O CLOUDS UNFOLD

DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE

O CLOUDS UNFOLD

by Adam Carroll Draper

An odd bit of news graced our conversation with friends last night.   A Swedish researcher named Magnus Söderlund is touting the efficacy of cannibalism to fight climate change.   The topic was broached over drinks - before we got our meal, fortunately.  Before someone feels the sudden urge to paraphrase Barry Goldwater (stood on his head) and rant a tantric “extremism to prevent climate change is no vice,” please calm yourself. 

Odd people can bring themselves to say crazy things.  Yet, intending the sensational for effect can still reveal a disturbing mindset.  I am not criticizing efforts to combat anthropomorphic climate change as much as to point out the contrapuntal philosophical underpinnings of the near messianic fervor driving some who are sounding the siren as it were.   

Let’s just take a giant leap and assume that all this burning and burning and burning that humans have been doing (particularly since the Industrial Revolution) has not exactly been optimal.  Is it all that difficult to look over human history and see a tendency to tax the land on which we live to the point that we end up having to move on for a while and do so somewhere else?  Hopefully, I have not said something too awfully controversial.  Having said that, does it seem a bit extreme to anyone else to jump from there to accepting that we are all essentially parasites and that the world would be better off without us – at least so many of us?  How many must die to prevent the scourge that having too many humans poses to mother earth – and who gets to decide this?

Everywhere (particularly on CNN this week) we are hearing dire warnings of climate change that require vast changes in how we live.  Very wealthy and influential people are flying all over the world, eating and gathering, to tell us that we should not fly or eat and gather.   Cows must die because they produce methane gas. Humans produce methane gas (some more than others) – so now we should stop eating cows and start eating each other?  If humanity is to survive, we must die (at least most of us).  Then, those who remain must learn to live amazingly austere lives, clustered in collectives for protection from the coming heat we are preventing by our own mass extermination.

I have an alternative proposition.  What if we took half the effort necessary to inflict privation upon the world and honestly focused on finding an alternative, clean energy source?   For all our hand-wringing and tax incentives, we have not yet done so.  Risking coming off as a complete loon, there may already be ways to produce clean, abundant, relatively cheap energy for everyone on this planet.   Is it really too hard to imagine that we may not know about these other sources of energy because it would change the entire socio-economic structure of the world if people were empowered to live our lives as we chose without having to work so hard to subsist?  What if the brave new world is one of abundant freedom and not privation?

The root of the problem is that we have been conditioned to accept the idea of mankind as a disease, a blight upon the earth that must be contained.  This whole mindset is antithetical to Christianity.  The earth and all the fullness thereof was created by God as a place for him to have a family – us, his children. 

Humanity is not a blight upon the world.  We are its stewards, however – and we are called to care for this earth and all the inhabitants thereof.  Our purpose is not fulfilled by digging holes and crying for the earth to cover us.   Our King will return.  We are here to reign with him in the new Jerusalem – the beautiful city of God.  I choose to long for that as William Blake did.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Excerpt from “Milton” by William Blake

If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read this.