A 9/20/19 opinion piece in the New York Times is titled: “Al Gore: The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win.”

Speaking at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Oct. 2021, Gore declared, “We have the solutions…. I have an enormous amount of hope about our future.”

Then last month, David Gelles published an article based on a recent interview with Gore. The NYTimes reporter stated that “the events of the past few weeks have Gore even more worried than usual.” Still, “Despite the apocalyptic weather news, Gore is also hopeful.”

Gore said in that interview, “The faster we stop burning fossil fuels and releasing other planet-warming emissions, the more quickly global temperatures can stabilize.” Further, “We know how to fix this…. We can stop the temperature going up worldwide…” (bolding added).

While these words are perhaps true, the sad fact is that in all likelihood, “we” won’t do it. All the books and films about global warming end with what we need to do. But in spite of some encouraging signs, we (meaning the vast majority of people on Earth) don’t seem to be making much progress.

Part of the Paris Agreement goal was the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO²) in the atmosphere to no more than 350 ppm. In 2006 that figure was 380 and it had risen to 410 by 2017. But now in August 2023, it is 420, and it keeps going up, as is clearly seen in the following chart. 

I’m afraid the much-respected Mr. Gore is somewhat affected by “hopium” (holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality). “We” are most probably not going to prevent the coming collapse resulting from overshoot.

But we (you and I) can work to push the collapse further into the future.  

_____

** We watched this on Amazon Prime (at a nominal charge), and then discovered that the DVD was available at our local library. In addition to the two books published with the same titles as the two movies, and several earlier books, Gore is also the author of The Assault on Reason (2007, 2017), Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (2009), and The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (2013).

Note: The Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence at Central Seminary in Kansas is offering a five-part course titled “Creation Care in a Changing Climate: Doing Our Part to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Please click here to learn more about this course, and if you would like to participate, you can register there. (Courses such as this can help with doing what I suggest in the last sentence of this article.)

Thoughts on My 85th Birthday

Today (August 15, 2023) is my 85^th birthday. That being so, I am sharing personal reflections on this milestone day. 

I am truly grateful to still be alive and “sound in mind and body.” Many don’t live this long. Three of my closest lifetime friends have been gone for years now: Bobby Pinkerton (1937~2008), Clyde Tilley (1935~2013), and Joe Wolven (1939~2015). I still miss them.

Although I am happy to say I have no illness of any kind, I am experiencing reduced activity, and especially markedly reduced travel, because of the decrease in physical energy/stamina.

At this point, I am not planning to go with June to attend our beloved grandson David’s wedding in Georgia the first of next month, and I will also likely not make the trip to south Missouri later in September for the burial of June’s only brother, who passed away early this month at the age of 88.

Thankfully, modern technology makes significant connectedness possible from the comfort of one’s own home—and for introverts such as I, being home, even home alone, is often more enjoyable than being in a crowd of people.

I can honestly say that overall, I have had a wonderful life during these 85 years. Three years ago, I published a brief book for my children and grandchildren with the subtitle The Story of My Life from Birth until My 82^nd Birthday (1938~2020). The book’s title is A Wonderful Life.

As I wrote on the first page, that title “is not an evaluation I have heard from others. In fact, some may well think my life has not been particularly wonderful—and that’s all right.” The point is that I believe that I have had a wonderful life, and I am genuinely grateful for how my life has been graced.

Tomorrow and in the following weeks, I will continue revising and updating that book with the goal of publishing a new edition of it, with numbers in the subtitle changed to 85^th and 2023, before the end of the year.

However, for as long as possible I want to continue focusing on the present and the future rather than the past. I plan to keep reading, thinking, and writing blog articles (and perhaps an occasional book review).

I want my grandchildren, and their children, to know something about my life story, but I am even more interested in trying to share with them knowledge and, hopefully, wisdom about the world as it is now and is likely to become.

I deeply desire to leave a meaningful legacy to my descendants, but not a legacy of material things or of things past. I hope to leave them a legacy that will encourage them to think critically, meaningfully, and creatively. I also want to motivate them to think deeply about the meaning of life.

To that end, last month I wrote a letter to my great-grandson on his first birthday, asking his parents to keep it for him to read years from now. I decided then that for as long as possible I will write a thoughtful letter to each of my family members on their birthday.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to my youngest grandson on his 16^th birthday. And today I will finish writing a letter to my oldest son, whose birth on August 15 was the best birthday present I ever received.

