Hotter? Climate change. Colder? Climate change. Dryer? Climate change. Wetter? Climate change. More volatile? Climate change. More homogeneous and unrelenting? Climate change. The list goes on. Route number two leads back into the mirror. The logic behind the climate-change-explains-everything mantra boils down to:
Man caused it. Man can understand it. Man can fix it.
To be fair, various people generally supportive of this anything-but-God thrust will take exception to one or more of those three elements. In at least one, I sense the seeds of honest despair — something far healthier than hubris or denial, for unlike the river in Egypt (the Nile) it can and often does lead to God. (H/T: Anchoress).
In the main though, the logic boils down to man, man, man. And because “man” is not a monolithic organism but a collection of unique individuals, endowed by their Creator with free will though, it really amounts to: me, me, me.
I helped to cause climate change. I can understand it by reading the right articles, seeking out the “best” models and scientists and contributing to the valiant efforts of those seeking to understand everything about how all of the earths energy and water distribution systems work and interrelate to one another. And I can help “fix” it by supporting the right legislation, the right politicians, the right kind of science, etc.
It is the pinnacle of narcissism. It is the opposite of humility. As such, it is merely the latest popular mask on something extremely ancient: the idea that man can save himself. It is an expression of man’s pride in imagining that he has had a major influence on the very essence of physical Creation and that he can understand all the mysteries of it (implying that he knows what they all are — which would cause them to stop being mysteries, which would put him above the Most High).
It is also man’s pride in imagining he could even make a dent in a “problem” that would not be a problem if we were not so self-centered. How wild is it that man even seeks to define as a “problem” an issue so vast that each thought he thinks and each breath he takes in talking about it (because those burn energy and emit CO2) sets the whole thing back? In another guise it is man’s attempt to say:
Yeah, I know I’m sinning, but I have big plans, BIG PLANS to fix it once and for all. Just you wait and see. I’m drafting legislation now that will outlaw sin forever. We begin bombing sin in five minutes.
It is man’s hubris to even think to define climate change as a problem at all. What if it is God’s will to change the climate for reasons unknown (as appears to have been the case in the warm periods over the last few thousand years which enabled man to “go forth and multiply” rather than dying back, cold and sick in the rain and snow)?
What if, in some kinds of unusual weather, we are meant to see messages such as this one?: “Heavy rain blamed for collapse at Rome’s Nero’s palace… prompting fresh concerns over the stability of the ancient complex.” Stability indeed. The system he stood for is coming unglued even as it imagines it triumphs.
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