Truth, Knowledge, and Hope: Jewish Responses to a Warming World

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon, September 16, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Then God created matter of all kinds – the land and the seas, the plants and the animals, human beings, male and female, the sun and moon and stars to shine on them all. God put everything in its place, giving us room to grow, and the rest of the world space to teem with life and activity. Then God saw all that had been made and, behold, it was very good.

Then God took a break, and the rest…is history.

The Torah tells us that God put us into the world to have dominion over it – to enjoy it – but also to take care of it, to till and to tend this God-given garden called Earth. And the story of human history is, in many ways, the story of our increased ability to do the former, and our decreasing commitment to do the latter. We humans have become very adept in our ability to exploit the Earth. We build cities whose skylines grow taller by the year; we move ourselves and our stuff from place to place with a speed that would have been unimaginable to most human beings throughout history; we remove plants and minerals from the earth, creating toys and machines and enormous structures too numerous and too great to describe in words.

It’s amazing what we can do – we’ve responded to that divine call to rule the world with great success. But along the way, we seem to be forgetting that second command: to care for the Earth, to till the garden, and to tend it.

And if you doubt me, I present to you as evidence this past summer. Do you remember summertime this year? It was hot! It was really hot. And, as I remind my friends and family in the United States, it was hot even up here in Calgary, and this is where some people move to avoid the heat.

Of course, wasn’t just hot here. Worldwide, this was the hottest summer on record – ever! And with every tank of gas, our cars burn, and with every smokestack spewing pollutants into the air, and with every forest we cut down for fuel, paper, or housing, the problem gets worse. Indeed, there is widespread scientific consensus that the world is getting hotter, that the change is caused by people, and that if we don’t do something about it soon, it’s going to get worse, and the results will be utterly catastrophic.

As you know, there is a lot of science out there on the subject of climate change.  And while I’m certainly no scientist and I don’t want us to get lost in a sea of facts, a quick glance into the scientific literature here is important. Since preindustrial times, average global temperatures have risen by more than 2 degrees Celsius, and we’re on track toward a 6-degree temperature change by the end of the century. That means that the lovely 22-degree summer days that you remember from your childhood will be 28-degree days for our descendants.

And the results of such change are going to influence us all – they already have. At current rates of change, glaciers, and polar ice will melt, causing sea level rises bound to wipe out beachfront communities and low-lying island nations. Equatorial countries will become unlivable, and entire populations will be displaced as people need to move to higher and cooler places. Already, heat waves since the 1990s are estimated to have cost the global economy more than $21.7 trillion CDN. The warming climate is already wreaking havoc on animal populations, as many species find themselves living in surroundings for which their evolution has left them unprepared. Long Island Sound doesn’t have lobsters like it used to – the water is too hot for them. Similarly, Atlantic cod populations are moving north at a rate of 100 miles per decade. Tree populations are becoming uprooted, too, with white spruce moving north at a rate of 60 miles per decade. Sharks are moving further North, and you’ve probably seen the footage of starving polar bears looking for ice floes from which they can hunt for seals.

By far, the most lethal animal to us humans is the mosquito, and now disease-carrying mosquitos live in places that used to be too cold for them. That’s dangerous. By 2080, 5 billion people – sixty percent of all human beings – will live in areas where they can contract the illnesses that these insects spread. In Mexico, mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue fever, zika, and yellow fever used to only attack people who lived in the lowlands. Now, those viruses are moving into Mexico City, one of the largest metropolises in the world.

As the world heats up, air conditioners help a lot of us, but only those of us who can afford them. And, of course, any time we turn on the AC in our cars or in our homes, that machinery adds more pollutants to the air, and we only exacerbate the problem. And while AC units do a good job of cooling the homes of the wealthy, they also spit heat out into the environment. In leafy suburbs, that’s not much of a problem, at least not directly, but studies have shown that air conditioning actually increases outdoor temperatures in large cities for people who can’t afford their own units. Air conditioning, therefore, is simply a transfer of heat from the rich to the poor. It taxes our power systems, it leads to brown-outs and blackouts. Last year, Qatar air-conditioned its open-air stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Shouldn’t that concern us?

And then there are the fires. I’ve seen this problem grow worse even during my short seven years here in Calgary. As our forests get hotter, they get drier, and when they get drier they become tinderboxes. Then, all it takes is a bolt of lightning or a stray spark, and they become infernos. Remember the Fort McMurray fire? When it happened, I hadn’t even arrived here yet, but I certainly heard about it in the States. It was devastating. Remember Lytton? It burned in minutes – two lives were lost, hundreds of homes turned to ash, and thousands of people had to flee. And there’s Maui, and there’s Australia, and there’s the smoke we saw here day after day after day during the summer. Each smoky view obliterating the sun and sky should remind us of the consequences of our environmental negligence.

