We are creating a hell on earth with our betrayal of the planet

BETRAYAL is a universal theme commemorated today, Spy Wednesday. This is the liturgical memorial when, by tradition, Judas took 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus, and entered into a pact he would live to regret, but could never escape — no matter that he would end up “throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple”.

Betrayal, unlike a change of mind, is irreversible. Judas “departed, and he went and hanged himself”. Whether myth or history, Judas is an emblem of a great human truth. For every good intention there is a serpent tempting us in our weakness, vanity, or greed into treachery. Once in the mists of time our betrayal cost us the Garden of Eden.

The story of Paradise Lost, of satanic pride leading to irreversible fall, is our story. We have all enjoyed a little piece of the action. Except on climate change, it seems we cannot get enough, no matter how often or how terribly we are warned of an irreversible cataclysm ahead. If we ever fall into that cataclysm, we will never crawl out of it. But no matter, we go on.

Hell is out of fashion. Purgatory is mothballed and limbo is permanently closed. The preaching of hell is especially discredited as the hocus pocus of a predatory priestly class exploiting the terror and weakness of pitiful people. The centuries of rendering hell: Yawning mouths of demons with teeth like scythes tearing the putrid, lustful flesh of a fallen humanity; the great lake of fire licking human limbs so recently occupied in unspeakable vice is now replaced by a vision in beige, where nothing much of any interest happens at all. Better not to upset anyone and certainly imperative not to offend anyone.

The UN report on climate change is a vivid resurgence of an old-time religion. Hell is back on the horizon, purgatory is here and now, and betrayal is almost universal. Betrayal is what you and I are doing every day just living our slothful lives.

As a species, we are bent on creating hell on earth. By dint of lust for goods and a life of ease, we are making a reality of visions far more terrifying than any ever conjured before. It is a strange phenomenon that a hell which was only supposed could cause collective terror, and even if only at the end, near universal repentance. In contrast, the yawning abyss now opening beneath our feet, copiously documented and scientifically proven, is almost universally ignored. We party on.

The size of the party has been gargantuan. Half of all carbon emissions between 1750 and 2010 occurred in the last 40 years. Greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2010 were the highest in human history. And the threat is both imminent and getting worse. Recently, increased reliance on coal “has reversed the long-standing trend of gradual decarbonisation of the world’s energy supply”. Because we must be satiated, the earth must perish. And some places on earth are already analogous to the pit of hell, full of millions of people trapped in appalling conditions, half-fed, half-dead, and without hope of escape.

Even on our temperate isle we are seeing extreme weather. Flooding, albeit hugely exacerbated by poor planning, is on the increase. The cost and scale of remedial action, itself only a regard action, is beyond the capacity of the Irish exchequer for the foreseeable future. Parts of our population cannot be effectively protected against the elements. Very many families and businesses can no longer find insurance to cover the costs of risks which, from the perspective of insurance companies, look increasingly like inevitabilities.

And all of this is as nothing compared to what is being wreaked around the world, among the poorest — stranded economically and geographically on the edges of the earth.

As for the unnamed, indistinguishable figures in the crowd with the unfolding drama of betrayal, show-trial and crucifixion; responsibility is literally thick in the air. We, each of us emit about 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year — more than twice the corresponding figure for China and about 10 times the estimate for India. The blame is everybody’s, but it is nobody’s. It is just the way it is. Put on the kettle, turn on the washing machine, drive the car, take a flight, and you and I are, in our inestimable way, slowly asphyxiating the planet. But our responsibility is not inestimable. It is meticulously documented. We just choose to ignore it, and party on.

According to the recent UN report on climate change that took seven years and involved 500 scientists, “both warm coral reef and Arctic ecosystems already experiencing irreversible regime shifts“. Having been expelled once from the Garden of Eden, we are now despoiling it again. It is extraordinary the extent to which the human identity in general, and our Irish identity in particular, is rooted in the land. Expelled from the Garden of Eden, led again in this week of Passover into the Promised Land, starved by the millions and cast adrift in millions more by the Great Famine, our land framed in cutsie pictures is at the core of our identity.

Our national conversation is at the point of ending in a great public washing of hands, and an ablution of responsibility. In all our talk about how we can save the economy, public policy has entirely lost sight of how, more importantly, we can save the planet, in order to have any economy at all. The issue is not that we are, globally, only a proverbial drop in the ocean; it is that we are each personally responsible. Our hope is not that we can hide in the crowd. By being in it, we are guilty as charged. There are no easy solutions and there are no cop-outs.

This newspaper reported yesterday the extent to which Ireland will miss its carbon emission targets by 2020. Instead of a 20% reduction, a paltry 3% looks more likely. Yes, it is all about cows and it is complicated. Moneypoint power station, our largest source of CO2 emissions, is another critical issue. It will be practically impossible for us to address our responsibility without a range of radical changes and difficult decisions being taken. For now, however, the blame game is on. It is everybody’s responsibility except mine or yours.

The issues at stake are not primarily environmental, or even economic — they are moral. President Michael D Higgins spoke last week about how we British and Irish live in “both the shadow and the shelter of one another” and we were all suffused in a warm glow.

But in the flood prone delta of Bangladesh, there is no glow, and certainly no shelter for millions in the shadow of our greed. If we take the silver, we will take the consequences. Betrayal on climate change is irreversible.