Climate change: the moral vacuum at the heart of humanity’s biggest crisis

The climate crisis is a moral crisis in which religion has played a significant, if seldom discussed, role
Historically, the church gave its moral blessing to colonisation and slavery. In a world shaped by such forces of globalisation, we no longer know how to live with nature

Andrew Sheng

Published: 3:30am, 14 Aug 2021

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Man and nature are running out of time. That’s the core message of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released this week. UN Secretary General António Guterres called the report a “code red for humanity”. He said that “the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk”.

What can we, individually and collectively, do? Many animals, including humans, cannot survive prolonged exposure to extreme heat and humidity.

And, like the pandemic, the twin effects of climate warming and biodiversity loss are hurting the bottom half of society most. Indeed, indigenous people who live closest to nature and comprise around 5 per cent of the world’s population, are likely to face a loss of culture, life and habitat because all their water, food and livelihoods will be devastated.

In essence, we are in an existential situation whereby nature is being destroyed by excessive human consumption, which creates pollution and carbon emissions, but all this is being made possible by bankers and businesses that seem to care more about profits than the human condition.

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Thus, decisions about climate change, human activity, financialisation and globalisation are essentially moral questions about the power to lead us out of the wilderness of planetary destruction.

In his monumental History of Western Philosophy (1946), British philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that those in power understand they have twin powers, over nature and other human beings.

Traditionally, the limits to such power have been God and truth. But today, religions are in turmoil over their role in finding pathways out of the mess. Furthermore, the spread of fake news adds to the confusion.

The current mess is not unlike a lost people wandering the desert, waiting for a Moses to find the 21st-century version of the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are aspirations, not commandments.

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As economists have said, climate change is a market failure. Yet, there is no operating manual to translate SDGs into environmental, social and governance projects for businesses, governments and social institutions.

Given that climate change is a blight on man and nature, it is not difficult to sense that there is a moral vacuum in globalised modernity and a lack of a shared, practical pathway out of planetary destruction. If secular science or politics cannot help us, can religion?

Ironically, religion has played a far larger role in the current quandary than meets the eye. Two papal bulls empowered the Portuguese and Spanish conquests of new lands in the second half of the 15th century. Papal bulls are public decrees, letters patent or charters issued by a Catholic pope.

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The papal bull Romanus Pontifex issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455 gave Alfonso, king of Portugal, the right to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery … to convert them to his and their use and profit”. Thus, the king “justly and lawfully has acquired and possessed” such assets.

The papal bull Inter Caetera, issued after Christopher Columbus returned from the Americas in 1493, not only reinforced the Spanish right to colonise and enslave non-Christian kingdoms and pagans, but also led to the doctrine of discovery.

This doctrine that would later form the basis of international law gave a licence to explorers to claim terra nullius (“nobody’s land” – that is, land not populated by Christians) on discovery. Thus, Christian discoverers and occupiers had legal title to the land, regardless of the rights of indigenous people.

In short, historically, the church gave its moral blessing to colonisation and slavery in the age of globalisation. The tragedy is that the doctrine of discovery is now embodied in US law.

In the historic case of Johnson vs M’Intosh (1823), US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall ruled, “According to every theory of property, the Indians had no individual rights to land; nor had they any collectively, or in their national capacity; for the lands occupied by each tribe were not used by them in such a manner as to prevent their being appropriated by a people of cultivators.”

He went on: “All the proprietary rights of civilised nations on this continent are founded on this principle. The right derived from discovery and conquest, can rest on no other basis; and all existing titles depend on the fundamental title of the crown by discovery.”

If humanity still treats nature as a free asset to be mastered, and some people as subjects to be dominated and disenfranchised because of the doctrine of discovery, how can we move forward morally to create human inclusivity and planetary justice?

Under secular science, the elites that control the media, military, economy, and political and social institutions have forgotten that they are not masters of man and nature, but stewards to protect human well-being and nature for future generations.

In this age of moral uncertainty, we forget that the shamans among indigenous peoples are purveyors of ancient wisdom about how to live with nature and each other. Dealing in traditional values, medicine and rituals, the shamans are really healers and keepers of tribal memories.

When modern scientists and technocrats have no solutions to the present problems except more speed, more scale and more scope, isn’t it time to drink in wisdom from the special few who still remember how to live with nature and each other?

Having lost our moral bearing, no wonder we can’t find a way out of the current mess.

Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective