Thank God for global warming??

The weather we've been having in Alberta has been so mild these last few weeks that it's become a frequent excuse for thoughtless conversation. A few days ago, Lee and I were walking down a rather busy street, and a couple behind us was exclaiming about what a gorgeous day it was, sunny and ten degrees warmer than November used to be. The man enthused to his partner, "Thank God for global warming! I've been praying for this kind of winter weather for a long time."

It's a sentiment that's common enough... and that encompasses a huge problem for our planet. No one likes to be as cold as we often get during Canadian winters, but at the same time, no one should be praying for an increase in global climate change. It's tantamount to joking about the people who are barely coping in developing parts of the world that are heating up beyond a human being's ability to survive. This past summer, temperatures reached 50 degrees Celcius in parts of Pakistan and India, and over a thousand people died. That's not funny.

The huge problem is sentiments like the one I overheard on the weekend. Unthinking people who assume that comfort is the most important thing going never give a thought to the fact that pursuit of "the good life" above all else gives rise to imbalances in other spheres. Many of us have become used to thinking of ourselves as isolated and unrelated parts of the world as a whole, expecting that our ecosphere will continue to right the negative results proceeding from our wrongful sense of entitlement to life's pleasures. Even as we had glorious, far above normal temperatures in Western Canada this week, people in the Maritimes were dealing with serious flooding because of a freak storm that arose from... global climate change. Did the man who prayed for global warming give them a thought? How would he like to try to live through extreme high temperatures in a country where air conditioning is rare? Creation is interconnected in ways that are beyond our tiny minds' capacities to fathom... but if we look, we can see connections as fine as spider webs everywhere, between every living thing and every environment.

Clearly, something is out of whack when the temperatures in Southern Alberta reach 18 degrees Celcius in mid-November, and we are kidding ourselves if we think it has nothing to do with us and our consumer society, our greenhouse gas emissions, our "need" to take pleasure cruises (next to the Space Shuttle, one of the most inefficient uses of energy in the world) when our winters do get chilly. It's more than time to wake up and stop praying for global warming. It's time to stop joking around and take steps to reduce it if that's still even possible: perhaps to forgo air travel for mere pleasure, to reduce our consumption of the earth's finite resources, and to simplify our lives to the point of just enough.