Climate Scientist and Theologian Tell How Ecological Crisis Requires New Cooperation between Science and Religion

V. “Ram” RamanathanJohn CobbOn Earth Day 2018, two distinguished scholars and environmental activists pushed the envelope of understanding for all of us attending a “Reunion of Science and Religion, Head and Heart” event. The event was beautifully hosted by the Church of Our Common Home and 1st Unitarian-Universalist Church, San Diego.

Climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and consulted with Pope Francis on “Laudato Si’,” the encyclical on ecology. Theologian John Cobb is the preemininent leader of process thought (following philosopher Alfred North Whitehead) and co-founded the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, California. He’s worked with Chinese scholars on an ecological civilization through the Institute of Postmodern Development of China, which he cofounded with Zihihe Wang in 2005.

Because both Ramanathan and Cobb have integrated science and religion in their own worldview, they contribute greatly to the new story in which the two need one another.

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Four Years to Prevent 1.5°C Rise in Global Temperature; Best Action? Form Alliances

Veerabhadran Ramathan / photo from UC San Diego News CenterWe are close to reaching an unwanted milestone. So many greenhouse gases now blanket the globe, holding Earth’s heat close to the surface like a blanket holds in our body heat on a chilly night, that the entire planet’s habitability is being affected. This past week I heard climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramathan say that in just four years his children and grandchildren, like all of us and our offspring, will be experiencing Earth as 1.5°C warmer than before the Industrial Age UNLESS we rapidly create the alliances necessary to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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