[Dialogue] Storytellers needed

[LAURELCG@aol.com]

Forwarded by Jann McGuire
Excellent piece on the need for art/story-telling in the face of

global-warming, etc. Read the whole story at this web-address:


http://www.energybulletin.net/12632.html



Published on 2 Feb 2006 by Orion. Archived on 9 Feb 2006.


Telling stories: the restorative power of myth

by Kelpie Wilson


Recently, writer Bill McKibben issued a call for artists to grapple with the

epoch-making topic of global warming. "If the scientists are right," he

wrote, "we're living through the biggest thing that's happened since human

civilization emerged." In order to wrap our minds around the enormity, he

said, we must engage our most creative and dramatic sensibilities. We must

create art.


But we need not create this art out of whole cloth, nor should we. The most

transfixing narratives in present-day culture are those that build on old

familiar stories—Plato's Atlantis, for instance; or Noah's flood. Tales of

ancient sunken cities offer tantalizing clues that human culture may have

encountered global warming before, though for very different reasons.


Geologists are finding hard evidence that when the last ice age ended, it

created floods of biblical proportions. Sediment cores show that around 7600

years ago a rising Mediterranean spilled suddenly into the Black Sea in a

torrent mightier than a dozen Niagara Falls. The deluge raised the Black

Sea's water level by six inches a day, quickly displacing the Neolithic

farmers who must have inhabited the fertile plains around its shores.


Several centuries earlier, melting ice sheets had raised the global sea

level by 5 to 10 meters. Just as today, a large portion of the Earth's human

inhabitants lived along shorelines. Is it any wonder, then, that nearly

every culture surveyed has myths of a cataclysmic flood?


A theme of many flood myths is that the deluge was punishment for failure to

respect the gods and their creations. The Old Testament version speaks of

God's desire to end the "wickedness of man," while the Babylonian version

says that the god Enlil was disturbed by the overpopulation and "noise of

the people." From a completely different part of the world, a myth from the

Palau Islands in Micronesia tells of gods who sent the flood to punish a man

who stole a star from the sky. The stars were the eyes of the gods.


The ancients were inclined to take any natural cataclysm—an earthquake, a

flood, or a storm—as a sign that their actions might be out of harmony with

the cosmic order. The great floods at the end of the last ice age came just

at the time that the earliest civilizations were forming. The deluge became

a powerful image to instill guilt as a tool for maintaining the social order

and to motivate faith in the founding religions of civilization.


How ironic then, that a past climate change for which humans bore no blame

should inspire such a tremendous sense of collective responsibility, while

the current one, for which we are certainly culpable, inspires only a mad

rush to place the blame on anyone or anything but ourselves.


Meanwhile, the flood waters are already taking their toll. The story of

Atlantis is being replayed from remote Pacific islands to melting Arctic

villages to a drowned New Orleans. But even the lesson of Hurricane Katrina

is staunchly resisted. The mainstream political culture continues to

downplay or ignore or even silence evidence showing that the warming oceans

are powering ever-larger tempests.


The logos of our science tells us that human behavior is a primary cause of

today's climate chaos; but we have as yet no mythos that allows us to take

it to heart and to admit our guilt. And we will never act to save ourselves

until we do.


Bill McKibben pinpoints the biggest challenge we face in creating the new

mythos: "...there's no real chance of a happy ending. We can do better, or

we can certainly do much worse— but we've already pushed the carbon

concentration past the point where the atmosphere can easily heal itself."


The new mythos cannot emerge from the art of today's popular culture, in

which the hero saves the day. Art as entertainment only drives us deeper

into denial. Art as a cathartic experience is different.


The Greek tragic plays, based on the sacred stories of the gods, provide

examples of such catharsis, or "purification." The art we need is an art

that can confront us with the tragic results of our actions and embolden us

to accept our culpability, while at the same time offering hope that we

might salvage what is left of the Earth and our humanity. Is it possible to

create new sacred stories, built on the familiar, that will restore both

reverence and hope?


Through the story of Noah, the Bible has already grappled with both climate

change and human responsibility. In the Talmudic tradition, which admits new

interpretations and even new stories into the sacred literature, Rabbi Ari

Kahn has written an interesting commentary examining context that gives us a

starting point.


Kahn says: "The saga of Noah and the flood is well known, yet Noah remains

an elusive personality. What was the nature of Noah's goodness? The

description of Noah is tzaddik—which can be variously translated as a good,

just, righteous man; in other words, a saint—but with the qualification 'in

his generation,' it sounds like a back-handed compliment. The implication

seems to be that in a rotten generation, Noah looked good."


Kahn then compares Noah with Moses. Noah passively carried out God's

instructions without bothering to try to save anybody but himself; but when

God threatened to destroy Moses' followers after catching them worshipping

the golden calf, Moses pleaded with God to relent...and he did. Through the

comparison Rabbi Kahn reveals the deeper lesson: it is not enough to be

concerned with ones own survival. We are all connected and we must each take

some responsibility for the actions of community as a whole.


One might imagine a mythos that both responds to Bill McKibben's clarion

call and extends Rabbi Kahn's thoughts in the context of our current and

near-term future predicament:


God saw that his great flood had not rid the world of evil. Though he had

done his best to help good men like Abraham and Moses along, the people had

multiplied and there was still much evil in the world.


