Light in Darkness: Embracing the Opportunity of Climate Change1

by Edwin Firmage, Jr.2

I“I howl like a wolf and mourn like an owl.”

Micah 1:8

Most of you know me, if you know me at all, as an environmental activist. A few of you may know

me as an outdoor photographer. But tonight, in view of the season, I’d like to put on another of my

hats. Long before I took up cameras and activism, I was a student of the ancient Near East. My

special focus was Israel and the Bible. And I’d like to start o! my presentation tonight by talking a

bit about the Bible. Ironically, academic study of the Bible was at least indirectly the beginning of the

end of my active involvement in organized religion. So, I think it’s only fair to forewarn you that I

stand before you tonight as that oddest of creatures, the agnostic preacher. But in part because of the

crumbling of belief, and also for other reasons, my Bible study was the start of everything good that

has followed, including the photography and the activism. What’s more, although I now approach

the Bible very di!erently than I did as a Mormon missionary thirty years ago, the Bible is if anything

more significant to me now. For me, as I hope for you, the Bible remains a foundational cultural and

spiritual document, and it can inspire us whether or not we are “true believers.”

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1 Section I is based on a presentation delivered at the Unitarian Church, Salt Lake City, UT, December 18, 2009. Section II borrows heavily from a petition called “A Call for Leadership” that I drew up for the University of Utah in February 2009 but only circulated among a small group of friends at the U. due to the apparent unwillingness of faculty to speak out and draw down the ire of the Utah Legislature. A copy of the petition is available on my website: http://web.me.com/efirmage/Edwin_Firmage_Photography/Blog/Entries/2009/2/2_A_Declaration_of_Energy_Indepenence_files/A%20Call%20for%20Leadership.pdf. Sections III - VI are new to this essay.

2 EDWIN FIRMAGE, JR. makes his living, or tries to, as a fine art photographer in Salt Lake City, Utah (res est sacra miser). He studied classics at Princeton and holds an M.A. in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from U.C. Berkeley, where he was a Mellon Fellow. From 1986–1989, he was a Rotary Foundation scholar at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is the author and publisher of Red Rock Yellow Stone, an award-winning combination of photographs of the American West and haiku from Japan. For more about Mr. Firmage, visit his web site, www.edwinfirmage.com.

My message to you this evening is that climate change is the problem: the ecological problem, the

social and economic problem, the health problem, and the moral problem not just of our time but of

all time. For reasons that I’ll explain in Parts III through VI, I think that churches have a uniquely

important role to play in addressing this problem of problems. But whether or not climate change is

the problem, it is certainly a problem, and a big problem for churches, as it is for other institutions. It

therefore seems reasonable, if perhaps somewhat old-fashioned, to consider what light the Bible

might shed on this issue for religious institutions that in theory, if not always in deed, honor the

Bible as a foundational document. So, with that justification for my playing preacher, let me turn to

the Good Old Book, that book “so little read in so many places at so many times” ("omas Greene).

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I begin my remarks tonight with these beautiful and familiar words first spoken 2,500 years ago by a

man living somewhere in the Near East, perhaps in what we now call Iraq, perhaps in what we now

call Israel. He spoke a long time ago in a far away place and in a foreign tongue, and I recite his

words in his tongue to remind us that these words do come from another world. Yet they still have

meaning for us today:

Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising (Isa. 60:1-3).

"e speaker of these words called himself Yesha‘yahu. He was the second or third of Israel’s prophets

to call himself by that name. Yesha‘yahu, or Isaiah as we know him, wrote at the end of the biblical

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 2 of 90

period. As one of the last of the writers of the Bible, he could look back over hundreds of years of

thought and action inspired by Israel’s unique faith. As one of the last of the prophets, he saw himself

and his people at a turning point in time when at last the promise of God’s covenant with Israel

would be fulfilled, mutually fulfilled.

If the Bible has a red thread, an organizing principle, it is certainly the notion of the covenant. What

does this covenant mean? To understand, we must go back to the beginning of Israel’s history, as

Israel’s priests did when they were putting the Torah in its present form. For them, the story begins

with God’s creation of mankind in his image:

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Let us make mankind in our image, according to our

likeness (Gen. 1:26).

