Mary Betz reflects on how we can understand and support changes that will protect our common home.

Francis of Assisi stopped to pray in the small church of San Damiano one day when Jesus spoke to him from the cross: “Francis, go repair my house which as you see is falling into ruin.” Francis dutifully gathered companions and began moving stones to rebuild the walls of the church. In time, he realised that God was calling him to a much larger task: it was not the physical edifice he was being asked to rebuild, but the internal workings of God’s house.

We are still working on that massive second task, but Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio firmly believes that if Francis were living today, he would understand Jesus’s words as a third, even greater challenge ­— a desperate plea to restore and protect God’s global house, our Earth.

Earth as God’s house

The Greek word for house, oikos, is the root of our word “ecology”, which we can understand as the interactions between houses and their households, or between ecosystems and all living and non-living things within them. Francis saw all things in creation ­— sun, water, birds, plants ­— as brothers and sisters to be lived among, reverenced and cherished.

Now, 800 years later, we find ourselves wondering how to recover a way to live in our oikos in wisdom, respect and wonder ­— rather than the economic commodification and subsequent environmental despoiling which has eventuated.

Earth’s Ecosystems at Breaking Point

The ecosystems of our oikos are under enormous pressure. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI identified many contributing, linked problems: “Can we remain indifferent before . . . climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural catastrophes and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical regions?”

It seems we have remained indifferent ­— or at least inert. The July report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change and Land, assessed the situation, including threats from climate change and interconnected environmental issues. The report shows that despite knowing the risks, we have continued to damage Earth and ourselves:

Tropical deforestation in the last three years is 63 per cent higher than in the preceding 14 years because of the demand for beef and palm oil for processed snacks, cosmetics, biofuel and cattle feed. Fewer trees on our planet means more carbon is released to the atmosphere, with greater disruption to the climate.

And 38 per cent of humanity live in “drylands” which have grown by 1 per cent per year for the last 50 years. In 2015-2016, 10 million people in Ethiopia required food aid because of widespread crop failure. It is also thought that declining soil quality and subsequent loss of food production are drivers behind the current wave of Guatemalan immigrants seeking to enter the United States.

The interconnectedness between how we use Earth’s resources/gifts and the stability of ecosystems and human societies is continually becoming clearer.

Risks of Not Stopping Global Warming

With the 2016 Paris Agreement, 195 nations agreed to enact measures to limit global warming to 2° C above pre-industrial levels, with a preferred limit of 1.5° (we are already at a rise of 1°). The difference between 1.5° and 2° sounds small, but the extra 0.5° would threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands more people through drought, wildfires, floods, storms, changes in crop viability and increased insect-caused disease.

In 2018 and 2019, the northern hemisphere experienced extreme heatwaves, which will increase as we approach a rise of 1.5°. An extra 0.5° rise would expose an additional 420 million people to extreme heatwaves, and up to 50 percent more people would experience water scarcity. Sadly, nearly two years after the Paris Agreement, the world is on track for a global temperature rise of 3° — an increase which would tip our delicate ecological balance and threaten human existence as we know it.

Action in Aotearoa

New Zealand plans to join the handful of countries legislating and making policies to help keep the world from warming more than 1.5°. The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill is due to be passed by the end of 2019 with the target of reducing all greenhouse gasses except biogenic methane (from cattle) to net zero by 2050. This should result in a reduction in the use of fossil fuels (and hopefully nitrogen fertilisers), and the offsetting of excess carbon emissions, either by planting forests as carbon sinks (for example, the One Billion Trees programme), or by purchasing overseas offsets.

Because of the complication that half of our carbon emissions come from agriculture (mostly methane from beef and dairy cattle), biogenic methane is being treated differently in this legislation and will only be reduced 24-47 per cent below 2017 levels by 2050.

A Climate Change Commission will monitor emissions and advise government on how best to reduce them. Government plans to move to from around 85 per cent to 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035, reduce numbers of high-emissions vehicles on the road (with mitigation for low-income drivers) and encourage local councils toward zero waste (our methane emissions from landfill are the highest per capita in the developed world).

Ultimately there will be many questions and trade-offs. Do we subsidise electric vehicles and/or create more public transportation? Can we encourage farmers to switch to horticulture, where soils and climate are suitable, and find markets for their products? Will government mandate the construction industry to use more sustainable materials and methods like passive solar design, solar water heating and electricity?

Invitation

Hardly a day goes by without a new report detailing global or local climate change, pollution or loss of biodiversity. But consumerist-creep and built-in obsolescence ensure that it is difficult to live with a lighter footprint on our Earth. Can we look into the eyes of our grandchildren and tell them we did all we could to restore God’s oikos to health?

Ilia Delio suggests that we will not do enough unless we understand deeply, as St Francis did, that Earth and its creatures are our kin. Like Francis, we might take more time to drop in to our local San Damiano, forest or beach to contemplate ­— to meet God in all things. Contemplation allows us to feel God’s presence, to gaze both on the beauty of creation and at the pain and destruction which the production of our food, possessions and travel are causing. To hold in our hearts both the beauty and the pain can transform us, and help us “discover the courage and hope needed to act on behalf of creation”.

Acting to restore God’s oikos invites us to look at our own behaviours and choices. A good way to begin is to calculate our carbon emissions (footprintcalculator.org) to discover which parts of our lives (transportation, diet, electricity use, purchases) are most in need of change. One step at a time ­— whether a few more plant-based meals per week, discernment between need and want in purchases, or starting/improving a garden — will position us firmly on this journey of restoration, both of Earth and of ourselves.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 241 September 2019: 10-11