NO government in the world has adopted a whole-of-humanity approach towards climate change. The consequence is noticeable in the disconnect between claims that we are meeting the target of achieving net-zero emissions of human-generated carbon dioxide by 2050 and
the reality that scorching heatwaves alternating with devastating storms are worsening year by year.
Even as we busily install solar panels and push electric vehicles onto the road, temperatures in Malaysia had, before the current deluge, been frequently hitting 35°C in the shade. Five heatstroke deaths occurred between February and June this year. Yet, heavy rains pelted the Klang Valley, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan in August, and this month all states will be lashed by storms. But the heatwave is forecast to return before the year-end monsoon. It will get worse next year as the trend is that of rising temperatures.
Here is a three-year heat alert record provided by the Meteorological Department: 2022 (11 alerts), 2023 (102) and 2024 (118 as of April, with 30 at
Level 2).
No crowd talks about climate change. Our politicians ignore the issue as it is not a vote catcher, and so you do not find it mentioned at any by-election ceramah. Is there ever a debate on this issue in the Dewan Rakyat? Our religious leaders and firebrand preachers also pay little or no attention to climate change as you rarely, if ever, hear a sermon on it. All this nonchalance despite the looming disaster.
On July 21 and 22, the Earth went through its two hottest days since global temperature records began in 1940. The 20 most populous cities are seeing increasing numbers of days with temperatures exceeding 35°C.
Thailand saw 40°C in April. The Philippines experienced a wet-bulb temperature of 53°C in May when the actual highest temperature was just 35.5°C. In tropical nations, you feel hotter than what the thermometer indicates because the combination of heat and humidity creates a phenomenon called the wet-bulb effect.
South Asia roasted when the mercury shot up to 47.4°C in May and stayed at 40°C in July. More than 1,300 people died from heat stress in Saudi Arabia during the June haj pilgrimage when temperatures exceeded 50°C. Africa sweltered in wet-bulb temperature of 60°C.
Last month, 123 people died of heatstroke in once-cool Tokyo when temperatures hit 34°C. In Shanghai, temperatures surged to 40.4°C. This year’s summer had cities across Southern Europe sizzling at 38°C, and wildfires broke out on formerly snow-covered slopes.
But quick as a flash, the opposite phenomenon comes visiting. East Africa emerged from a killer drought in last year’s summer to be lashed by torrential rains and consequent massive floods in December, prompting a high official in Kenya to lament: “We have two hazards coming at us day and night. We are either in drought or are in floods.”
Malaysia is now experiencing the same dual phenomenon. Flood losses from damaged homes and damaged infrastructure in just five states last year totalled RM760 million. We are quite unprepared for climate disaster as we are 30 years late in starting the switch to renewable energy.
Scientists were already fully aware of climate change in the 1970s. Solar photovoltaic cells to generate electricity and electric milk delivery vans were introduced in that decade. But with objections from the oil industry, nothing more was heard of them for decades.
In 1992, the United Nations convened an earth summit to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions. Although 158 nations agreed, all dragged their feet. Malaysia launched its first grid-connected PV system only in 2000 and allowed the first electric vehicle on the road in 2013.
It is fashionable to pin the blame for climate change on coal, oil and gas. A blame game lets the mastermind off the hook and allows us to make just a few superficial changes, such as reducing coal usage. Who is this elusive and crafty mastermind?
Why did humanity take preventive actions so late? Scientists have long pinpointed the approximate year when the global climate started to change. It is 1760 when the Industrial Revolution began spewing out carbon dioxide soot. The long period of inaction is because we ignored the primary reason for climate change – the human alienation from nature and God.
Transition to civilisation marks the fall
At the start of this 10-part Adam and Eve series, we explained that the human estrangement from nature began with our transition to civilisational living after 300,000 years as hunter-gatherers.
How do we know that it occurred during this transitional period? The giveaway is the saga of Adam and Eve’s first two sons – Cain, a planter, and Abel, a herder. Agriculture paved the way for civilisation, with crop farming invented 12,000 years ago followed by livestock rearing 2,000 years later.
The iconic Garden of Eden in this Hebrew scriptural story is a metaphor that stands for nature. God tells Adam and Eve that they “must not eat from the tree of Etz Ha-da’at Tov Va-ra, which literally means the “experiential knowing of serendipity and calamity” or good fortune and misfortune.
But tov va-ra takes on the meaning of good and evil when the mind bifurcates or cuts all human experiences into two combative halves. Mental bifurcation causes us to lose the sense of wholeness and the sense that all is one. This is how evil emerges: It is not out there, it is in our minds. We are the mastermind behind climate change.
Adam and Eve felt entranced by the tree and they “took of its fruit and ate”, i.e., they felt a temptation to step away from nature and to live a new type of experience shaped by their minds. Instead of humanity in nature, human life bifurcates into a “humanity versus nature” drive propelling us to conquer, exploit and where expedient, to destroy nature.
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). To be naked is the condition of all lifeforms in nature from the amoeba to the ape. Being naked is a figure of speech for living in nature. After the fallout, humanity adopted lifestyles that covered up the way of nature as depicted by the word “coverings” used as a metaphor.
The fallout with nature spins off the instantaneous consequence of estrangement from God. Genesis describes God as “walking in the garden”, figuratively meaning that God is in nature which is also the original home of humanity. But the couple “hid from the Lord God”. In falling out with nature, humanity alienates itself from God. If we are not with nature, we are not with God.
This is the first warring division: Each group of humans leaving the wild to attempt civilised living fell into a state of disharmony and brokenness characterised by alienation from nature and God. But indigenous forest tribes to this day remain aligned with nature and to the original faith. Have you seen an Orang Asli who lives in the jungle or frequently visits it? He walks bare-footed on the jungle ground at a jogging pace. No civilised person can do that.
The next warring division occurs in the economic sphere. Adam and Eve’s planter and herder sons grow up to become enemies, and Cain murders Abel. It is not a simple homicide, though. Long overlooked are the stunning revelatory contents of this story, for it discloses that politics and religion are deeply implicated in violence and warfare.
Cain and Abel decide to make separate offerings to God – not a joint offering of their produce – revealing the hostile bifurcated relationship between the crop and livestock sectors. Herders long rose to ascendancy over planters in West Asia, but in large parts of East Africa, their conflict over land and water resources still contributes to civil strife.
The story puts God in the centre of the action with these verses: “The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour” (Genesis 4:4-5).
This makes Cain “very angry” and he kills Abel, thereby introducing violent conflict – the first intimation of civilisation to come. The big takeaway from this tale of violence is that it has God playing a lead role. This is the Torah’s way of saying that religion, like politics, is woven into the fabric of agriculture and civilisation and is implicated in human conflict.
In the next article, we shall piece together evidence that the “we versus them” bifurcation is fuelling geopolitical conflict. Enmity, often falling along religious fault lines, is diverting world resources into weaponry and away from the fight against climate change. World attention is riveted on fighting the wrong threat.
The writer champions interfaith harmony.
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