If you’re contributing less to a problem than others, why do you sometimes have to suffer more from it than the ones most to blame?

Maybe you are invisible.

“Climate change has long had its fingerprints over untold killer floods, droughts and famines. Unfortunately the people being sacrificed every day to the climate crisis are those least responsible for it. They have been deliberately made invisible because the lives of those with black and brown skins simply don’t matter.” Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want.

In February, The Guardian reported that Climate change, according to a study commissioned by Care International, was responsible for the majority of under-reported humanitarian disasters last year. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/21/climate-change-cause-of-most-under-reported-humanitarian-crises-report-finds

Did you know that in 2018 whole populations were affected by food crises in countries ravaged by drought and hurricanes such as Ethiopia and Haiti.

Did you know in Madagascar more than a million people went hungry as corn, cassava and rice fields withered under drought and heat.

Did you know climate change was linked to civil disasters in Sudan, Chad, the Philippines, Madagascar and Ethiopia last year.

Did you know that nine of the 10 most neglected tragedies occurred in countries in the Africa Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states.

“Not only are the people who live in the world’s poorest countries most vulnerable to climate change, but they are also the least equipped to address its increasing impacts. Media must not turn a blind eye to such crises and the role of climate change.” Sven Harmeling, Care International

Did you know 13 of the 15 largest countries by GDP are in the Northern Hemisphere? They are the largest emitters of green house gas. The global South emits relatively little. But the whole globe warms as a result of the wealthy nations dumping their carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

Scientists predict that tropical countries, which tend to be poorer and to have contributed less to climate change, are set to suffer one of the more severe effects: major swings in temperature. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/05/02/scientists-just-showed-why-climate-change-is-enormously-unfair/?utm_term=.70f053e0a394

If I didn’t have people who work along side of me to advocate for climate solutions, I’d be a desperado. Thankfully I’m not alone and neither are you.

This Friday at noon several of us will meet in the Parrot Gallery of Community Mennonite Church, 328 W. Chestnut St. for a weekly Lenten gathering. We look at these challenging problems, attempt to understand more than we already do and consider ways to take actions that matter.

Action is an antidote to despair. Thinking and praying and working together beats sitting by yourself in front of a screen. So, come join us.

Other ways to take action: Contribute to organizations that are helping. Tell the stories that aren’t being reported…..and make it clear climate change is involved. Perhaps most importantly, take political action to dramatically reduce emissions quickly. I like the way David Wallace-Wells put it in his recent New York Times op-ed:

“Buying an electric car is a drop in the bucket compared with raising fuel-efficiency standards sharply. Conscientiously flying less is a lot easier if there’s more high-speed rail around. And if I eat fewer hamburgers a year, so what? But if cattle farmers were required to feed their cattle seaweed, which might reduce methane emissions by nearly 60 percent according to one study, that would make an enormous difference.

That is what is meant when politics is called a “moral multiplier.” ” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html

ADDENDUM

Just in! Can this be true? U.S. air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans’ consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans. That’s according to a paper published this week in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

It was already known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in more polluted neighborhoods than white Americans. Factories and power plants causing pollution wouldn’t exist if no one consumed what they produced and it is a fact that white Americans consume more than other races.