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Class 4: The Impacts Of The Climate Crisis On Creation

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1. DEVELOPING A COMMON LANGUAGE:

Climate Justice and Environmental Justice:
According to Wikipedia, climate justice is a concept that addresses the ethical dimensions of climate change. Applied ethics, research and activism use the term to explore anthropogenic climate change as an ethical, legal and political issue rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature.
The US Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The EPA states that this goal can only be reached when all persons benefit from the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and have equal access to the decision-making process for a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
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Creation Justice expands the concept of “justice for all” to include all of creation, the Earth, all plants and animals, humans, water, air and soil.
Sea-level rise as it relates to climate change is
caused by two major factors
⁠
. First, more water is released into the ocean as glaciers and land ice melts. Second, the ocean expands as ocean temperatures increase. Both of these consequences of climate change are accelerating sea-level rise around the world, putting millions of people who live in coastal communities at risk. (the Climate Reality Project)
Systems of exploitation seek to maximize profits by underpaying laborers and/or providing unsafe work environments or by extracting and using resources which belong to others.
Intersectional environmentalism: Leah Thomas coined this term to identify the interconnected nature of people and the planet. The term highlights the importance of achieving climate justice, of amplifying historically excluded voices, and of approaching environmental education, policy and activism with equity, inclusion and restorative justice in mind.
Intersectionality suggests that certain aspects of who you are will increase your access to the good things in life or your exposure to the bad things in life. The term was coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw and recognizes that multiple social issues are connected and cannot be addressed effectively in isolation. This has led the United Methodist Church and others to include racism, sexism, poverty and other social inequities as it considers climate justice.
Global Climate Risk Index identifies the vulnerability of specific locations to future extreme weather events. Countries or localities can use the index when planning for more frequent or more severe weather events.
Desertification refers to land degradation resulting from climatic variations and human activities. It is not a natural process, but is caused by human activity. Today, a third of land is threatened by desertification (Good Planet). Note that desertification is not the loss of land to desert or through sand dune movement.
Biodiversity refers to the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem. (Oxford Languages)
Cryosphere includes all parts of Earth covered by water in its frozen form (snow and ice, glaciers and permafrost soils.) ( From This Is Climate Change by David Nelles and Christian Serrer)

2. IMPACTS ON THE EARTH **

AIR
Greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide especially) have increased as a result of our use of fossil fuels to create energy, synthetic fertilizers, synthetic clothing and other plastics, and through the burning of forests. The increase in greenhouse gases has warmed and polluted the Earth’s atmosphere and thus the air we breathe.
WATER
Both the oceans and fresh water have been affected. The oceans have absorbed much of the excess CO2 which has caused them to warm and expand in volume and become more acidic. The additional atmospheric warmth has caused melting of the glaciers and ice caps and sheets. The additional water from the ice sheets plus the expansion of the warmer water has caused sea levels to rise.
Creeks and rivers and lakes and ponds have become polluted from using them as receptacles for our waste products from many industries and from the run off of agricultural wastes and fertilizers.
The chances of flooding are increased as warmer air holds more water and releases it in storm systems.
LAND
The rise in sea level has caused flooding and eroding of coastal areas. Farming practices have caused desertification of land. Forests have been burned for agricultural and industrial uses. Warmer temperatures have caused the permafrost (soil that is typically below freezing) to begin to melt and release stored carbon as methane. Warmer air temperatures increase evaporation of moisture from the soil increasing the likelihood of droughts. Warmer temperatures increase the conditions for wildfires.