For Israel’s priests, the resemblance between God and man was both physical and spiritual. It was

this resemblance that made it possible for God at a later date to tell Israel, “You must be holy,

because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Without such a resemblance, such a

requirement would be impossible. But even at the beginning of history, before ever speaking a word

to this e!ect, God expected mankind to model its behavior on his.

It didn’t. God’s first attempt to create a holy following failed. "e generation of Adam and his family

created a world full of violence. Clearly, if people were going to become holy, God would have to do

something more than simply turning them loose on their own recognizance. And so, after wiping

out all life on earth except the beings saved in the ark, God gave mankind its first instructions in how

to behave. He told Noah that men may not kill each other, because they are the image of God. And

he told Noah that while people would now be allowed to eat animals as opposed to just plants for

food, the life of these animals, as embodied in the blood, belonged to God and to God alone.

"is was the first simple statement of ethics and the first dietary law of the Bible (Gen. 9:3-6). Once

more, however, humanity failed to live up to its promise and its obligation. Humanity again filled

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the earth with violence, and even proposed to take heaven by storm by building a gigantic siege

tower (cf. Isa. 14:13-14: Babel and Babylon, the same city at di!erent ends of history, define

arrogance). God responded by scattering humanity to the winds and making it di#cult for them to

work together. Students of foreign languages will be forever grateful for this di#culty.

And so, God made a third attempt. Again he singled out one good man, and he made a promise to

this man of a sort that he had not made with Noah or with Adam. God bound himself to this man

as a friend, with the promise that he would be a friend not only to the man but to his o!spring. In

time, God took the o!spring of his friend, Abraham, and set them down at the foot of Sinai for a

lecture like no other in history. In painstaking and unprecedented detail, God laid out for the

Israelites what it means to be holy. And no aspect of life was too trivial for consideration. Diet,

clothing, hygiene, behavior, governance — God spelled it all out for them so that there would be no

room for excuses. "is was Israel’s Torah, the Teaching, the basis for the agreement between God and

his people. If they would follow his Teaching and become a holy people, he would be their God, and

would dwell among them, literally. In Israelite thought, the giving of the Torah and the covenant at

Sinai is the epitome of God’s relations with mankind, for at Sinai God at last gives mankind the

knowledge of how to become like God.3

Such is the vision of the Torah. But the biblical story of God’s passionate involvement in the life of

Israel of course does not end there. It continues in the prophets, whose theme is the failure of Israel

to live up to this covenant responsibility. "e tone of the prophetic message down the ages is set by

Samuel, the first great prophet after Moses of whom we have any substantial record. Samuel rebukes

Israel for its desire to have a king like the other nations, for Yahweh was their proper king (1 Sam.

8:10-22). And Samuel rebukes Saul, Israel’s first king, for having saved some of the spoils of battle to

make a grand sacrificial o!ering, despite Yahweh’s command to destroy them. Samuel’s response to

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3 In this reading of Israel’s prehistory, I follow Martin Buber, “Abraham the Seer,” in On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, ed. Nahum Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1968, 22-43. I discuss the relevance of the primeval history to the Holiness Code in my own article, “Genesis 1 and the Priestly Agenda.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 82 (1999), 97-114. An abbreviated audio version of this article, which I presented at the 1998 Sunstone Symposium, is available on my website: http://web.me.com/efirmage/Supporting_Documents/Scholarly_Works_files/Genesis%201%20and%20the%20Priestly%20Agenda.mp3. Obviously, this reading of the Torah is 180 degrees di!erent from the traditional Mormon view. But this is the plain, holistic reading of the text, which is to say, the intent of the text according to its final compositors.

