“Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake ……. So let us not return to what was normal, but reach toward what is next.” from New Day’s Lyric by Amanda Gorman.
Our intention is to provide a curriculum that can be distributed to local faith communities and taught by volunteers with no particular expertise in climate science. We hope to provide the basic science agreed upon by the majority of climate scientists, plus additional resources for those who would like to delve deeper. We sense a moral, economic, and national security imperative for all of us to become educated on this important topic. Our belief is that a basic education of the current situation leads to greater motivation to action, rather than greater despair. A 2021 UN global poll found that 2/3 of the world’s population know that climate change is a global emergency. And from that same poll, that in Europe 90% of the young people know it is the world’s greatest threat. And yet a study at Yale University showed that only 35% of the US population ever talk about it. Our hope is that this introductory study will help people move beyond awareness and despair to hope and action. We remember that each part of the problem is also an opportunity for action.
Anita Dygert-Gearheart, MSW, ACSW, LCSW
From early childhood my parents instilled in me a deep love of the natural world. My life experiences instilled a deep love for humanity and led to my becoming a clinical social worker. This ecological crisis combines my love for nature and humanity, understanding that we are all part of this incredible home we call Earth. It is my hope that this small study will motivate others to join in responding to this crisis.
Dr. M. Robert Dygert-Gearheart, Ordained United Methodist Minister, Doctor of Ministries
I was ordained a United Methodist minister in 1969 where I served in the Indiana Conference for 42 years. Now I realize that we are awakening to a new scenario, one that will determine the fate of the global community. While we weren’t aware, now we are awake to a defining moment in human history. This existential crisis of our ecological system demands we step through in unity, all together. I have always believed faith communities to be portals where we, together, can bind the broken and heal the injured. Let us look together at what we face as a global community as, truly, this is a moment of liminality (standing on the threshold).
One day in early 2020 we were driving through rural southern Arizona and happened to tune in a podcast by Terry Patten interviewing Peter Russell. We were introduced to the idea that the earth is on a collision course with destruction without much hope. Later we heard Margaret Wheatley say the same. Finally, we checked out the website of Michael Dowd, a retired minister who was sounding the alarm. Now we were standing at attention and by 2021, in lockdown mode from the corona virus, we decided to spend some time tackling for ourselves an understanding of the so-called climate crisis. Was it nothing to really worry about, a gentle warming of the climate, an existential crisis, or actually a predicament beyond solution? We were concerned at various moments in our lives when we heard about acid rain, a hole in the ozone, etc., but life always got in the way and we assumed others would solve the problem.
Now we had time to delve more deeply, and it seemed a good endeavor for 2021. We contacted friends and family from various parts of the U.S. and started a book study which would illuminate our understanding and, in many ways, change how we live our lives. We devoured books, podcasts, documentaries, articles, hungry for understanding. We wanted to sort out the science from politics, realizing the issue was becoming more politicized each day, so we were careful in our selection of books. Reading a book written in 1980 by an ecology professor seemed counterintuitive, but it had been so highly recommended, we forged ahead with William Catton’s book, Overshoot, the Ecological Basis of Evolutionary Change. This book gave us language for our concerns, a better ecological perspective on what is happening with our world, and where we as humans fit in. We began to see ourselves as “Homo colossus” living in an “age of exuberance” in the “anthropocene era”, “fouling our nest” in the name of “perpetual progress” (all terms used by Dr. Catton). This book was to be our introduction to the connection between the human experience and the earth’s ecosystem. Professor Catton awakened in us a desire to more fully understand how we, as humans, fit with all forms of life and with the current ecological crisis.
The second book we read, “There is No Planet B, A Handbook for the Make or Break Years” by Mike Berners-Lee, published first in 2019 and revised in 2021, offers a clear perspective of the challenges at hand and the impact of our daily life choices.
When we read and discussed “How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t” by Leslie Crutchfield, we felt a strong affinity with the need for a true grassroots movement to educate in order to motivate many of us to action. Having been involved in the United Methodist faith all of our lives, our first thought was of faith communities as one vehicle for education.
Other books, podcasts, sermons, documentaries, articles, and classes offered us a plethora of ideas and opinions regarding causes and outcomes related to this crisis. Many authors are looking at the science and projecting outcomes. Some, like Bill Gates, predict that human ingenuity and technological advances will lead the way to solutions. Others, like Charles Eisenstein, suggest that a major cultural shift is needed. And there are those more pessimistic about the probable outcomes. A list of books and documentaries can be found in the additional resource section on our website www.wakeupworld.earth , and we hope it will help you in selecting reading, listening, watching and study materials, should you desire to explore further.
After a year of reading, watching, listening, exploring, discussing, taking classes, while we are certainly not subject matter experts and have a lot more to learn, we are clear that the climate crisis is real and increasingly a part of all of our lives. For the sake of this and future generations, we believe we collectively have the responsibility and ability to confront this crisis. This prompted us to develop a curriculum for adult education programs. We offer it with the wish that we all might learn and act together. We join the well-known climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, in saying: “climate change is real; humans are responsible; the impacts are serious; we need to act now.”
In this introduction, we have used various terms (ecological crisis, global warming, climate change, climate crisis, existential crisis) to describe the impact that the warming of our atmosphere is having and will have on our entire ecosystem. From here on for simplification we will use the terms climate change and climate crisis. Each class will include a glossary of terms specific to the climate crisis and relevant to that class. Feel free to browse ahead and take a look at those terms, if questions come up as you review this introduction.