Whose Facts? A Buddhist Response to Climate Skeptics

Thich Nhat Hanh in his Art of Power

The late American senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed how “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” It appears he was wrong. For me one of the more distressing problems facing us as human beings at the beginning of the twenty-first century by our common reckoning is how we continue to argue the fact of global warming. For many reasons a substantial part of the American population resists the scientific consensus that our planet is warming at a distressing rate and that it is chiefly caused by human activity.

There are legitimate challenges to the solutions offered by those who have called the world’s attention to this crisis. Many of these solutions offered are draconian while in a world with so many moving parts and therefore of potentially wildly unintended consequences, that no one can guarantee satisfactory, from our human standpoint, outcomes. At the same time making our way through this thicket is very important, critical actually, and requires considerable attention from our scientists and our policy makers. And, I suggest, from the rest of us.

But, that is not where the conversation and challenges tend to lay. Instead we’re still arguing the fact of global warming. Opponents, and there are many of them, attack the science, sometimes aligning with fringe views, sometimes attacking the scientists themselves. For instance the feeding frenzy in some blogging circles and in right wing publications following the revelation of leaked emails to and from scientists associated with the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit late in 2009.

The hostility of the scientists to “climate skeptics” and their unwillingness to cooperate with them, which the emails revealed was much ballyhooed and cited as evidence of falsification of the actual science. However the exoneration of the science itself published by outside investigators in 2010 received considerably less publicity. And, not surprisingly, no reflection from those same bloggers, other than an occasional appeal to conspiracy. And now what blow back from these same sources that will come of the recent allegations that former Vice-president Al Gore groped a masseuse seems fairly obvious: more evidence of falsifying science for those who want such.

I don’t like speculating on the motivations of any individual who chooses to stand as a climate skeptic. But it is necessary to reflect at least a little on the whys of climate skepticism and as I’ll explore the justifications on purely scientific grounds are sufficiently shaky that it seems necessary to look instead to motive. Of course there have to be a few who have actual scientific questions. And I don’t want to minimize this critical function of investigation into the matters of our physical universe. Questioning is the nature of science itself, after all. But those competent to judge this and offer contrary views are in fact very few. And fewer still of those who have the larger picture do argue the facts.

Of those who stand in opposition to the claims of global warming it appears the much larger number resist the science on religious grounds, unwilling to acknowledge human beings as being a part of nature and resisting any assertions that assume we do. Others resist the economic consequences to a wholehearted acceptance of the problem, which can be formidable. But, again, rather than move to that difficult question clutch at any denial of the problem.

And still others, I suspect, fear the power it would take to engage the problem. This resistance to a strong center is an honest stance our American political scene. But, too often, in defense of this smaller government stance, some will go to the same fringe scientists and the same attacks on mainstream scientists used by those who resist modernity and science itself.

The net effect of each of these different groups working against public acknowledgment of the ecological trend and the catastrophe we are facing, and particularly that they have a strong place in the American Republican party means that a serious conversation about how to deal with the issue of global warming at our American governmental level is extraordinarily difficult. Possibly, that conversation is impossible.

But, it need not be. There are voices to be heard coming from many sources that can help us realign our view of our place in the world. Christians and Jews are increasingly offering spiritual views that can help us face the matter at hand. And, of course, there is a Buddhist view. Well, no doubt, several. But, in general there is a way to help us address that first question of fact on the ground, of where we stand in relationship to the world, and how we need to respond to the science that is crying out to all of us of impending disaster.

Thich Nhat Hanh says “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” I would unpack that a bit. We are here. And there is no where else to go. We must work out our lives here. And then there is that illusion thing. An unfortunate aspect of our astonishing mental abilities, as I see it a side effect of awareness and the ability to separate and assess is an abiding sense of separation and with it that sense of alienation which Buddhism addresses. The illusion is that we are substantially separate, rather than a perspective within something larger. Whether we are “called” to another view is an open question. Although I would say call doesn’t have to imply a being in the sense of a deity. And in that larger connected sense I do feel we are called out of this sense of separateness.

There is another view, and it is accessible to our human consciousness and it is critical to healing that sense of separateness and alienation, which is a wound in our being, individually and collectively.

And that is we are one.

We are one family. That family is all humans, but it is also every living thing on this planet, and it is the planet itself.

One thing.

Of course this one thing includes all sorts of differences. For one it calls for decisions and actions. We support this, we do not that. To do this calls for reason and acceptance we’re part of the whole thing.

Another point is how we arise out of various conditions. And when those conditions change we will pass away. So, a very important point is that we all will die. Nothing we do will prevent death coming eventually, for the good, the bad, and everything in between. The sun rises on all of us. And it sets on all of us.

Sobering, but a necessary corrective to many possible choices that would follow believing we have some sort of escape.

And, at the very same time that good news: here we are one thing.

And I think there is a deep call, ah that call thing again, for us to see into the many ways in which we are connected.

One of which is our ecological connection. In fact one way of looking at a Buddhist view is an ecological consciousness.

We are intertwined, completely, inseparably. And which is understood in many ways, but one critical way is that we are all joined in the natural world and need to look at things from that perspective. The best gift of the human mind to that perspective, I suggest, is the scientific method. Not the only way of seeing, but critical. And as a Buddhist, I see not accepting the gift of scientific method as part of the bag of tricks of being human inconceivable.

That is a fact we deny at our peril.

And, so, I hope anyone who sees the wisdom of Buddhism will eschew the denial of the basic science as presented by overwhelming scientific consensus and acknowledge the fact of global warming and that it is largely caused by us.

Then we can sort out what are the best ways of engaging the crisis.

What to do is an open question. I think there is much to worry about, and there are consequences to all decisions.

Now, among the Buddhist responses that make the most sense to me are those found at Ecological Buddhism: A Buddhist Response to Global Warming.

But, right at the beginning, what we need is to see the fact on the ground.

We are intertwined as one thing.

And that one thing is in considerable danger.

And we need to act.