Saul will echo through generations of prophecy, “Does Yahweh desire whole o!erings and sacrifices

as he desires that you hear him? To hear is better than sacrifice, and to listen better than the fat of

rams” (1 Sam. 15:22).4 If king and priest were the anointed executors of the divine will, the prophets

were the guardians of it, a role that from the beginning put them at odds with the political and

religious establishment. “So these men, the prophets, who mostly have no appointment but only a

mission... stand and summon to justice the representatives on the royal throne for their treachery

against YHVH and His commandments. One after another they repeat God’s words, ‘I have

anointed thee to be melekh,’ or ‘I have appointed nagid’: Samuel to Saul (1 Sam. 15:17), Nathan to

David (2 Sam. 12:7), Ahijah to Jeroboam (1 Kgs. 14:7). For four hundred years they come one after

the other and take their stand before the prince and reprove him because of the violated covenant,

and finally Jeremiah (22:6!.), sometime after the disaster [the fall of Jerusalem], announces

destruction for the king’s house which had not been just, and therefore was no more justified.”5 "e

conflict is tragic and deeply moving, as in the case of David, who is Yahweh’s champion in war and a

charismatic figure of enormous human depth and obvious faith. Even David, who, like Abraham,

was promised that his dynasty would enjoy God’s special favor forever (2 Sam. 7:16) and who

became the model for the Messiah, does not escape prophetic censure. In contemporary pagan

literature, kings were the subject of epic and hagiography. In Israel, they are the foils of the prophets,

cautionary tales of the failure of even the greatest to live up to their responsibility. It’s an

extraordinary tale, without parallel in world literature, which perhaps is why many people today still

read it, long after the royal propaganda has been relegated to the dustbin. I wonder, though, how

many readers understand its message. No book in history sits less comfortably with the status quo

than the Book that has so widely become the icon of the status quo.

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4 Trans. mine. Generations of Sunday School lessons to free-spirited children notwithstanding, Samuel’s rebuke is not a sermon on obedience per se. It’s a statement about the hierarchy of values. In e!ect, Samuel says that how you behave trumps how you worship. "at’s a message that today’s punctilious Sunday School and temple goers might actually #nd troubling. I’ve chosen to render kishmoa‘ beqôl YHWH literally, because the injunction to “hear” is so rich in biblical echoes, as in the Shema: “Hear, Israel, the laws and statutes that I proclaim to you today. Learn them and observe them” (Deut. 5:1). To hear is to internalize, not simply to follow your #le leader’s orders. Mechanical obedience is as meaningless as mechanical sacri#ce. Yahweh does not want automata any more than he wants zealous hypocrites. To suppose otherwise is to treat Yahweh himself as a machine, an idol.

5 Martin Buber, !e Prophetic Faith. Trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies. New York: Harper, 1960, 68. Originally published 1949.

In the end, what the prophets look for and universally fail to find is the transformation of a people. In the

view of the prophets, it is precisely the Lord’s chosen people who are the most blind and deaf to God

(Isa. 42:19-20; 43:8; Jer. 5:21; 6:10; Ezek. 12:2; cf. also Isa. 30: 9; Jer. 6:17; Hos. 4:6,16; 7:11), who

do not understand God (Hos. 4:1 || lack of covenant loyalty, v. 6 || forgetting the Torah; Isa. 5:13;

Jer. 22:16 = doing justice and righteousness), and who are unclean (Isa. 64:6). "e prophets therefore

seek a national purifying, a return to fundamental principles. In Hebrew to this day, the word for

repentance is simply “return,” teshuvah. "us, Jeremiah tells Jerusalem, “Wash your heart of evil

(kabbesî mera‘ah libbeka) that you may be saved” (Jer. 4:14). “Circumcise yourself to the Lord,

remove the foreskin of your hearts” (4:4) so that you become in fact as well as in belief a holy people

(Amos 5:14; Isa. 62:12; cf. Jer. 2:3; Isa. 6:13).

"e apparent resistance of the people to deep, wholesale, and permanent transformation provokes

the prophets to anger and sorrow, for they see, as the people do not, the disparity between what is

and what could be, and between what is and what must be. In reality, the Israel of the prophets was

probably not for the most part a society run amok, prophetic indictments notwithstanding, but an

everyday kind of society with its “normal measure of daily sin.”6 Hezekiah (715-687 B.C.E) and

Josiah (640-609 B.C.E.), for example, ruled for almost 60 years between them, during a century of

exceptional political turbulence and social change. Such longevity itself says something about the

likely quality of their leadership. And the Bible recognizes that they were in fact good kings, who

generally did right by God and by the people. Of Hezekiah, the author of 2 Kings says, “He put his

trust in the Lord..."ere was nobody like him among all the kings of Judah who succeeded him or

among those who had gone before him” (2 Kgs. 18:5). Josiah “did what was right in the eyes of the

