Enhancement? Isn’t our proper role stewardship? In recent years there’s been plenty of encouragement for that. The strength of stewardship is accepting that we have a duty to care for creation. Its weakness is that it falls short of insisting on what follows from our new earth story: that in our evolving world we should be seeing ourselves as an integral part of nature, not beings above and beyond it, as “stewardship” can imply.

When we make that shift, we begin to see our relationship with the earth in a radically new light. So it’s encouraging that in recent decades many churches have been quietly greening themselves. You see it in new hymns, prayers, sermons, liturgies and church-sponsored conferences and seminars.

For theology, a major new factor is the huge shift in our consciousness of power. Once God, conceived theistically, was assumed to have all the power. Only God was almighty.

Not quite any more. Humans now have knowledge unimaginable to previous generations, and the power to move mountains, change the course of rivers, send landing-craft to Mars, manipulate genes, develop new strains of plants and livestock, destroy forests, destroy species, destroy people en masse with nuclear weapons, poison gas and deadly viruses.

Where we fall short is in the wisdom to marshal all that knowledge and power for the betterment of our species, and of the planet that we share with all life. For along with our knowledge and power goes an awesome responsibility new to our times, and the scorecard so far is very mixed. Some highly informed folk assess that the human species in relation to the planet is close to tipping-point.

An American physicist, David Robinson, reflects that concern in The Poised Century. Which way we tilt will depend almost entirely on how we humans use our power: to preserve and sustain or to destroy? As Robinson says, “Given consciousness, we have the capacity for conscious evolution, the ability to look at our own actions, see their effect on ourselves and the world, and then act in new ways that will change our course from extinction to sustainability.”

Extinction? Climate trends showthe world is on track for a 3°C warming by the year 2100, well past the 2° trigger that threatens drastic effects on the weather, oceans, fish stocks, species survival, human well-being. The fear is that nothing we can do will then prevent a further rise towards a 6° warming. “And,” some predict, “6° gives you mass extinction,” which means that 50 per cent or more of existing species will vanish.

That’s happened five times in the past 500 million years, when warming radically affected the world’s oceans. It led to vast emissions of hydrogen sulphide gas, destroying the ozone layer and poisoning land species.

Today it’s burning fossil fuels that’s tipping the balance against our children’s future. Their emissions form a greenhouse blanket around the earth that distorts the balance between solar energy coming in and earth-generated energy escaping from the atmosphere.

We’re already seeing the consequences in hotter, longer and more frequent heat waves and droughts, fiercer bushfires, harsher winters, wilder storms and flooding, and melting permafrost and glaciers.

Close to home, the Antarctic is carving ice at an alarming rate. The polar glaciers are disappearing six times faster than in 1990, and sea levels are set to rise, some say at least three metres, by the year 2100. As one observer put it, “To understand our origins, scientists look to the stars. To understand our demise, the glacier is ground zero.”

Expect the new extremes of drought and flooding to slash food crops more often. Expect more people to suffer malnutrition and starvation. Expect a time when millions more will lack ready access to water.

In the face of all that, we need action, we need hope – and we need a spirituality that embraces the earth. With the pressures of consumerism all around us, Robinson asks, “Is there a better way to be better off?” and answers, “Yes” – as long as we develop “a new economics that values who we are over what we have. That values being over accumulation [of goods].”

Next month: A new spirituality.