Looking forward, I want to do all I can to help my children/grandchildren, and as many other people as possible, to think well and to choose wisely, in order that they, too, will have as wonderful a life as possible—and a life that will make a positive contribution to peace and justice in the world.  

In closing, I am sharing this little poem I have written for today:

I’m eighty-five and still alive.
The good old days have parted ways,
but days are new and joyful too. 
So, I’ll go on ‘til time is gone
with gratitude my attitude 
and faith in God until the sod 
will cover me. And then I’ll see
 a blissful state, my lasting fate.

 

The Radiant Center Challenged by Criticism of Centrists

As many of you know, I am an advocate of what I call “the radiant center.” The last part of the last chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020) is about seeking and advocating a radiant theological center between the extremes of fundamentalism and liberalism (see pp. 317~330).

Last month, though, a man I greatly respect published an online opinion piece criticizing centrists. Naturally, I had to think about whether that was also a criticism of my strong emphasis on seeking the radiant center. 

Mitch Randall has been CEO of Good Faith Media (GFM) since July 2020. GFM evolved from what once was the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission (CLC), which I highly evaluated and appreciated in the 1960s through the 1980s.*¹

Randall began his July 20 article by asserting, “The greatest enemy of freedom is not white Christian nationalists breaching the U.S. Capitol. It’s white moderate — now centrist — Christian males advocating for civility over justice.” He immediately moves to MLKing’s powerful writing 60 years ago.

On April 12, 1963, King’s “The Letter from the Birmingham Jail” was published. In that pointed letter, King wrote that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ ‘Councilor’ or the Ku Klux Klanner.”

No, that stumbling block is “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

I fully agree with King’s emphasis on positive peace and the necessity of justice. But it seems quite clear to me that King was also a centrist in that he was firmly between the extremes of doing nothing and of acting violently. He did not engage in the extremism of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

There are some who say that it was the extremism of the violent Blacks that made it possible for King to be so effective, but it is hard to know whether that was so. What we do know is that King had the “strength to love” and used those words for the title of his influential book also published in 1963.

Since I oppose the extremes of doing nothing and violent action, I guess I could be called a White centrist Christian. But according to Randall, such centrists “have done more to thwart the progress of faith and freedom than any fascist or anarchist.”

Moreover, Randall charges that such centrists “decry those demanding justice for the isolated, marginalized and oppressed” and they brand people like him as extreme because he advocates “for inclusion, affirmation, and equality for all of God’s children.” 

But I want to remind Randall that the center is quite wide, and the radiant center I advocate for ethics as well as for theology includes those things he so strongly calls for.

There are some who want the justice, the inclusion, the affirmation, and the equality that Randall desires but who are willing to use violent action to seek those good ends. However, I haven’t seen Randall advocate such violence, so I would place him, just as I did MLK, in the radiant center.

Seeking the radiant center doesn’t mean embracing “bothsideism.” When the opposing extremes are vacuous inactivity and violent action, the radiant center calls for “neithersideism.”*²

I have often emphasized the importance of both/and thinking. But there are also times that the emphasis needs to be on neither/nor. The radiant center often stresses the latter. So, in considering the radiant center with reference to ethics as well as theology, these words still are applicable:

The radiant center radiates the heat (passion and compassion) and light of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the gospel about Jesus. The radiant center is engaged, for light does not stay in the bulb nor heat in the radiator. Radiance entails engagement.*³

Yes, being in the radiant center means actively engaging in efforts to produce peace and justice for all, which usually means moving to the far left side of that center—and I appreciate Mitch Randall for criticizing those centrists who are on the far right and are not radiant.  

____

*¹ When the CLC was significantly changed (and later renamed) as a part of the conservative takeover of the SBC, the Baptist Center for Ethics was formed in 1991 by former Southern Baptists who had established the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship the year before, and in 2017 Randall became the second director of that organization, which is now GFM.

*² I don’t remember ever seeing/hearing the word “neithersideism,” so I thought maybe I was coining a new word. But in searching the Internet, I soon found that journalist Matt Labash subtitled his 4/21/22 Substack article “The case for Neithersideism.”

*³ The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2020), p. 329.