A sermon by the Rev. Diane Teichert and Donald Milton, MD DrPH
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
October 23, 2011
Diane: My husband, Dr. Donald Milton, joins me in the pulpit today. Trained in internal and occupational medicine at Hopkins and Harvard Universities, with a doctorate in public health, he is the director of the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland-College Park. He began his position there at the same time I began mine here, two years ago in August. We have two grown children, Alexa in Minneapolis and Ross in Ithaca NY, but our nest is not as empty as it might be because of our dog Oliver.
Diane: Last Sunday we got into a little argument after the service, didn’t we? Let’s see if we can reconstruct it for everybody. We had been in the foyer, talking about the church’s new composting program.
Don: OK, I said something like, “It’s not going to make a significant difference if we as individuals get into composting. Global climate change, the real impact are things like the Keystone pipeline. If our focus is on individual actions that make us feel good and we don’t do anything about the major issues and major public policy changes, then it’s a waste.”
Diane: And, I said, “I agree, but, we can’t overwhelm people with the big issues to the point that they don’t do the individual things that they actually can do.”
That’s when I thought: oh, dear, I asked him if he would do a sermon with me and now I have to worry about what he’s going to say. He’s going to trash our PBUUC composting goals and lecture everybody about the latest gloom and doom scientific research.
Don: And, I said, I promise not to do that.
Diane: So, Don, why did you yourself put so much energy into creating four beautiful compost pens in our backyard? Why is it that after all those years in Massachusetts of me being the one to take the compost out, turn it in the bin, and retrieve soil from the bin to spread on our vegetable garden every spring… why are you so into it now?
Don: Baloney, I took the compost out too. And, in the deep snow or with highs in the single digits, neither of us did. Here, it is far less onerous to do year round. But, I’ll admit I wasn’t into gardening there until the last couple of years when we gave up on having a lawn and turned our front yard into part raised bed vegetable garden and part wildflower chaos. Who knows … I can’t remember my dad doing any gardening before age 60; maybe it is just something that happens to men in my family as we age. I used to hate it. Now it makes me feel good.
But, my point is that what makes us feel good is not going to be enough. In University Park, Chuck Wilson, who heads the “Small Town Energy Program for UP or STEP-UP, is trying to convince me to give up my wonderful compost bins for the good of the community. He thinks that it would be much more effective if we could get everyone in UP to compost and then get the town to pick it up to take to the town compost heap. So, he’s trying to get me to give up my compost and join a pilot project where the town will collect kitchen compost every Tuesday. If enough people join the pilot the town may make this a routine part of the garbage collection and we could get a much larger number of people to compost — people who like me 20 years ago didn’t want to garden or couldn’t be bothered. I believe that it is going to take large collective action to have impacts — so maybe I should give up my compost?
Diane: But then we wouldn’t have good soil to add to our garden!
Many people think that we should take action to counter global warming for the sake of the earth, but you have been studying the health effects of global warming on humans. It’s not just the earth we need to save; it’s ourselves! Some of these health effects aren’t so obvious. Can you tell us about some that are just now coming to light?
Don: OK.
It seems clear to me that given the carbon pollution we’ve already created, there is going to be climate change. So, that means that we are going to have to adapt. That in fact is now the focus of much work in academia — we call it climate change adaptation. We still need to try and mitigate it. But, change is in a small way already here and more is certain to come, given all the carbon we have already added to the atmosphere.
For some examples, let’s talk about things very close to home: like our houses and the Chesapeake.
The National Academy of Science this year released a report on climate change and the indoor environment. Climate is outside, right? So, what’s that got to do with indoors? Some of you remember “tight building syndrome”. That was when we stopped using outdoor intakes on commercial offices to reduce our heating and cooling costs. Suddenly we discovered problems with stuffy buildings could really affect peoples health — exacerbate asthma and so on.