After a time, God decided to send the people a test. He gave them a gift of

awesome power, power distilled from the remains an earlier creation. The

oil, coal, and gas would allow the people to fly through the air, to build

great cities, and to perform other stupendous miracles. If the people were

to use this gift justly and wisely, then they would be worthy of inheriting

the Earth.


But the people used God's gift to build temples and great houses for a few

while the many starved. They built to such excess that they destroyed much

of Creation in the process; and their greed led them to make wars upon each

other such as the world had never seen.


And so God said that he would take the Earth from Man since he had not been

a good steward. He said that henceforth Man would live on an Ark, surrounded

by the catastrophes he himself had wrought. He said: "Man is a builder. Let

him then live in that which he has built."


And those who heard God's words and heeded them were afraid. They implored

their brethren to cease from their building and their drilling and cutting

and mining and burning lest they destroy even more of the Earth and make the

Ark smaller still.


All of Heaven heard their cries and wept. The tears filled oceans and they

rose. The ice melted and the seas rose higher and smote the land and many of

the works of Man tumbled and were gone. There was great death and

destruction and multitudes perished.


Finally a day came when those who were left looked upon each other and said:

The Earth as we knew it is gone. It has been diminished and it is now only a

small island in space. Let us open our hearts to each other and work

together to preserve what is left to us. Our new world will be smaller than

it was before, but now that we truly see that our home is an Ark, we will

treasure every life form and greed will have no place here.


Leading us to a new reality, the story offers new choices. As we have seen

with the response to Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, many people have

opened their hearts to each other and many more have seen the terrible

results of our government's corporate hard-heartedness.


In the coming years there will be ever-increasing opportunities to ask

ourselves: Shall I be like Noah, concerned only with myself and my immediate

family? Or shall I be like Moses, and participate in the struggle to lead

the larger human community out of its moral wilderness?


This choice involves more than soul salvation. It is an immensely practical

one. Lifeboats won't be able to save the wholeness of Creation and there

will be no way to patch up our planet without global cooperation.


Noah and Moses don't speak to everyone. But there is a wealth of traditions

to tap for sacred art that will help us understand that with global warming

and its aftermath we shall reap what we sow.


Storytellers, start your engines.

And here's more on global warming.

 WASHINGTON (Feb. 9) - A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders on 

Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide 

emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to 
combat 

global warming.

The group which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, 

religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement 
to 

run in Thursday's New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen 

nationally.

"With God's help, we can stop global warming for our kids, our world and our 

Lord," the television spot declared.

The campaign by evangelicals coincided with a call on Wednesday by a leading 

U.S. think tank for the United States to take immediate steps to fight global 

warming, including working with other nations to reduce greenhouse gas 

emissions.

The Pew Center for Global Climate Change said in a report that America has 

waited too long to seriously tackle the climate change problem and spelled 
out 

15 steps the United States could take to reduce emissions it spews as the 

world's biggest energy consumer and producer of greenhouse gases.

"This transition will not be easy, but it is crucial to begin now," the Pew 

Center said. "Further delay will only make the challenge before us more 

daunting and more costly."

The campaign by the evangelical leaders represented a possible split in 

President George W. Bush's political base, in which Christian evangelical 
voters 

are heavily represented.

However, the names of most of the president's most influential Christian 

political backers were notably absent from the list of signatories joining 
the 

campaign. Possibly the best-known signer was Rick Warren, author of the 

best-selling book, "The Purpose Driven Life."

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After their fiery falling out, John McCain and Barack Obama say they are 

again united to tackle climate change. Details | Post


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Specifically, and mirroring a proposal by the Pew Foundation, the leaders 

called on Congress to pass laws to create a trading system that would spur 

companies to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is a 
major 

cause of global warming.

One such bill, The Climate Stewardship Act, first introduced in 2003 by 

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Joseph 
Lieberman, 

would require that U.S. emissions return to their 2000 levels by 2010.

The United States, with around 5 percent of the world's population, accounts 

for a quarter of its greenhouse gases and U.S. emissions rose by 2 percentage 

points in 2004 alone, according to government figures.

The McCain-Lieberman bill has failed to win passage twice in the Senate, 

although a majority there did adopt a non-binding resolution to cap 
emissions. The 

issue has not come up for a vote in the House of Representatives.

The Bush administration opposes imposing mandatory limits and backs voluntary 

efforts by companies. It has also refused to join the Kyoto Protocol, an 

international accord signed by the European Union, Japan and most other 

industrialized nations that sets hard targets for cutting emissions.

The Christian leaders said they were impelled by their faith to launch the 

campaign out of a growing realization that the threat of global warming was 
real 

and that the world's poor would suffer the most.

Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School, said: "However we treat 

the world, that's how we are treating Jesus because He is the cosmic glue."

The leaders said a poll they commissioned of 1,000 evangelical Protestants 

showed that two thirds were convinced global warming was taking place. 

Additionally, 63 percent said the United States must start to address the 
issue 

immediately and half said it must act even if there was a high economic cost.

The Pew Foundation also recommended boosting renewable fuel output and 

providing financial incentives to farmers to spur absorption of greenhouse 
gas 

emissions on farm lands.

U.S. government weather forecasters reported on Tuesday that the nation's 

January temperatures were the warmest on record, beating the average for the 

month by 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Two weeks ago NASA scientists confirmed that 
2005 

was the hottest year ever recorded worldwide.

Additional reporting by Tom Doggett