Right now, one of the worst things you can do for the planet, for people, for justice, and for democracy, is be invested in fossil fuels. I know this may sound dramatic, but it’s true – and I will do my best in this post to explain why.
First off, it’s important to say that fossil fuels are not, in and of themselves, evil. They’re simply an energy source. And for about 130 years (from the mid 1800s to the 1980s) they were a clear source of economic and societal growth around the world. They made possible the steam engine, which linked continents by rail; the diesel and gasoline engines, which made car travel and ultimately air travel possible; and they formed a consistent and reliable source of power generation for electricity grids that has spread the benefits of electricity all over the world.
And so we need to give fossil fuels their due. They should be thanked for their service.
However, since the 1980s, the scientific community – including the scientists working for the fossil fuel industry – have known that the carbon byproducts of burning fossil fuels (whether CO2 or methane) have been steadily filling our atmosphere with heat trapping gases and creating a growing fever for our planet. This fever, as we’ve said elsewhere, is causing the finely tuned ecological systems of our planet to go out of balance, building the steady progression of climate impacts we are already seeing today – increasing frequency and intensity of storms, droughts, fires, floods, extreme heatwaves, etc. These impacts, if they continue to progress unmitigated, will result in sea level rise that makes major population centers unlivable, widespread crop failures and increases in global hunger, heatwaves strong enough to black out power grids and kill large populations in short periods of time, massive blows to economies due to unrelenting natural disasters, climate refugee migrations on a scale never seen before, and a subsequent rise in political instability, anti-immigrant sentiment, and authoritarianism. We are already seeing the beginnings of this today.
Yet despite these realities, the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, the whale oil industry, and many others before it, has been pouring money since the 1980s into campaigns of deception to keep people dependent on fossil fuels, and the money flowing into their pockets. We should not be surprised by this. People in power lie all the time in order to preserve their power. This is just human sin. And so I say “thank you for your service” to the fossil fuel industry for its contributions up until the 1980s – but not beyond. From that point to the present, their industry has shifted from helping to harming.
Fortunately, as followers of Jesus, we do not need to passively participate in the normalized insanity of fossil fuel living. Indeed, we must not. Which brings me back to my original statement: Right now, one of the worst things you can do for the planet, for people, for justice, and for democracy, is be invested in fossil fuels.
For planet, the science is clear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that we need to reduce our global carbon emissions by half by 2030, and entirely by 2050 in order to avoid the most catastrophic unravelling of our planet’s global ecological system. If we care about preserving this world and the life living in it for future generations, we must be transitioning away from fossil fuels urgently and rapidly. Full stop.
For people, the situation is no different. I think we sometimes imagine that the “environment” is somehow this thing “out there” and external to human beings. But the environment runs right through us. Our bodies are built out of what we eat, drink, and breathe. The plastic pollution we are pouring into the environment is being broken down into microplastics and finding its way back into all our bodies. The toxins our industries pour into our water, and the chemicals we put on the food we grow are impacting our sperm counts and showing up in our breastmilk. And so an unravelling ecological world accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels won’t be a world that is somehow external to us – it will be a world that will run right through our physical bodies and we will have to try to find a way to survive in it. Where the world goes, there we go as well.
Furthermore, the burning of fossil fuels is not only causing the earth to heat up – it’s also directly toxic to human health. Coal power plants and gas refineries are regularly (and intentionally) built next to low income, black and brown neighborhoods, and the impacts on the people living in those communities are horrible. They have significantly increased rates of ADHD, autism, birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer. Threre’s an 85 mi stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, LA, that is called “Cancer Alley” because it is packed with fossil fuel refineries and cancer rates for the people living there are through the roof. Research is now even showing that the gas stovetop you use to cook your dinner is having steady carcinogenic impacts on your body. And so fossil fuels, on multiple levels, are not good for people.