3. IMPACTS ON HUMANITY

The U.S. Department of Defense in 2014 said, “Climate change will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.” (An Inconvenient Sequel, Truth to Power, Al Gore)
Quote from the article published on the Brookings website, September 23, 2019, “The Challenging Politics of Climate Change” by Elaine Kamarck, Founding Director of the Center for Effective Public Management:
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“As the climate crisis becomes more serious and more obvious, Americans remain resistant to decisive and comprehensive action on climate change. In “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,” David Wallace-Wells paints a frightening picture of the coming environmental apocalypse. Whole parts of the globe will become too hot for human habitation and those left behind will die of heat. Diseases will increase and mutate. Food shortages will become chronic as we fail to move agriculture from one climate to another. Whole countries like Bangladesh and parts of other countries like Miami will be underwater. Shortages of fresh water will affect humans and agriculture. The oceans will die, the air will get dirtier. “But,” as Wallace-Wells argues, “what lies between us and extinction is horrifying enough.”
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That’s because, as climate change takes its toll on Earth’s physical planet, it will also cause social, economic, and political chaos as refugees flee areas that can no longer sustain them. If this prediction seems a bit extreme, all we have to do is look at recent weather events that keep breaking records to confront the possibility that the threat from climate change may indeed be existential.”****
Quote from Raymond Zhong in the New York Times, 5 Takeaways From the U.N. Report on Climate Hazards published February 28, 2022:
“The new report finds that climate change is not only adding to ecological threats such as wildfires, heat waves and rising sea levels, it is also displacing people from their homes and jeopardizing food and water supplies. It is harming people’s physical and mental health, with increasing incidence of food and waterborne illness, respiratory distress from wildfire smoke and trauma from natural disasters. And the funding shortfall for dealing with all this is “widening.”
Quote from an article in the Washington Post on October 11, 2021 by Annabelle Tinset and Sarah Kaplan:
“At least 85% of the global population has experienced weather events made worse by climate change, according to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. These combined findings — which focused on events such as crop failures, floods and heat waves — allowed scientists to make a solid link between rising temperatures and human activities. They concluded that global warming had already affected 80% of the world’s land area. In a letter signed by 450 organizations representing 45 million health-care workers attention was called to the way rising temperatures have increased the risk of many health issues, including breathing problems, mental illness and insect-borne diseases. “The climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” the letter said.”
A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) written by Adam B. Smith on January 24, 2022 gives a financial and human toll for severe weather in 2021 in the United States.
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“Damages from the 2021 disasters totaled approximately $145 billion. (All cost estimates are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index, 2021). The costliest 2021 events were Hurricane Ida ($75 billion), the mid-February Winter Storm / Cold Wave ($24.0 billion), and the Western wildfires ($10.9 billion). Adding the 2021 events to the record that began in 1980, the U.S. has sustained 310 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The cumulative cost for these 310 events exceeds $2.15 trillion.
2021 was also unusually deadly, in that the 20 events of 2021 caused at least 688 direct or indirect fatalities—the most disaster-related fatalities for the contiguous U.S. since 2011 and more than double last year’s number of 262. In addition, these U.S. disasters also went late into the year, as December produced the Southeast, Central Tornado Outbreak (December 10); the Midwest Derecho and Tornado Outbreak (December 15); and the Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30. In 2021, the U.S. experienced 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, putting 2021 in second place for the most disasters in a calendar year, behind the record 22 separate billion-dollar events in 2020.
What really made 2021 stand out was the diversity of disasters:
1 winter storm/cold wave event (focused across the deep south and Texas);
1 wildfire event (combined impacts of wildfires across Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington);
1 drought and heat wave event (summer/fall across western U.S.);
2 flood events (in California and Louisiana);
3 tornado outbreaks (including the December tornado outbreaks);
4 tropical cyclones (Elsa, Fred, Ida and Nicholas); and
8 severe weather events (across many parts of the country, including the December Midwest derecho).

