NÅR VANDET STÅR I MUNDEN... [Lærer man vel at svømme]

(“when the water is up to the mouth....[one learns to swim well]”)


a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 23rd, 2003


I would have to be the first to admit that I don’t really know all that much about the scientific basis of Global Warming. I believe that it’s happening because so many people who do seem to know what they’re talking about tell me that it’s happening, and I also know that there is still some dispute (although not much) about whether or not it is being caused by the emission of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gasses) by our fossil fuel-driven industrial society, or rather reflects some sort of “normal” geological climate change. I realize there are still some questions about what it really means to our society and the environment. Mostly, though, I’m just not really sure about what I ought to be doing about it. Like most members of my generation, I’m familiar with the notion of “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally.” But when confronted with a problem on the scale of Global Climactic Change, what does one do in one’s own neighborhood to make things right again? I’ve been so concerned about this I even went out and bought a book, written by two PhD’s -- Paul and Hazel Delcourt -- entitled Living Well in the Age of Global Warming: 10 Strategies for Boomers, Bobos, and Cultural Creatives. I’m a Boomer, and I share many of the qualities of a “Bourgeois Bohemian” (which is what the acronym “Bobo” stands for), and I certainly fit the demographic profile of a “Cultural Creative,” so when this title popped up on my Amazon “Recommended Picks” list I clicked with my mouse and waited for enlightenment to arrive on my doorstep.

The problem is, when the book finally did arrive it wasn’t at all what I had expected. Rather than telling me anything useful about what I might do to help stop global warming, it basically offered meaningless advice about how to end up a “Greenhouse Winner” rather than a “Greenhouse Loser,”while its “10 strategies” essentially boiled down to two. Strategy number one: move to the mountains (actually, there were several variations on this particular theme). And Strategy number two? -- buy a boat. So, needless to say, I was more than a little disappointed (even though I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy a boat for years); since when all was said and done, this book might have done a lot more good in the fight against global warming if it had remained in the form of a tree.

But the experience did get me thinking again about my feelings of helplessness in the face of the prospect of catastrophic global climate change. Growing up under the shadow of the Cold War, I’d always sorta assumed that the end of the world, when it came, would be in the form of a nuclear holocaust: one big Armageddon-like blow-out, followed by (at least for anyone who managed to survive) a long, nuclear winter -- or as Jonathan Schell once described it, a Republic of Insects and Grass. Little did I dream that our actual situation would more closely resemble that of the Frog in the Teakettle -- the temperature around us slowly increasing over time, but we never really notice because the change is so gradual...until the next thing we know the kettle is boiling and our goose is cooked. It’s difficult even to talk about it without sounding alarmist, like Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But just because a problem is so big that it’s hard to conceptualize doesn’t mean that it’s a fairy tale, or that we can safely ignore it. Because if we wait until the problem is so obvious that it is undeniable (and in the opinion of many, we are there already), it may also be too late for us to do anything about it.

Some of you may remember from Neighborhood Sunday the Danish proverb I allude to in the title of my sermon: “ Når vandet står i munden, Lærer man vel at svømme” -- “When the water is up to one’s mouth, one learns to swim well.” The Danes seem to be taking global warming a lot more seriously than we do here in the United States...perhaps because despite being among the world’s leaders in per capita boat ownership, they also recognize that they live in a country surrounded by water -- 406 islands and one low, sandy peninsula, on which the highest point is less than 200 meters above sea level. And thus they are also among the world’s leaders in things like wind turbine technology (Denmark currently generates approximately 27% of its electricity this way) and other sustainable and efficient “green” technologies, and are using this technology not only to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, but are also exporting it to Eastern Europe in order to generate even greater offsets under the terms of the Kyoto accords. 80% of the wind generation capacity in Denmark is owned either by private citizens or through small, neighborhood collectives, while government subsidies for this form of energy are scheduled for elimination in 2004, since the cost is now competitive with that of other new energy sources. Når vandet står i munden, Lærer man vel at svømme....

On a slightly different note, as most of you probably know (since the media coverage has been overwhelming, at least in the media sources I routinely view), yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the assassination, in Dallas, Texas, of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And I was a little surprised to learn that not only am I now among the minority of living Americans who can actually remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned that Kennedy had been shot, but that also (as of my last birthday), I am now myself older than JFK was at the time of his death. So the torch has indeed passed to a new generation once again. And as I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve also been reflecting upon some of the better- (and lesser-) known aspects of Kennedy’s political career: his legendary “charisma” and clever, charming wit; his reputation as a legitimate war hero, and the near-crippling physical disabilities he kept secret from the public; his now well-publicized sexual peccadilloes with women like Marilyn Monroe; the closely-contested (some might even say stolen) media-driven election which elevated him to the Oval Office, and which, in many ways, sowed the seeds of his defeated opponent Richard Nixon’s subsequent Watergate paranoia, and thus might even be said to be at the root of our nation’s present polarized political acrimony; his Keynesian-inspired tax-cuts (which many conservatives now point to as justification for their own supply-side economic theories); the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and his subsequent interest in counter-insurgency in places like Vietnam; his trip to Berlin; the Cuban Missile crisis; his mixed-record on Civil Rights; the creation of the Peace Corps, and his visionary support of the Space Program. Academic historians generally rate Kennedy as a somewhat mediocre President -- not the best or the brightest, but certainly not one of the worst either. Yet his death continues to maintain a powerful hold on the American imagination, like an icon of the end of an earlier, more optimistic era.

