Whales and waterfalls

“We are all going to die by 2040,” the tour guide said flatly, “based on the cascading negative effects of climate change.” As shocking as that sentence was, I was more taken aback by the fact that it got zero reaction from his audience.

This was last June: I was a chaperone with a group of Grade 7s at a place called Arcadia Earth, a new museum in downtown Toronto giving visitors “an immersive journey through planet Earth.” Darkened rooms light up with vivid, moving projections: a whale will swim by, then a jellyfish, then a stat about ocean pollution and species decline. The creatures are just pixels but they look real, close enough to touch. The combination of animals and facts is designed to “inspire visitors to be part of the solution for creating a better world.” I appreciate what they’re doing but it was tough to absorb.

While the tour guide rattled off stats about coral reef decline, I heard a boy whisper to his mom, “Is that true, about 2040?” She was quick to reassure him “No, no.” One or two of the other kids looked worried, but most of them had already moved on. I could see in their faces, and I’ve heard through the grapevine, that some families in our local Christian school do not think climate change is “real.” It’s evidence of how far the conversation has gone off the rails, in my opinion; instead of simply caring for each other and for the earth, it’s political. It’s frustrating that creation care isn’t an easy “yes” for Christians.

But even if everyone in the group had agreed on the need for action to combat climate change, it’s so tricky to find the right tone. Too much bad news leads to despair. The stats can be overwhelming. These kids were 12, maybe 13. Adults can barely absorb the scope of the damage our actions have caused, let alone process or implement the changes needed to counteract it. I did not envy that tour guide his task.

Appalachian foothills

In August, our family camped one night at Watkins Glen State Park, New York. It has an incredible hiking trail that feels like walking into a Lord of the Rings landscape. Watkins Glen was built around a gorge that’s 3.5 kilometers long. Its river rushes down a series of 19 waterfalls that look like postcards come to life. The trail seems dwarven-made: stone stairs, stone railings – even an arched stone bridge. The light is ethereal, the view more dramatic around every curve. It was only slightly ruined, in a few spots, by empty water bottles that idiots had thrown over the railing, now sitting on small grassy ledges where they will take 450 years to decompose (the bottles, that is).

Coal, wine and salt all played a role in the region’s fortunes. Its fame grew after a newspaper editor, in 1858, wrote glowingly about the Glen, and when an artist named J.D. Hope started painting it. The park opened to the public, free of charge, in 1906, after New York State bought it. At first, concrete and iron stairs were built to allow visitors to walk along the gorge. They were so ugly that when flash floods filled the gorge and destroyed its infrastructure in 1935, it was – historians have quipped – a blessing in disguise. To redo it, President Roosevelt hired the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work relief program during the Depression. It took a decade for these men to excavate, blast, grade, and build from natural stone and mortar the bridges and walls of the trail we walked along, nearly 100 years later. Their efforts now give a million people a year the chance to see this natural wonder up close.

It’s hard for humans to take the long view. I get it. Sometimes day to day life is all we can manage. And there’s not one magical way to make everyone agree on what is happening to the climate, either. We can’t agree on why or what’s next or what should be done.

Back in June, I asked the guide at Arcadia Earth, during a break, where he got 2040 from. “It’s in the UN data,” he said. “You can look it up.” We were standing in a warehouse filled with holograms. It felt like a visit to the future, but it also had an elegiac feel – more mausoleum than museum. As though virtual reality was showing us scenes from long ago, already made extinct by human folly.

Thinking of his spiel, I asked how he stayed hopeful with 16 years left on earth’s clock. “By the next generation,” he said. “I think they’re going to figure this out.” He looked about 25 – older than the Grade 7s, sure, but still pretty young to sound as bleak as he did. Like he’d already given up on everyone above 30. He told me he was studying Environmental Science and working locally for the NDP. Arcadia Earth was a side job for him; he did it to connect with kids and convey the urgency of climate change.

He has an uphill battle, that much is clear. So do politicians, pastors, parents, newspaper editors, teachers, artists and State Park wardens. So do firefighters (and their moms!) as Meghan wrote about, and farmers. So do we all. May God grant us the wisdom we so desperately need.

A picture book at the library caught my eye last week: As the Seas Rise. Not ‘when.’ Not ‘if.’ As. This struck me as a long way from The Berenstain Bears Go Green, which had a simple “litter is bad” message. This new book reads more like current events – “Cars stuck, roads closed as heavy rain hits GTA” (Aug. 17) and “Montreal’s recent floods reveal the locations of hidden rivers” (Aug. 19). In the picture book, storm drains fill with seawater, homes are submerged and people become sick from dirty water. To stop it from happening again, people in this Florida community create living shorelines to protect against flooding.