Been sitting on this piece for several days now.  It’s a very long “essay” by an LA Times “Environment Reporter” about “climate anxiety.”  Been trying to figure out how to comment on it.  On the one hand, I have a great deal of compassion for someone that has anxiety issues.  But on the other hand, “climate anxiety” strikes me as just strange – there simply is no concern so imminent nor so drastic as to create the levels of anxiety described.  There is media hype, but there is no science to justify being anxious about the climate.  But as I reread it this morning, after last night’s screed on how insane our media/politics have become, I think I gained some insight.

We are born with an innate sense that things are just not quite right.  The Apostle Paul wrapped it in very religious language in his letter to the church in Rome:

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible mankind, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.

If you strip that of the religiosity, it says we all know there is something wrong and we keep looking for a way to fix it. This, of course, presumes that Christianity is the right place to look, but does it not seem evident that “climate anxiety” is born of trying to hang that sense in something wrong somewhere?  This is especially true when you read the last sentence in that passage.

So, here we are in the most prosperous situation in human history with this vague sense that things are just not quite right, thrashing about to identify a source for that sense.  So, we turn to climate concerns, or politics, or …. But what we are seeing in climate anxiety rendering people nearly dysfunctional or our politics becoming so silly is that when that we try to make that innate sense material rather than spiritual, we lose our capacity to approach things rationally.

I cannot help but think this accounts for the rise of Kamala Harris.  She came to her candidacy in the most undemocratic way conceivable in modern America.  She lies though her teeth.  She is vacant, never answering a question directly, not saying anything of substance.  Her only seeming qualification for the position she finds herself in is that she is not Donald Trump; she is not Joe Biden, and she has some name recognition.  Her candidacy seems born of anxiety.

Let’s be fair, Trump is a bombastic boor, prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.  But he has also governed as POTUS for four years and as tumultuous as the media made that time it was substantively better than the last 4 years.  Only the irrationality born of misplacing our sense of things being out of shape can explain the anxiety that surrounds him and gives Harris any legitimacy.

Who we elect will have very real consequences.  Do you think Harris will address Hamas tunnelling into the US?  I don’t, and failure to do so could well result in actual death.  Climate hysteria threatens our fundamental systems – technological, economic and governmental.  We are, in misplacing this emotional sense of unease, threatening ourselves in ways we blind ourselves to.

It is time for a serious rethink about how we are doing things. I, of course, think Paul had it right and we need to run to Christ.  I am sure there are many that think I am wrong.  Fair enough, but I challenge them to come up with an alternative that preserves our rationality.  The absence of that rationality threatens us far more than we often realize.