Athens Catholic Community Discusses Climate Change

The program began with a presentation by Jim Couts, a Catholic climate ambassador for the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, a partner of the United States Conference of Bishops.  The coalition was founded in 2006 and works to provide a forum to explore the issues and faith implications of climate change, as well as to initiate public policy change at local, national and international levels, according to its website.

Couts began his presentation by stressing the need for prudence in dealing with climate change.

“The prudent thing to do is [to recognize] the environment is changing, the climate is changing and it’s changing as a result of human activities,” Couts said. “The prudent thing to do is change your lifestyle.”

Couts then went on to discuss the concepts of global dimming and global warming, the phenomenon responsible for the changes in the Earth’s climate.

Global dimming is the process by which particles from pollutants become trapped in the atmosphere, absorb solar energy, and reflect sunlight back into space. Sunlight is therefore blocked from entering the atmosphere and results in the cooling of Earth’s temperatures.

Global warming has the opposite effect. Global warming occurs when greenhouse gases become trapped in the atmosphere, absorb thermal radiation and then re-radiate the radiation in all directions. Some of the radiation is pushed back down the Earth’s surface resulting in a warming effect.

These two processes seem at odds with one another and are in fact are the source of much of the controversy of climate change, according to Couts.

“You’ll hear people say constantly, ‘some of the scientists say the Earth is cooling, some say it’s warming. Obviously they can’t make up their minds.’ In fact, both are happening at the same time,” he said. “And when you have this global dimming and global warming going on at the same time, environmental chaos reigns.”

The data Couts presented states that global dimming has reduced the Earth’s temperature over the last 100 years by 0.8 degrees Celsius, while global warming has increased the Earth’s temperature by 2.6 degrees Celsius. This has created a net warming effect of 1.8 degrees Celsius.

Couts points to American consumerism as a key concern in addressing climate change, pointing to the fact that Americans constitute only 5 percent of the population yet they consume 30 percent of the world’s resources.

Couts quoted economist Victor Lebow’s essay “The Real Meaning of Consumer Demand” that was published in 1955 to illustrate what has become of the American lifestyle.

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption,” Lebow wrote. “The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms.”

“When you hear words like these, this is the mission statement of a religion,” Couts said. “And it’s part of the reason that it is so very difficult for Americans to come to terms with the changes in lifestyle that are going to have to occur that will either happen voluntarily or will be forced on us by mother nature.”

Conservation remained the focus throughout the rest of Couts’ presentation as well as during the panel discussion that followed.

Kylie Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio University studying environmental studies, was a member of the panel. Johnson said that one of the most important ways to get members of the community to start being more conservative with their resources is to show them how easy it is to change their lifestyle.

“They’re more apt to do it because they’re going to see its really easy and its not going to affect their lifestyle; they can still have a comfortable lifestyle,” she said. “I think that’s what most people are concerned about, that they’re not going to be as happy … we need to change people’s thinking about that and show them that its really easy and it’s not affecting or altering your happiness in any way.”

Johsnon also said that she believes more people will get involved in the environmentalism movement once its practices become more mainstream.

However at present environmentalism is still operating on a grassroots level, and Couts said that he often finds himself in situations where he’s “not preaching to the choir” when trying to convince members of the community to take climate change seriously.

“For a person like me who considers the opposition dumber than a bucket of bolts, I have a hard time in being respectful of other people’s opinion,” he said. “But it’s really vital that we do that and that we deliberately go after [those people], to make that initiative … be relentless, don’t give up.”