What I’ve found myself thinking about mostly though is what things might be like if the American people embraced the problem of Global Warming with the same spirit of optimism, and service, and idealistic self-sacrifice characteristic of the early days of the Peace Corps and the race to the Moon. We are, after all, still the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world; we represent approximately 4% of the world’s population, yet produce 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases, and given our legendary “Yankee ingenuity,” are no doubt perfectly capable of achieving an annual 5% reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten years with little or no loss of productivity, simply through increased efficiencies, the intentional development of alternative, renewable energy sources, and the widespread adoption of a handful of lifestyle changes, many of which would actually lead to better health and an improved quality of life for the majority of American citizens.

But these things aren’t going to happen if they are simply left to “the invisible hand” of the marketplace, especially a marketplace where we continue to subsidize old, inefficient “dirty” technologies, while compelling new and innovative. sustainable “green” ones to sink or swim on their own merits, even while still in their infancy. Moreover, by producing and perfecting these sustainable technologies now, we may be able to export them to the developing world in time to head off the uncontrolled production of greenhouse gasses in those countries, while at the same time demonstrating that it is indeed possible for them to enjoy a much higher standard of living at a much more modest environmental cost.

The problem of Global Warming is a lot more complicated than merely higher mean temperatures and rising sea levels. Even the rosy scenarios anticipate significant changes in weather patterns, agricultural productivity, flooding and the like, while the worst-case scenarios predict catastrophes of near-Biblical proportions. Furthermore, even a sustained, systematic, unified global effort to ameliorate the problem may not be sufficient to reverse the trend for another 100 years or more. But rather than merely throwing our hands in the air, closing our eyes, and holding our noses, there are some practical steps we can all take in order to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The first of these steps is self-education. There’s a lot more that we all can learn about Global Warming, both with regard to the big picture, and also in terms of the hands-on things we can do in order to avoid contributing further to the problem ourselves. Unitarians are sometimes teased about believing in “salvation by bibliography,” but in this case in particular, knowledge really is power, and is the foundation for meaningful action. Here are two book that I feel ARE worth the paper they are printed on. The first is High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. This is a relatively new book, written by J.F. Rischard, a vice-president at the World Bank (so it’s not exactly the kind of tree-hugging liberal pabulum I ordinarily like to read). The second is Jon Naar’s Design for a Livable Planet, which is filled with all sorts of practical ideas about things you can do to reduce your environmental impact on the earth. This is a fairly old book, but the good news is that there are lots of used copies available for about a buck plus postage at Amazon. Increased awareness leads naturally to the second step, which is making as many of these lifestyle changes as we can, and then committing ourselves to making even more. I don’t want you to think that simply turning out the lights when you leave the room and driving a more fuel-efficient car is going to make all the difference in the world. But it’s a start, and it certainly doesn’t hurt.

The third step involves participating in the education of others, as well as creating networks of mutual encouragement and support...so that as communities we can begin better to understand the full dimensions of our involvement in the problem, and can help one another in our efforts to make more comprehensive changes to address it. This is one of the places where churches like ours, as learning and teaching organizations, can make an important contribution. And finally there is the step of Activism and Advocacy: working to create changes on the level of public policy, which in this particular case is going to be essential if we hope to have any kind of meaningful impact on the overall situation in the long term.

Of course, there are some who believe that because the problem of Global Warming is so complex, only a solution which relies upon “the invisible hand of the marketplace” can possibly be effective. And I agree with this view...to a point. But because the problem of Global Warming is likewise one of those instances where “Bad money drives out Good,” so long as “bad actors” are allowed to avoid paying the true environmental costs of their activities, skimming off the profits while compelling the rest of us to pay for cleaning up their mess, well-intentioned competitors are always going to be at a disadvantage. If we wish to see some sort of workable, “market-based” solution to the problem of global warming, we need to make it profitable to do the right thing, while taking the profitability out of doing wrong. And we do this through rational regulation, backed by the authority of law.

Moreover, as the World’s Leader in the production of greenhouse gasses, it only stands to reason that the United States should take the lead in working toward their reduction and eventual elimination. For America to opt-out of the Kyoto accords because we claim that compliance would put our industries at a competitive disadvantage against those of countries like Bangladesh is absurd. America ought to be showing the world a better way of doing things, rather than throwing our weight around in a vain attempt to keep things just the way they are. So long as the “invisible hand” is seen to be thumbing its nose at the rest of the world, holding down the less-fortunate while propping up the fortunes of a privileged few, it will only work to divide the world further between the “Greenhouse winners” and the “Greenhouse losers.” A rising tide may well float all boats, but that only matters if people can afford to buy a boat. The alternative of throwing the weak to the sharks is morally acceptable only in some sort of alternative universe where the fundamental laws of human decency no longer apply.

And finally, I think it is essential for us to remember that as part of that “four per cent,” ALL Americans are seen by the rest of the world as belonging to that privileged few. It may well be true that our freedom, our economic prosperity, our so-called “opportunity society” in general, are the envy of the world, so long as that prosperity is perceived as denying opportunities to others, we will be despised as selfish, short-sighted bullies rather than admired as the generous, compassionate, creative and innovative hard-working human beings we all like to imagine ourselves to be. The time has come, and indeed may be long overdue, for Americans to live up to our flattering self-image, to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival...” not only of liberty, but of the planet itself. And “the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor...can truly light the world,” not just metaphorically, but literally as well.