For justice, there are numerous layers here. First, it is wealthy individuals, communities, and nations who are most responsible for the burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of climate change while it is poor individuals, communities and nations who are the least. Yet the dark irony is that it is the rich, because they are rich, who will be most able to build resilience to the impacts they have caused – while it is the poor who will be most vulnerable. This is fundamentally unjust. Second, fossil fuels as an energy infrastructure are designed to benefit the wealthy the most. Drill rigs, oil refineries, and power plants all require an enormous amount of capital to build and operate. When a population is trained into dependence on oil, it is only a select few who have the capital to control those pieces of infrastructure, and who therefore have the power to dictate what people have to pay for gasoline, for heating, and for electricity. This consolidation of power among a few and control of the many through energy dependence forms the basis for the final threat of fossil fuels – the challenge to democracy.
Fossil fuels have been historically – and notoriously – used to consolidate power around authoritarian and corrupt governments. Think of countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran – many of their people are quite opposed to their governments, but oil provides a major source of power consolidation for them and enables entirely undemocratic regimes to remain in control. Fossil fuels also form the (often unacknowledged) backdrop for war. The US invaded Iraq twice over oil – different reasons were given each time, but Iraq and Kuwait are both major producers of oil, which the US is hungry for. Wars involving oil producers regularly shock energy prices – the Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in major energy challenges for Europe as Russian gas became unavailable. Ugly alliances are made over fossil fuels that result in human rights compromises – the US has failed repeatedly to challenge Saudi Arabia for human rights abuses because the Saudis have oil and the US wants access to it. And oil power is in the regular business, in dictatorships and democracies, of buying politicians. Here in the US, the oil lobby is extremely powerful and has gotten numerous politicians to speak and vote how the industry wants them to, amplifying their lies to the public and legislating in the interest of fossil fuel executives rather than the public good. In short, fossil fuels consolidate far too much power among too few – and consistently serve as an anti-democratic force in the global struggle for universal self-governance.
God has called us in Gen 1-2 to care for creation. We can’t care for creation if we’re participating in a technology that is destroying it. Jesus has called us in Matthew 22 to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can’t care for our neighbors if we’re participating in a technology that is unravelling the ecological system that sustains us and poisoning people directly who are near it. The God of the Bible is consistently a God of justice – particularly for those with the least power. We can’t be agents of God’s justice in this world if we are at the same time participating in an energy infrastructure that consolidates power among a rich few, builds energy dependence among the many, and accelerates climate devastation that will most severely impact those least responsible for it. And while the Bible doesn’t speak specifically about democracy, we know that of the current political systems available, democracy is the best imperfect option for nurturing freedom of speech and belief, maintaining checks and balances to power, and creating the space for people and communities to grow and flourish. And so if a particular technology is so tied to buying politicians and corrupting legislation, consolidating power in authoritarian governments, and creating a basis for wars, participating in it runs counter to advancing political systems more suitable for shalom.
For these reasons, I would argue that participation in fossil fuels is antithetical to following Jesus and building for the Kingdom of God. Because fossil fuels are still so embedded in our societies, it is nearly impossible to detach ourselves completely. But passively accepting the status quo is not an option. We need to try to work against them. And there are many ways we can, which we’ll talk about in future posts.
Finally – and this wasn’t in the original statement – fossil fuels at this point just make no economic sense. Global policies are all moving in the direction of clean energy. The slow and steady work of the UN COP meetings is sending consistent and strengthening signals to the world and the market as to where things are going. The auto industry is moving steadily and deliberately towards EVs. Technology for renewable energy, battery storage, heat pumps, etc is getting better every day. Renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels and creates more jobs. With solar panels, heat pumps, and an EV, you can electrify, heat, and cool your home, as well as charge all your travel, from your roof for free. Why on earth would you want to keep paying at the pump, and paying a gas company, and paying an electric company when you could save all that money by owning your own rooftop power plant? And so, moving away from fossil fuels is simply better stewardship of the resources God has given you.
More to come in the next post!
RESOURCES:
“This is Hunting Park” Episode “Nobody Important Lives There” – story about the fight to stop the Nicetown gas plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQ3atOv_7U&t=2s
Climate Action Tracker – excellent website on national carbon reduction targets (where we all stand at the moment):
Project Drawdown – excellent website on global carbon reduction solutions
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