4. IMPACTS ON DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

BANGLADESH:
Let’s take a look at Bangladesh, located east of India on the Bay of Bengal. This country is an important example of how the climate crisis impacts developing nations, both now and into the future. “Rising seas, floods, and intensifying cyclones are just a few of the impacts that make Bangladesh one of the most climate change-vulnerable countries in the world. Few countries on Earth so exemplify the deep inequity of the climate crisis as Bangladesh. Despite producing only
0.56% of the global emissions
⁠
changing our climate, Bangladesh ranks seventh on the list of countries most vulnerable to climate devastation, according to
Germanwatch’s 2021 Global Climate Risk Index (CRI)
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. Perhaps more telling,
the average person
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in Bangladesh emits 0.5 metric tons of CO2 per year. In the US, for comparison, that number is 15.2 metric tons per person — about 30 times as much.” (The Climate Reality Project)
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https://youtu.be/ZK-8PisM_xo
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In addition to Bangladesh, the countries that have been placed on the list of the 10 most affected are Puerto Rico (1), Myanmar (2), Haiti (3), the Philippines (4), Mozambique (5), The Bahamas (6), Pakistan (8), Thailand (9), and Nepal (10).
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AFRICA
Climate justice explores the unequal distribution of climate change impact for groups such as
Indigenous people
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, people of color,
women
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, and
people with disabilities
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. An example of this unequal distribution can be seen in Africa. Ugandan climate justice advocate
Vanessa Nakate
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shared with the United Nations that, historically, Africa as a continent is responsible for less than
four percent of global emissions
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, and yet many Africans find themselves at the frontlines of climate change.
The most recent United Nations report on the climate crisis (the 6th by the IPCC published in 2021 and 2022) sheds more light on the inequities.
“Developing countries not only have fewer resources for dealing with climate shocks. They are also more vulnerable: Their infrastructure is often inadequate, their social safety nets are weaker and their people’s livelihoods depend more on the natural world. Between 2010 and 2020, floods, droughts and storms killed 15 times as many people in developing nations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere than in the wealthiest countries, the report found. Even within rich countries, there are huge disparities in exposure to these risks among different groups of people. In all, 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people — nearly half of humankind — are “highly vulnerable” to climate change today, the report says.” From a New York Times article by Raymond Zhong on April 4, 2022 entitled “5 Takeaways From The U.N. Report on Limiting Global Warming”.
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CLIMATE REFUGEES / CLIMATE MIGRANTS
According to international refugee law, the status of refugee is not granted to people forced to emigrate by the impacts of climate change on their home country. Without this designation, they are denied the benefits usually accorded refugees. Sometimes they are referred to as climate migrants to denote this difference.
The World Bank estimates that by 2050, some 216 million people will be compelled to move because of the effects of climate change, from sea level rise and storm surges to desertification and extreme heat. (The Operations Evaluation Department of the World Bank)
“Climate stressors, such as changing rainfall, heavy flooding, and sea level rise, put pressure on people to leave their homes and livelihoods behind. It makes their homes uninhabitable. These people could live anywhere in the world ranging from the Pacific island states such as Kiribati and Tuvalu that are dealing with sea-level rise, to farmers in countries in West Africa who cannot cultivate their crops or raise livestock anymore because of drought and flooding………
People are already moving because of climate stressors and changing weather patterns. Whether salinity intrusion in Bangladesh is making it difficult for farmers to continue cultivating rice or flooding in Kenya is killing livestock and destroying crops, people’s livelihoods are being threatened by climate stressors. In many cases, people will adapt to these stressors by migrating. …..The majority of environmentally-induced migrants are likely to come from rural areas, as their livelihoods often depend on climate sensitive sectors, such as agriculture and fishing. However, climate migration out of urban areas is also possible as sea level rise affects the densely populated coastal areas.” From the United Nations University
https://ehs.unu.edu/news/news/5-facts-on-climate-migrants.html
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https://ehs.unu.edu/news/news/5-facts-on-climate-migrants.html
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5. UNEQUAL IMPACTS WITHIN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES **

According to
Yale Climate Connections
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, the following are key factors to consider in thinking about climate justice:
Climate justice begins with recognizing key groups are differently affected by climate change.
Climate impacts can exacerbate inequitable social conditions.
Here are a few examples of how some communities may be more affected by these impacts than others – and may have fewer resources to handle those impacts, too:
Communities of color are often more at risk from air pollution, according to both the
NAACP
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, the
American Lung Association,
⁠
and countless research papers.
Seniors,
people with disabilities
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, and people with chronic illnesses may have a harder time living through periods of severe heat, or being able to quickly and safely evacuate from major storms or fire.
People with limited income may live in subsidized housing, which too often is
located in a flood plain
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. Their housing options may also have inadequate insulation, mold problems, or air conditioning to effectively combat severe heat or cope with strong storms. Economically challenged people may also be hard-pressed to afford flood or fire insurance, rebuild homes, or pay for steep medical bills after catastrophe strikes.
Language barriers can make it difficult for immigrant communities to get early information about incoming storms or weather disasters or wildfires, or to communicate effectively with first responders in the midst of an evacuation order.
Some indigenous communities are already seeing their homes and livelihoods lost to rising sea levels or drought. For example, the
Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe
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has lost nearly all of its land and is relocating to higher ground.
Prolonged drought and flooding can affect food supply or distribution, making it harder for people to access affordable, healthy food.
Today’s youth and future generations will experience more profound impacts of climate change as it worsens over time, from direct adverse health impacts to the financial implications of needing to shore-up infrastructure and other adaptation and mitigation needs.
Watch the video below from the peoples’ climate march in Glasgow, Scotland during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). You will see representation from both developed and developing countries. Their commonality is the need for climate justice.
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6**: IMPACTS ON OTHER ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE**

