Azzi: Climate and democracy: Protecting all that sustains us
“Climate change is hitting us hard now — it’s really awful in the southern states — dangerous in some," a loved one wrote recently. "The only gratitude I have for not having children is for not being plagued with thoughts that I may have cruelly invited grandchildren into a world that may be fraught with misery from how our generation has disregarded their future.”
I write today from Star Island in the Isles of Shoals, from the Oceanic Hotel's grand long, sheltered porch lined with rocking chairs where I've been attending the 2023 International Affairs Conference which this year is focusing on “The State of Democracy Abroad and at Home.” This respite from my usual mainland routines has given me time to think about the world, about the complex world into which we have invited our children and grandchildren.
My friend - whom I have not seen in years - isn't given to hyperbole. Their words and actions are rarely rash - most often measured and cautious - and upon reading their most recent text I found myself deeply moved.
Moved today, as I watch the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of families enjoy this year's conference - to wonder how long it will be before they, the recipients of our love, our traditions, our world, realize that perhaps we've dealt them a loaded deck.
Climate Change and Democracy: A deck loaded from top to bottom.
I remember a time, perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, when I was standing on a not-so-grand porch in Marlborough, NH listening to a scientist express his concern that if humanity was not careful there would be a time when the Gulf Stream would begin collapsing with catastrophic results for the earth.
That time might be here.
This week, on several news platforms, there have been numerous reports that the Gulf Stream system could collapse within this decade with catastrophic climate results.
Those ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would have, as reported in the Guardian, "... disastrous consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and west Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern coast of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets."
It would endanger life as we know it.
That time is here because I believe that climate change denialism and the global challenges to Democracy and democratic institutions - at home and abroad - are existentially related and that we ignore those threats at our - and our inheritors - peril.
They would endanger life as we know it, life which I've promised to loved ones and my inheritors.
Endangered by those who would dismantle democratic institutions in order to preference authoritarian and supremacist governments. Endangered by those have deliberately aligned themselves with anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-justice interests to promote selfish and anti-democratic interests.
And it frightens me a lot.
As I sit on this porch and look out across the ocean I believe that there are signs, for people of reason, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the alternation of the day and night, in the ocean tides and temperatures of our lands. We have had wonderful weather this week, and everywhere around the island those signs of wonder and beauty humble me.
"Out of this," the Qur'an reminds us," do We bring forth close-growing grain; and out of the spathe of the palm tree, dates in thick clusters; and gardens of vines, and the olive tree, and the pomegranate: [all] so alike, and yet so different! Behold their fruit when it comes to fruition and ripens! Verily, in all this there are messages indeed for people who will believe."
Today, I am unsure I can help deliver fresh pomegranates, dates, and olives to the inheritors of a man from Lebanon, my father, who came to America at age 9.
Though I am unsure whether I can deliver to his children and grandchildren the sane, secure, and just world I believe he sought, I do know I am called upon - as are you, to protect that which we have been gifted, that which blesses, humbles and sustains us.
Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Climate and democracy: Protecting all that sustains us
