A better catastrophe

It is a health hazard to go outside today, a warm June day in Ottawa where I live. Across wide swaths of North America, smoke from wildfires has made air quality warnings as essential as UV ratings and weather forecasts. At a deeper level the threatening smoky haze adds a visceral element to concerns about our environment.

When reality feels like dystopia

Bizarre elements abound in our current context. Fire-fighters are flying from South Africa to Alberta, but I cannot bike to the library or tend to my new pollinator-garden. The local wading pool, so important for kids stuck in apartments with no air conditioning, is closed because of air quality. Climate resiliency, how to cope with negative impacts, is replacing optimism that major disasters can be prevented.

The federal government released its climate adaptation strategy this week. “Too little too late,” say climate scientists. Perhaps it’s “better late than never.” Meanwhile, one of the major political parties announced they would support funding for more fire-fighters as long as climate change is not mentioned. In the same week, leading inventors of artificial intelligence issued another warning of existential threats for human life if recent expansions in its use continue without regulation. Regulation is unlikely anytime soon from governments who can’t deal with the well-documented threats of climate change. The dystopian novels my grandchildren read feel more real this week. Is anyone surprised by reports of increased anxiety about the future among adolescents?

Hope beyond Optimism

Ethicists and other thinkers are asking what we should do, if some level of catastrophe is inevitable. Responses cover a wide range: give up and let it happen; protect my kin as best I can and pray for a miracle; retreat from the world and hope for survival of a remnant; or continue to care for and advocate for creation, with a stronger focus on what is most vulnerable to catastrophes that are going to happen. Dr. Debra Reinstra, in her book, Refugia Faith, draws on many sources to describe a spirituality that focuses on places of refuge in a world that falls apart.

For Reinstra, community with a suffering creation replaces dominion and stewardship as a guide for action. Hope, for Christian and secular scientists who write about the high risk of looming catastrophe, is not optimism. It is a deeper way of being, an essential virtue in itself. The insights of our Indigenous siblings, with their seven-generations orientation, are also helpful. I am finding this literature more honest and rich than superficial prayers and sermons that assume continuation of the status quo behind assurances that God is in control. What if God has other plans?

Making a Mental Shift

I’ve focused a lifetime of work on a better future for children. While I can make a conceptual shift to recognize that their future may not be better than the present and will include some level of major catastrophe, I find it more difficult to discern what a Better Catastrophe means for choices I make today and tomorrow.