Coming Together to Solve the Climate Crisis

By Tommaso Boggia, Foundation Beyond Belief Environment Blogger

Getting people interested in the climate crisis can be tough. For some reason, when you start talking about political corruption and scientific data, most people tune out, fall asleep, stop caring, or start acting like contrarians for the hell of it, but I know the climate crisis discussion can be much more exciting than that!

What is more exciting than windmills slowly spinning their blades in the American heartland?

What is more inspiring than recently laid-off factory workers heading back to work building new batteries for electric cars?

What is more beautiful than 15,000 young Ethiopians marching in the streets of Addis Ababa to preserve a future with plentiful crops, accessible drinking water, and sustainable development?

Sure, puppies and polar bears are cute and draw people’s attention, but I won’t be talking about those here (check out the animal protection section for your cute-animal fix). The climate crisis is a human problem, and human stories will demonstrate the exciting opportunities and potential threats that lie ahead.

My name is Tommaso Boggia, and I have been trying to find local and national political solutions to the climate crisis for the past five years, first as a student college organizer, now as a … well, a full-time college organizer at a progressive think tank. I’ve been part of campaigns to help communities purchase record levels of clean energy, saved campuses hundreds of thousands of dollars, shut down dangerous coal power plants, and demonstrated the youth support for clean energy policy to senile and scientifically deficient politicians. As a lifelong atheist humanist, I am stoked about the opportunity to be the climate blogger for Foundation Beyond Belief.

The battle to solve the climate crisis is, at its core, a moral issue. Millions of people around the world are already suffering the initial effects of the climate crisis, seeing reduced crop yields, their islands flooded by the rising seas, their water sources evaporating into thin air. Atheists throughout the world and others prone to scientific thinking are rallying around this cause, but too many are still stuck in denial.

We wouldn’t be here still trying to solve this fifty-year-old problem had we not abandoned rational, science-based policy. Just as with cigarettes, evolution, and gay marriage, religious conservatives and corporate interests often join to scare politicians away from taking action to improve their constituents’ lives.

Here in the United States, the denialist position is led primarily by evangelical Christian groups. Fortunately, not all religious groups are part of that denial.

Many have rallied around the issue, including the Catholic Church, the Tibetan Buddhists, and the Eastern Orthodox. And there are promising signs even in the evangelical camp, where a small but growing minority have coined the term “creation care” as the touchstone for their own dawning movement to address the reality of climate change.

I will try to instill all of my posts with a good degree of humor and optimism while relaying important messages about the most important issue of our time (sorry, fellow Foundation Beyond Belief bloggers). If you start reading my upcoming posts and feel like stopping because they are too macabre or technical, please leave me a comment to let me know I need to stop geeking out.

I’m looking forward to getting the Climate Action Beyond Belief conversation started!