Lord, following in the footsteps of his forefather David and deviating neither to the right nor to the

left” (2 Kgs. 22:2). Jeremiah himself says of Josiah that “he upheld the cause of the lowly and the

poor” (Jer. 22:15). And yet, it is during this same period that Isaiah and Jeremiah thunder against

Israel, because there were also less-than-exemplary kings, less-than-exemplary ruling classes, and even

less than exemplary poor. Jeremiah blankets them all with furious denunciation, “From the smallest

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6 Yehezkel Kaufmann, !e Religion of Israel. Trans. Moshe Greenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1960, 421. Kaufmann’s is by far the best general history of Israelite religion ever written, and I cannot recommend it too highly to those who may wish to pursue the subject in greater depth.

to the greatest of them, all seek gain, from prophet to priest all deal falsely” (Jer. 6:13; 8:10). In an

ordinary society, Abraham Heschel notes, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible...In a community

not indi!erent to su!ering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually

concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common.”7 Israel had

crime, and corruption, and poverty even at the best of times, like all societies before and since. But

for a people under covenant to be holy, to be ordinary, to be like every other nation, was to fail God.

"e fact that crime and corruption and all of the ills of normal society had not disappeared

demonstrated to the prophets that Israel’s commitment to the covenant was insu#cient. In the end,

while the prophets produced a long litany of the people’s o!enses, what they really condemned Israel

for was being ordinary.

"e importance of this point cannot be overstated. Believing readers of the Bible today who suppose

that Israel was punished because it was in fact unusually wicked fundamentally miss the point, which

is that the Israelites were in fact probably just like most people in most ages, and the prophets

condemned them. "e prophets were not sociologists or moral statisticians. "eir indictment of

Israel was not compiled from an encyclopedic knowledge of the sins of the people, but rather from

their observation of the society as a whole and its self-evident failure to be something radically

di!erent. "e prophetic indictment was therefore not subject to mitigation by the righteousness of

some individuals. "e prophets were no more concerned with individual righteousness than with

individual wickedness. Of course individuals must be righteous. But if society as a whole cannot rise

to the challenge, individual righteousness does not matter: the righteous and the wicked perish

together. “To a person endowed with prophetic sight,” Heschel continues, everyone appears blind; to

a person whose ear perceives God’s voice, everyone else appears deaf. No one is just; no knowing is

strong enough, no trust complete enough. "e prophet hates the approximate, he shuns the middle

of the road..."e prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him, it

is a challenge, an incessant demand..."e prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is

at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.”8

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7 !e Prophets. New York: Harper, 1975, I:16 (first published 1962).

8 Idem.

For the prophets, the transformation of the world — and their ultimate vision is of a transformed

world modeled on Israel’s holiness (Isa. 2:2-4; 42:6-7; 45:22; 49:6; 56:6-7; 66:18-22; Mic. 4:2; Jer.

3:17; 4:2; 12:16; 16:19; Zeph. 3:9-10; Zech. 2:15; 8:20-23; 14:16-21) — requires first that God’s

people take their divine mission to heart in a way that they have not yet done. Israel is the first fruits

of God’s harvest of the nations (Jer. 2:3). "us, after chastising Israel for its failure to do this, God

tells Jeremiah, “I will put my teaching (torah) inside them, I will write it on their heart, and I shall be

their God and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33). In this last chapter in the story of God’s

relations with men, “they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother,

saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of

them” (v. 34). Bringing the story full circle, Jeremiah reminds his people that the person telling them

this is “the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day...and the moon and the stars by

night” (v. 35). Only at this point can God say of mankind, “It is good.”

"e essence of biblical prophecy is not to see what will be but to see what is and what can be. "e

reality that the prophets saw is that while the physical universe is all that God intended it to be,

God’s masterpiece, man, “is still in the process of being created.”9 And what God hopes to achieve

with this part of his creation is an image of himself in the fullest sense of the word. While God

prohibits icons to Israel, he permits himself one: Israel is God’s icon. Israel is God’ mate, his love, his

passion. As I said at the beginning, it is God’s purpose, according to the Bible, to create a nation that

embodies his own holiness, his own righteousness. "us, Isaiah in a striking image says, “But the

Lord of hosts shall be exalted in justice, | "e Holy One of Israel sanctified in righteousness” (5:16).