Let us remind ourselves what the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church say about our responsibility to the animals and plants which make up this beautiful world:
Caring for All Creatures (from the Social Principles written in 2020)
We support the respectful and humane treatment of animals, who are crucial participants in God’s ongoing creation and of inherent worth. We embrace Biblical teachings that envision a time when humans and other creatures shall live in peace and harmony in a restored creation. (Isa. 11:6) This commitment to respectful and humane treatment of animals means, for instance, putting in place protections to ensure that animals employed in agricultural and other forms of labor are free from cruel or abusive types of treatment and provided with ample rest and nourishment. Additionally, we oppose forcing animals to combat each other. Animals raised for human consumption should be provided with healthy living conditions and sufficient food and water. Animals raised for human consumption must likewise be reared in humane conditions and slaughtered in a manner that minimizes their overall suffering and pain.
With respect to creatures living in the wild, we urge cooperative efforts by international bodies, governments, civic institutions, churches, and concerned individuals and groups to end poaching and protect endangered and vulnerable species and preserve dwindling habitats. We decry the mass extinctions currently underway and call for the adoption of sustainable policies and practices that allow both animal and human life to flourish.
How are we doing?
The climate crisis is making areas uninhabitable for many native plants and animals.
This is leading to migrations and also to species extinction.
Animals are dying in forest fires.
Coral is dying in the acidifying oceans.
Ocean and fresh water animal species are dying from uninhabitable conditions.
Trees are dying from lack of adequate water and warming temperatures.
Land animals are dying from loss of appropriate habitat.
We honor all of God’s creatures in song. What about in action? Enjoy a little bluegrass as you listen to “
Place In The Choir
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” by the Brown’s.
Watch this 3-minute video “David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg’s Plea for the Planet” created in September, 2019.
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https://youtu.be/CMOEcUPGi9c
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https://youtu.be/CMOEcUPGi9c
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Additional Resources for Further Learning:

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THIS
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short video is produced by
350.org
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, The People's Fight: How We Halt the Climate Crisis.
Videos:
FeedbackLoopsClimate.com
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Introduction
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(13min)
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Forests
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(14min)
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Permafrost
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(11min)
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Atmosphere
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(9min)
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Albedo
⁠
(11min).
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Educational Materials
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Video:
Johan Rockstrom: Earth's Climate Tipping Points
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(3min)
Article:
Why Positive Climate Feedback Loops Are So Bad
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Video:
Climate Migration in America
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(3min)
Video:
Climate Migration in America & the World
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(17min).

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Creation Justice Tips
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by Crys Zinkiewicz

From UM Social Principles: “We confess that the negative impacts resulting from the degradation of the natural world have fallen disproportionately on marginalized communities, including indigenous tribes, religious and ethnic communities, people living in poverty, and other vulnerable groups. We, therefore, pledge to resist all forms of environmental exploitation, neglect and inequality.
Jesus has told us that we are to care for the “least.” Working to ameliorate climate change recognizes that the “least” in our world will suffer the most from the ravages that are coming. We may have the resources to survive, but others will not. Jesus calls us to care for humanity, to work for climate justice.
Confused about climate change? Experts are just a click away. Visit TED Talks on your computer. Type in “climate change” in the search bar and learn about both the science and why climate change is a human rights issue. Hear what they say and make up your own mind.
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This African proverb reminds us to seek out connections to be effective in creation justice. Who else is working on the issues? People you know and people they know, other churches, other faiths, secular organizations, online groups? Go together!
500,000 school days missed annually by U.S. children are due to pollution from burning fossil fuels. Sick children mean parents miss work. Missing work often means no wages. Missing too frequently may mean no job. People who live closest to toxin-spewing plants pay a heavier price than those who have resources to live elsewhere. Justice requires action to stop air pollution.
“With respect to creatures living in the wild, we urge cooperative efforts by international bodies, governments, civic institutions, churches, and concerned individuals and groups to end poaching and protect endangered and vulnerable species and preserve dwindling habitats. We decry the mass extinctions currently underway….”—UM Social Principles
“Few biblical themes are as prominent or as numerous as the scriptural injunctions to stand in solidarity with ‘the least of these,’ including the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger, and all other vulnerable members of society….Accordingly, we pledge ourselves to the establishment of just, equitable, and sustainable economies that work for all.”—UM Social Principles
Commit to reuse, repair, and recycle in the present rather than discard, despoil, and destroy our future. Do it for the children and grandchildren you know and love.
Be aware and care that our actions affect people and places with fewer resources. Climate change consequences are life- and livelihood-threatening as the sea level rises, drought jeopardizes food harvests, and extreme storms wreak havoc.

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