This guest blog post was written by Reverend Jeffery Spencer, Pastor at Niles Discovery Church and alumnus of Pacific School of Religion.
Some people think that science and religion don’t mix. This is certainly not the case for many people of faith, including progressive Christians and institutions like my alma mater, Pacific School of Religion, a multi-denominational seminary in Berkeley, California, that recently announced it would divest from fossil fuels.
The science of climate change paints a clear picture – human beings are causing the environment to warm by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, primarily by burning fossil fuels. That warming is causing climates to change. These scientific facts are clear, as are the impacts, which is where religion comes in.
Changing climates mean where and how and how much food is produced will shift, leading to famines. People will die of starvation because of the human activity of burning fossil fuels, and in religious circles we have a word to describe that. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
Changing climates mean drastic shifts in where and how much potable water is available. Devastating flooding in some areas and devastating droughts in others are the results of these shifts. Lives will be disrupted. Mass migrations of people will be necessary. Changing climates also mean mass extinctions as plants and animals are unable to evolve quickly enough to survive the changes.
Science tells us that if we burn more than 20% of the known fossil fuel reserves (and the actual percentage may be even lower), we will cause average global temperatures to rise more than 2° C, bringing on the worst impacts of climate change. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry’s business plan is to dig up and pump out all of the reserves – and to go searching for more – to sell it so it can be burned.
In religious circles we have a word that describes the activities of companies who put profits ahead of the well being of people. We have a name for activities that cause people to be displaced or die and plants and animals to go extinct. In religious circles, the failure of human beings to be good stewards of creation has a name: sin. Running our economy on fossil fuels is a sinful, immoral, and unsustainable business plan and we must address it directly.
Change is possible – and it’s happening thanks to individuals, groups, educational institutions and even entire cities that are promoting divestment. For example, the divestment of my alma mater was accelerated thanks to a petition signed by alumni and friends of the institution. As Pacific School of Religion President David Vásquez-Levy said, “This is a situation in which not only students and trustees are in alignment, but faith and science as well.”
Pacific School of Religion is putting its money where its preaching is – and that means moving it out of fossil fuels.