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Wendy Denton – The Seven Deadly Sins of Climate Change

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“What good is a mountain just to have a mountain?”
(Jason Bostic, VP of the West Virginia Coal Association)
 

The Seven Deadly Sins of Climate Change is about the human causes of climate change, the disregard of the natural world, and how human behaviors continue to contribute to the earth’s environmental decline. In the late sixth century, Roman Catholic Pope Gregory produced a list, later known as the Seven Deadly Sins. These sins were condemned by the church as offenses against God. “Over the past several decades,” says Wayne Muller, author of A Life of Being, Doing, and Having Enough, “our culture has slowly turned those seven deadly sins into brand-new, shiny Seven American Values.”

Sin #1: Pride
Sin #2: Greed
Sin #3: Lust
Sin #4: Envy
Sin #5: Gluttony
Sin #6: Anger
Sin#7: Sloth
 
I have added another sin, Sin #8: Betrayal.
 

Sin #1: Pride
Accomplishment while ignoring consequences

  • Be the Best!
  • American exceptionalism.
  • We’re Number One!
  • ExxonMobile holds the record for the highest corporate profits ever reported in the United States.
  • Pride lets us see ourselves as above nature, seeing her as our plaything and our tool.

Here a group of executives celebrate a major victory for their fossil fuel company, while ignoring the dead birds falling from the sky.

Sin #2: Greed

I deserve it!

  • You can have it all!
  • This is not about guaranteeing sufficiency; it’s about fearful grasping for more than we need.
  • Each day, Americans consume 3.5 gallons of petroleum per person (US Energy Information Administration)
  • Power over others
  • North Dakota Access Pipeline: Capitalism run amok vs Water Protectors

Here, the path of oil containers pulls our eyes upward to the eventual conclusion of our acts: the skeleton of a hawk on a cross of punishment and sacrifice. This is disaster capitalism writ large. Lightning strikes in the background illustrate the clash of values, like elements that can’t coexist, positive and negative colliding, resulting in an explosion of fire.
Sin #3: Lust

Pleasure without conscience

  • Sex sells! Get more sensation!
  • Good to the last drop
  • Everything is commodified: food, money, possessions, jobs, network contacts, all become objects.
  • Fulfilling desires

 

Here, the all-powerful CEO squeezes the last drop of oil from the Earth, destroying the Earth – and us all — in the process.

Sin #4: Envy

Rampant consumerism

  • I want to be famous.
  • I want to have what you have.
  • “To the extent people prioritize values and goals such as achievement, money, power, status, and image, they tend to hold more negative attitudes toward the environment, are less likely to engage in positive environmental behaviors and are more likely to use natural resources unsustainably.” (Tim Kasser, Knox College psychologist)

 

Here, a couple sits, all but camouflaged by the hundreds of TV ads around them. Bye Buy. Because you’re worth it. Get aggressive. The economy that creates the overwhelming desire for consumption of stuff is ultimately self-defeating.

Sin #5: Gluttony

Free Market Fundamentalism

  • All you can eat. Supersize!
  • The disposable poor
  • Worshipping at the altar of More, More, More
  • We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with the reigning ideology that includes privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporation taxation paid for cuts to public spending.

Here, standing on a foundation of fossil fuel investment, the devout cleric preaching Free Market Fundamentalism presides over an altar of corporate-worshipping candles.

Holding Atlas Shrugged, his new Bible that promotes the ideology that it’s everyone for themselves, that victims deserve their fate, that we can master nature, endless dollars rain down upon him. 

Sin #6: Sloth

It’s not true, or Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo

  • Lazy thinking makes people turn away in disbelief and not want to deal with it; some find climate change an affront to the deepest and most cherished basic faith: the capacity and indeed the right of ‘mankind’ to subdue the Earth and all its fruits and establish a “mastery” over Nature; and some persist in magical thinking that “knows” the cavalry will come over the hill and save us.
  • The crisis we have been ignoring is hitting us in the face, and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place. (Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything)

Here, the aging fairy godmother and granter of wishes looks with resignation and despair at the fossil fuel emissions that surround her.

She knows she can’t save us and watches as the flames creep closer. 

Sin #7: Anger

Dominion Over and the power of the privileged

  •  If anybody stands in my way, watch out!
  • The U.S. military is by some accounts the largest single consumer of petroleum in the world (Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything)
  • Angry white men and aggrieved entitlement
  • Police Treating Dakota Access Protesters ‘Like an Enemy on the Battlefield,’ according to Amnesty International
  • “Climate Denials’s Ugly Side: Hate Mail to Scientists,” an article published in Inside Climate News

Here, members of a militia form a firing squad while aiming their rifles at the blindfolded natural world now construed as the enemy. 

New Sin #8: Betrayal

Big Green in bed with Big Oil 

  • Corporate infiltration of the Green Movement
  • “Our arguments must translate into profits, earnings, productivity, and economic incentives for industry. (Former National Wildlife Federation President Jay Hair, 1987)
  • The Nature Conservancy has been in the oil and gas business for a decade and a half. (Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything)
  • Large parts of the environmental movement aren’t actually fighting corporate interests—they have merged with them.

Here, we have Big Green (the environmental movement) and Big Oil (fossil fuel corporations) snuggled up in bed together.

Most likely, their progeny would not be an equal mix of environmental fervor and corporate self-interest. No, more likely such offspring would be watered down, tepid, ineffective attempts to save the planet.

In other words, useless and dangerous.

Seven Things You Can Do About Climate Change – right now

  1. Eat everything in your refrigerator

Scientists have estimated that up to 40 percent of American food is wasted. It occupies a significant chunk of the landfill and produces methane. Even more important, wasted food adds to the amount of food that needs to be produced, which is already a big part of our carbon load.

  1. Buy less stuff. Waste less stuff.

Consumer goods have a huge impact: Making that new MacBook Pro burns the same amount of carbon as driving 1,300 miles from Denver to Cupertino to pick it up in person. Think carefully about whether you’re going to use something before you buy it.

  1. Cut emissions from fossil fuels.

Contact your governor and Congressperson and demand they enact strong legislation to curb emissions from both vehicles and power plants and cut fossil fuel subsidies.

  1. Eat less meat and dairy.

The production of meat and dairy is incredibly carbon-intensive. Emissions from red meat production come from methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

  1. Love your pets

Every so often a news outlet points to pet ownership as being bad for the climate. Actually, though our pets eat meat, they eat the leftover parts people don’t want. When a cow is slaughtered, over 50% of the animal is removed as unwanted or unfit for human consumption. Besides, if you have a dog, the next time you need to run to the store, walk your dog instead.

  1. Drive slower

Keeping to the speed limit and driving defensively can improve your mileage by more than 30 percent.

  1. Plant trees.

Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees also “scrub” the air of pollution and help soak up storm water, minimizing floods. They provide shade which reduces utility bills and reduce ground level ozone. The more trees we plat, and the faster we plant them, the better!

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