This week the GOP held their first presidential debate during which only one candidate stated that climate change is real. In response, President Biden tweeted “Climate change is real, by the way,” ostensibly to show the vast disparity between the two major political parties in America when it comes to climate change. To be sure there is difference, but it is not nearly as big a difference as it needs to be in order to reverse course and mitigate climate change in a way that will maintain a habitable planet.

The Biden administration is taking it more seriously than the previous administration, or any other Republican administration ever has. That said, the democratic party is just as beholden to corporate money as the GOP, and is just as determined as the Republicans to maintain U.S. global economic and military supremacy. In order to do so, the U.S. government, with overwhelming bipartisan support, signed an obscene and heinous defense budget of $816.7 billion dollars in 2023. Germane to the discussion on climate change is the fact that the U.S. military uses vast amounts of fossil fuels and is a huge polluter of the environment. Humanity should be using remaining oil reserves to create sustainable infrastructure like putting swales and ponds in places where drought is prevalent and run off causes flooding, planting and regenerating forests, and cleaning up pollution, rather than for militaristic motives that creates an Us versus the World mentality and may lead to mutually assured destruction.

In 2022, the Biden administration opened up new offshore drilling leases, as well as leases on public lands. Rather than listen to the science and climate scientists like Dr. Michael E. Mann, the government tried to put a band-aid on the dwindling oil supplies because of high gas prices. This year, the U.S. Department of the Interior is again considering new five year leases for offshore drilling. This is absolute lunacy on a planet that is daily experiencing weather extremes due to climate change and ecosystem collapse due to pollution. The aforementioned Dr. Mann has stated that we can mitigate the worst of climate change if we stop burning fossil fuels. We can’t do that by opening up new drilling.

On the legal front, the U.S. Department of Justice has been in court fighting against climate change activists since the Obama administration in the case of Juliana v. United States. The case is still in court and the U.S. government’s position is that citizens do not have a Constitutional right to a stable climate. The only reasons that the government would make this argument is to attempt to maintain the capitalistic and U.S. military status quo. President Biden for his part has yet to declare a climate emergency despite the wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, heatwaves, crop failures, and other manifestations of man-made climate instability and chaos. But hey, he did send a tweet to score political points…

As a theologian and permaculture practitioner, I must speak out against this duplicity and foot dragging in the name of the economy and militarism. People are suffering. People are dying. Ecosystems are collapsing and humans are actively causing a mass extinction. As Dr. Mann and other climatologists have said, the window to mitigate the worst effects of climate change is still open, but it is perilously close to closing for good. It is delusional to think that Americans will be spared the worst. It is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus to enable a system that is causing human suffering though climate change and to sit back and do nothing about it. People of faith, and people of no faith, should arise and demand appropriate action. “Direct action gets the goods” is a phrase I learned years ago as a member of the I.W.W. The time for direct action to mitigate climate change is right now. That means making significant changes to our lives for the greater good of all humanity. Were Jesus here today, he’d be flipping over tables in Congress and the White House. He’d be calling out President Biden for sending meaningless tweets while actively contributing to the problem. He would not be passive in the face of governmental eco-terrorism.

Be like Jesus.

P.S. my latest book is now available on Amazon.com. Find it here. Theological Musings Volume 1