I could continue in this vein, but you get the idea.

As your rabbi, I have a few things to say about this.

First, please, take science seriously. There are strong forces today and many, many dollars that are being devoted to minimizing the threat of climate change, and it is incumbent upon us all to see through the smoky smokescreens they create.

I say this not just as a political plea, but as a Jewish one. Our people has always been committed to the truth – to study, and learning. And through the ages, we’ve honored and respected experts. “The world stands on three things,” Rabban Gamliel said many centuries ago, “on justice, on truth, and on peace.” The Torah describes God as “gracious and abundant in love and truth.” And perhaps most explicitly, the Rabbis taught that “In an argument that’s for the sake of heaven, the desired end is truth.”

Let’s embrace that as we look at the current environmental catastrophe for what it is. Let’s never avoid this truth, even though it’s scary and troubling. Let’s be like the great 12th-century sage, Maimonides, who only moonlighted as a sage back then. His day job was as a physician – as a scientist. He was deeply pious, but when an uncomfortable scientific truth-challenged his religion, he didn’t reject that truth, he reconciled it with what he already knew. Scientific truth doesn’t threaten us, it enriches us. This has always been the Jewish way, and we dare not forget it now as the fires burn and the days grow hotter.

And here I need to add something that I say with great love for this wonderful community in which I live: I never thought I would have to say something like this. I never thought that I would have to plead with a community of educated, intelligent Jews to take science seriously. But here in Calgary, I have encountered many people – good people, intelligent people, articulate observers of the world, some of them Jews, some of them even members of our own congregation – who want to minimize the risk that climate change poses. They see such concerns as liberal hokum, woke overreactions, and left-wing political propaganda.

We can understand why. Oil and gas are important to us here in Alberta. They’re our bread and butter. We depend on it. Some people butter their bread with butter; we Albertans butter ours with tar sands. Some people – yes, some people here in this room – poo-poo the science because it’s hard to see these individual events as part of a bigger problem, or because of a general mistrust of institutions and experts that seems to be spreading these days. Such obliviousness is a luxury we can’t afford, and it’s also a betrayal of our Jewish commitment to truth and to tending the garden.

Second, let’s be ready for the fact that life is going to need to change for us. That change will be real, it will be significant, and it’s going to affect our daily lives. This situation calls upon us to engage in the sacred work of Tikkun Olam, repairing our broken world. But Tikkun, repair, doesn’t come easy. It is work for us human beings – hard work. We’re already seeing some of it. Cars are becoming more efficient, regulations are sometimes growing stronger. We recycle, we compost, and we protect our world where we can. Some people refrain from using disposable cutlery; others walk to work; still, others buy energy-efficient appliances. Here at Temple, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll soon be getting solar panels on our roof, and we’ll be one of the first religious institutions in Calgary to do so.  This should make us proud (and we should thank our Environment Committee for making this happen).

Each of these steps is wonderful and holy work, because these days, protecting our world is one of the most important mitzvot we can do. But of course, each of these steps is a drop in the bucket, and none is anywhere near enough given the changes that we need to make. Protecting our world now demands worldwide, systemic change. It would be great if Canada stopped polluting the air, but if, say, India and China continue doing so, we’ll eventually choke on the fumes ourselves.

Fixing this problem will demand dramatic changes to life as we know it – and that’s particularly true for those of us who enjoy the privileges of Western life. I don’t know what those changes going to look like. Maybe it will mean warmer homes in the summertime, maybe fewer airplane rides, maybe we’ll need to stop using disposable plates and bottles and cans. Maybe we’ll need to move away from sprawling suburbs and back into more energy-efficient cities. Whatever it is, be prepared for change – and be prepared for the kind of change that we’re going to feel.

However it ends up looking, we must remember that Tikkun Olam – fixing our world – is essentially an embrace of and an understanding of the need for change. Even and especially when it affects our own lives.

And finally, let’s remember the words of the Psalmist: “Those who sow in tears, will reap in joy.” These are hard and frightening times for us and for all humanity. They will demand work, and sacrifice from us all. But we dare not despair. There is growing awareness of what we need, and we must embrace our vision of a better world:  A world of human warmth rather than environmental heat. A world of peace, justice, and truth, rather than one of propaganda and lies. A world in which each human being can have domain over the world while also tilling and tending the garden.

That, my friends, will take work, but when we do it, this new year and every new year will be good and sweet not only for us but for all humanity.

Shanah Tovah.