BRATTLEBORO — During the Civil War of the 1860s, our country mobilized its entire society and economy to wage an epic struggle in which 620,000 people died.
During the Great Depression, with the New Deal and Square Deal, the Roosevelt administration wrestled with the economic meltdown, thus initiating a new era of government interventionism to address a national emergency.
During the 1940s, the United States and its allies confronted fascism in Europe and in the Pacific. While on a wartime footing, the country's entire population cut back, saved, and rationed. Entire industries were converted from civilian to military use (cars to tanks and airplanes).
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States spent $2.4 trillion on the war in Afghanistan (2007 Congressional Budget Office statistics), forced us to take off our shoes to board every plane, and created an entirely new instrument of the government, the Department of Homeland Security.
I chose to provide this historical rationale for my support of the supposedly unrealistic Green New Deal at the UCC's annual conference in Vermont in April.
You can't tell a historian that monumental changes and investments can't be made by a country or society in order to confront a national emergency.
We do not have a national emergency. We have a global emergency. Ecocide is much bigger than genocide.
Not doing anything is infinitely more expensive than doing nothing. Climate-change denialism and arguments about “affordability” are inane and suicidal.
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I speak to, and not for nor on behalf of, my congregation at Centre Congregational Church (UCC). Yet, as a member of the UCC and as a private citizen and father, I support and endorse the Declaration of Climate Emergency that has been submitted to the Brattleboro Selectboard.
On Friday, Sept. 20, members of Centre Congregational Church will participate in the Climate Strike Rally at Pliny Park from noon to 1 p.m. Members of our church will register for 350Vermont's nonviolent direct action training at Centre Congregational Church from 1:30 to 6 p.m.
On Sunday, Sept. 22 at 10 a.m., the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal will preach on the science and theology of climate change. Antal is a world-renowned author, climate activist, and public theologian. His book Climate Church, Climate World: How People of Faith Must Work for Change (2018) will be on sale following the service.
I pray that Christians, Jews, Muslims, hippies, anarchists, libertarians, socialists, atheists, agnostics, leftists, and rightists will come to Centre Congregational Church and, if not worship with us, then thoughtfully listen to a scientifically informed and faithful Christian perspective on the climate-change crisis that confronts us and our progeny.
May the members of Brattleboro's Selectboard also attend this service and be inspired to adopt the Declaration of Climate Emergency put before them.