It is not in his omnipotence or his omniscience that God says he is distinguished, but in his

righteousness. Omnipotence and omniscience are qualities that uniquely characterize God, and yet

in Isaiah’s vision these qualities are not what God chooses to dwell on. It is the quality that he shares

with man.10

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9 Heschel, op. cit., I:198.

10 So Heschel, op. cit., 213, in a particularly brilliant passage in a book that is notable for brilliance.

What God seeks in mankind is the same overflowing of righteousness that exists within himself, that

seeks to fill and to transform the world. “Let justice roll down like waters, | And righteousness like a

mighty stream” (Amos 5:24). "is righteousness is an irresistible force, not the static balancing of

interests or the maintenance of “law and order” that we associate with simple justice. In real world

justice and law and order, there are many ways, especially for the powerful, as the prophets knew

only too well, to sidestep responsibility. Even in the midst of social order, therefore, injustice and

inequity abound. Righteousness does not tolerate such a status quo. It seeks constantly to redeem the

imperfect. “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, | And those in her who repent, by righteousness” (Isa.

1:27). And the scope of the intended redemption is universal: government, religious life, and civil life

as well as individual behavior must all be transformed.

As Amos’s metaphor illustrates, justice and righteousness in prophetic thinking are not principles

that exist in the abstract. "ey are not morals or ethics but the force of goodness in action that

emanates from God to man. In fact, they are important ultimately because and only because they

bless the life of man, for God himself seeks fulfillment in man. Injustice too is a force, which flows in

the other direction. "us, “injustice is condemned not because the law is broken, but because a

person has been hurt,”11 and God too feels that hurt. “You shall not a$ict any widow or orphan. If

you do a$ict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry...I will hear, for I am

compassionate” (Exod. 22:22-23, 27).12 Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these, you do it to me.

"ere is no more profound expression of the human aspiration for goodness. Nor is there a more

tragic appreciation of human reality, which expresses itself in the prophets as divine pathos. In

nothing are the prophets as moving as in their sense of the disjunction between God’s desire to touch

his people’s hearts and their unwillingness to be touched. What the prophets hold out to Israel is the

prospect of abundant life (cf. esp. Isa. 55). As Moses says at the beginning of Israelite history, “I have

set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19; cf. Amos

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11 Heschel, op. cit., 261.

12 "ere are also positive formulations of such commandments (Isa. 1:17; Jer. 22:3; Deut. 14:28-29; 16:11, 14; 24:19; 26:12). Israel is to show kindness to the disenfranchised, because God himself does so (Deut. 10:18-19). Righteousness thus goes beyond not oppressing the widow and orphan to being their advocate and aid, even though in strict “justice” they don’t “deserve” it.

5:5-6). What Moses and his successors hold out is not simply a way of life that avoids imminent,

nasty death. It is not a stay of execution. It is rather a blessing, a life of unimaginable possibility and

radical freedom empowered by the presence of God himself. Yet Israel, in the prophetic view, refuses

this.

For the prophets, as Heschel observes, “"e opposite of freedom is not determinism, [an inability to

act freely,] but hardness of heart, [a refusal to act rightly]. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of

mind, of eye and ear...Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom. Sin becomes compulsory

and self-destructive. Guilt and punishment become one.”13 Freedom is therefore more than the

simple possibility of self-determination. It is the active opposite of all those qualities that characterize

Israel in its refusal to be touched: stubbornness, hardness, and brazenness of heart (Deut. 29:18;

Lam.3:65; Ezek. 2:4), the willful refusal to see and hear reality (Isa. 42:19-20; 43:8; Jer. 5:21; 6:10;

Ezek. 12:2; cf. also Isa. 30: 9; Jer. 6:17; Hos. 4:6,16; 7:11). To be free is to become all that one can

become, not simply to make one’s way with God knows how many shackles holding you back (Isa.

5:18).

Despite their sorrow at Israel’s present rejection of freedom, the prophets to a man hold out the

possibility that at some point things will change and Israel will at last embrace its mission. If the

present scene is bleak, the ultimate outcome is a happy one. How could it be otherwise? If Israel’s

refusal to become the image of God were to be the last word, then God’s creative purpose would

come to nothing, and that by definition cannot happen. Confidence in man’s capacity to repent saves

the prophets from despair.

