Climate Change Has a Trolley Problem

Francesca Reznik is a program manager for workforce development at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. She holds a Master’s of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School of Harvard Divinity School. This Points of View article reflects her opinions, not necessarily those of Atmos or her employer. 

If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.

He’s the forest. He’s the desert.

He’s the ice caps, that are dying.

He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts.

He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?

–Mary Oliver, “At the River Clarion”

The activists do not look like activists.

They are two older men, maybe in their 60s, with leathered faces, skin the color of whiskey caramel. These fifth-generation Arizonans have been miners all their lives. So were their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers. The rocks of this valley—the dust, the metals—are in their blood and genetic code. 

The men show us a picture of the type of mine we are here to see, and the crater it will leave behind after it sucks this valley dry of its precious metal. It looks like an ugly scar on the landscape, a gaping hole.

Will God ever forgive us for what we have done to Creation?

Can we even forgive ourselves?