Starting on Halloween and extending to Nov. 12, the UK will host the 26th Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, bringing together the world’s leaders to accelerate action towards the United Nation’s stated goal of reducing global carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.

Given that the promises at the Paris Conference have not been implemented, given that the U.S., which is the biggest carbon emitter per capita has not been able to pass climate legislation, given that China and India are still furiously building coal plants, and given that even Canada, which parades a green image, is ripping up its boreal forest, the lungs of the planet, for toilet paper and forcing yet another deadly oil pipeline (Line 3) across the America’s heartland, the prospects for humanity appear grim indeed.  We seem to be re-enacting the Biblical story of the God’s people straying from their love of God and hurtling toward disastrous consequences.

And it’s not just people who are effected.  Nature is already suffering acutely.  Images of emaciated polar bears attempting to scale sheer rock cliffs for a few bird eggs because the ice sheets that allowed them to hunt seals have melted; the screams of koala bears perishing in Australia’s climate-caused wildfires; tens of thousands of animals, small and large, desperately trying to outrun the California fires; shore birds slowly suffocating from oil soaked feathers from yet another oil spill this month; whales washing up dead from starvation with bellies full of plastic -- these images fill us with grief and despair.  After a while, we grow numb – until the next shocking photo image or personal encounter. 

How do we deal with this weight of grief?  Anguish turns to anger.  I admit that sometimes I wish all humanity would just die -- or leave the planet! -- so that the innocent and vulnerable, God’s beautiful creation, can once again flourish.  But God never abandoned Israel, so  I look for anything to love about us and start to wonder if our hope and salvation, our redemption, is through empathy and compassion for all living things, for all God’s creation – including us. 

My hope lies in the human capacity for heart break.  I do not hope for what is impossible.  I do not hope that the ice sheets will refreeze.  I do not hope that wildfires, droughts and floods will cease, because we have passed that point.   Scientists tell us that we can still avert the worst effects of climate change if the whole world works together with single-minded determination. Can we do it?  Yes.  We know the way.  Will we? The question is open. 

Perhaps the greatest question is, will we remember who we are?  Will grief break open our hearts and let the life-giving spring waters flow?  No matter the outcome, the best and only way through this hinge point in history is to remember love; to remember how to love, to respond as the heart teaches us, to reach out and try with all of our might to rescue what and who we love  –  with Love. 

---Respectfully submitted, Melissa Foster