Well, there are two ways that climate change is impacting the indoor environment. One is that with increasing torrential rain fall, we have more leaks in roofs and flooded basements all the way to frank flooded houses a-la New Orleans after Katrina. Climate Change is in many respects about extreme events. We will have more heavy rains as well as more hurricanes. The level of the Chesapeake is rising faster than any part of the ocean on the east coast of the US. This is partly because of land subsidence, related to a meteor that created the mouth of the bay 35 million years ago (is thought to have created a tsunami that topped the Blue Ridge Mountains). That will mean more floods in DC, Baltimore, and other coastal communities. Then there’s the rain. How many of you have experienced roof leaks and flooding with this late summer and early fall wet season? How many of you are living in rental housing where the landlord has not fixed the problem? How many of you now have frank mold growth in your home because the water damaged materials were not dried within 48 hours or removed? How many nights have you been up with a child’s asthma attacks because of the damp moldy conditions? How many hospital visits and unpaid doctor bills? Damp and moldy buildings are well known to exacerbate asthma and other lung diseases.
Let’s talk about the Chesapeake itself. The Bay was a wonderful thing 50 years ago when my sisters and I swam on the beaches and attended my father’s company’s annual crab feast. I remember the old National Bo commercial ‘brewed on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, land of pleasant living.’ But how pleasant is a Bay with no crabs or oysters, dominated by a growing dead zone and sea nettles. People I’ve met since moving back here, who live on the sores of the Bay don’t let their children swim in it.
The latest environmental change models show that we cannot separate human changes in land use (e.g. urbanization and farming crops) from climate change. They indicate that a major driver of harmful algal blooms, oxygen depleted dead zones, and sea nettles in the Bay is the increased nutrient load of run-off from farming. Increasing temperature is also fostering growth of pathogens such as a type of cholera bacteria that can infect a scratch and be fatal. But, the detailed climate-environmental models of the Chesapeake show that if we could ban chicken farming from the Delmarva peninsula, we could tremendously increase oxygen levels, reduce harmful algal blooms, and get back a productive swimmable Bay.
Diane: One thing that strikes me about those examples is how absolutely and intricately connected we humans are to all that is around us. That’s not news, of course, but the we understand it in ever increasing detail, with ever more intricate questions arising as we learn more. It moves me to humility… and awe.
The sensibility we must have now (and should have had all along) about our place in the universe is so different than the relationship described in the Book of Genesis, which is one of “dominion, “ “rule,” and “power over” depending on your Biblical translation. We are learning, we are continuing to learn, that we do not have power over the environment. To have dominion over implies being separate from. We have a powerful impact upon it, yes – we can nearly move mountains and with nuclear weapons we can destroy everything including ourselves – but we do not rule it.
Don: I think you over-state it a bit there: we are not going to destroy the earth. We probably won’t even destroy life. Evolution is very effective at solving problems and life will go on. The question is, are we smart enough to continue being a part of life beyond a few more generations?
We have changed the planet, our environment, in many ways, and some of them are going to be very hard for us to adapt to. There is no way that evolution can help us adapt – unless you consider that nature’s way would be for us to become extinct and some more intelligent creature to appear, who would later – 100,000 years from now – dig up the artifacts of a long lost species and wonder how they (we!) could have been so stupid. Evolution won’t save us; we are going to have to save ourselves.
It’s the personal and collective lifestyles – from composting to public policies and corporate practices (and composting as public policy) that must adapt. And, like Frederick Douglass said, “But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Diane: I believe there is – because I experience it and I see it in others too – an energizing, spiritual force in our a deepening, humbling, and amazed awareness of the intricate interconnection between human life and all that is. By acting on that awareness, both individually and collectively, we can reinforce and renew that energizing, spiritual force. With cultivation, by celebrating it, it will give us the impetus and ongoing strength to make the changes in our personal and collective lifestyles that the earth demands and human life requires.
Let’s make of this work not a fight – though a fighting spirit may at times be necessary – let’s make of it a celebration. A celebration of our oneness with all who live and all that is! But with outrage, demand and struggle!
So may it be.