A catastrophic climate change faith and practice 

a faith and practice for a moral economy

a proposed sermon on climate change

Solar and the Blessed Community


1. Our climate change goal is to completely reverse the effects of climate change, with as little permanent damage to the earth (extinctions, for example) as possible, and with as little damage to human life as possible.

2. We may not live to see the goal accomplished. In God’s time, a delay of generations is acceptable.

3. Climate change and good government are linked. Climate is the world community’s problem to solve. We grieve when our governments willfully turn a blind eye to the science of climate change.

4. Our good government goal is for everyone on earth to have a fair chance at building a meaningful life for themselves, with transparent collective ownership of governments. Each other person’s democracy is in general good for our own peace and freedom.

5. For climate restoration, the first recommendation among policy activists is to deploy, deploy, deploy innovative products. The deployment of innovative and effective sustainable energy products is approximately the shortest route to our worldwide climate change goal.

6. Just as the price of photovoltaic panels is being driven relentlessly down, so the price of all alternative energy products shall be driven relentlessly down. The full price of fossil fuels is limited by our having a finite earth with a finite atmosphere.

7. An oligopolistic marketplace creates a rocky environment for innovation. People who have tried to innovate before us have changed the term “leading edge” to “bleeding edge”. Governments interfere in the supposedly free market in many ways, from wars over oil fields to monopolistic predation to patent obstacles placed in the way of poor inventors.

8. A great deal of 17th century dogma about “free markets” and the “invisible hand” wistfully looks back at a financial utopia that never existed. We declare such dogma to be suspect and in need of careful discernment.

9. If climate innovation is a critical benchmark for the earth’s survival and if most potential innovators are dissuaded from innovation by the need for food and heat, then both our governments and our non-governmental communities are equally failing to achieve a critical benchmark.

10. Balancing the free market in favor of the cultivation of climate change innovation should be a priority for Friends. Some of the work requires detailed case studies of how inventors fail. Some of the needed work requires that we walk the innovation path ourselves, singly or in groups.

11. Some people are called to technical tasks in this work. Others are confused by too much technical work. Simple political activism is just as much needed as the technical work.

12. Friends (Quakers) have a rich history of innovation. For just one example, mass transit has a forefather in the Darby family of England. Part of innovation is love for all humanity made manifest.

13. Friends go through periods of confession and do plenty of soul searching, but in the end, dwelling exclusively on climate sorrow without going for a goal doesn’t satisfy our deep longings. Such behavior is natural for a time and Friends must be held in the light as they go through dark nights of their souls. However, the dawn comes, and we must arise to live our lives in the Light.