Such is the paradigmatic, biblical story of God and his people from the creation to the fulfillment of

creation in Zion. In the thinking of the Bible, the unity of God and his people at the end of time is

what will inspire the rest of the world, the nations and their kings, to come knocking on Israel’s door

in search of the same blessing. "is is the biblical paradigm of Zion, the kingdom of God, the

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13 Op. cit., 191.

exemplary city on the hill that brings about the final transformation of humanity into the true image

of God. "is is the essential, unifying message of the Bible throughout its long history.

"is is therefore the theme that Jesus too comes preaching, “Now after John the Baptist was put in

prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "e time is

fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).

Jesus’s gospel wasn’t new. He didn’t need to explain the kingdom to his fellow Jews, because they

already knew what it meant. "e gospel, the good news, of Jesus of Nazareth is the old priestly and

prophetic ideal of the holy nation, the Zion society, that is built upon the premise that mankind is

under divine injunction to be holy, to realize in themselves the divine likeness that is theirs in

potentia. In the gospels, this ideal is personified in Jesus. It is an inner, individual reality, as all

righteousness must be (Jesus’s whole moral teaching underscores this point). But it is also a collective

truth. For Jesus, or any other individual, to be the sole, essential, or isolated embodiment of the

ideal, renders the notion of a kingdom meaningless. "us, Jesus can say, “"e kingdom of God is

entos hymon” (Luke 17:21) and mean both “among” and “within you.”14 "is is the biblical value.

"ere is in all of this long story of the Bible an astonishing integrity, as of a man’s life that makes

sense as he looks back on it in old age. Although what we now call the Bible, the so-called Old and

New Testaments, was written by many hands over many centuries, it has meaning as a whole that

unites the many disparate and not always mutually consistent parts. And the same can be said of the

history of “God’s people” after the Bible. "e Zion idea reaches into the Christian tradition of

monasticism, which likewise sought to create a community of holiness that linked the mundane

aspects of life with the spiritual quest. "e Zion idea is in part the inspiration for the Puritan

tradition, and through it for not a little of the American religious experience, whose most

extraordinary manifestation is the religion of the Latter-day Saints.

It was this ideal that brought my ancestors here to the desert of the Great Basin 150 years ago, in

what they believed was the end of time, the “latter days,” a turning point, like Yesha‘yahu’s, when all

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14 For a good, critical discussion of the range of meanings, see Joseph Fitzmyer, !e Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV. Anchor Bible 28A. New York: Doubleday, 1985, s.v.

of God’s purposes for mankind and the world would be fulfilled, those purposes that have inspired

people wanting to call themselves saints since Yesha‘yahu’s day and beyond.

For my ancestors, those would-be saints, as

for their biblical role models, there was

ultimately no distinction between sacred and

profane.15 All of life was encompassed by the

injunction to be holy. From how you make

your clothes to how you raise your food to

how you make your living, absolutely

everything was part of the gospel of the

kingdom. Mormons would easily have agreed with Josephus, “Moses did not make religion a

department of virtue, but the various virtues — I mean, justice, temperance, fortitude, and mutual

harmony... — departments of religion. Religion governs all our actions and occupations and speech;

none of these things did our lawgiver leave unexamined or indeterminate...” (Against Apion

2.170-173).16 "e Mormon symbol for this all-encompassing mandate of holiness was the all-seeing

eye above the beehive with its busy little bees and the inscription “Holiness to the Lord.” Today, you

see that inscription, though not that image, only on Mormon temples. But in earlier times, you

might also see it on a warehouse or a ward house or a storefront; it didn’t matter. All were equally the

province of God.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 12 of 90

15 With regard to the Hebrew Bible, in the strictest of priestly terms, there was of course a distinction between the holy objects of the sanctuary and the profane world outside, as there was between the borrowed holiness of the priests and the non-holy world of the people. But this technical distinction is obscured by the overarching notion of the mandate for the people to become holy and by the fact that their trespasses, their violations of the code of holiness, directly a!ected the purity of the sanctuary. In other words, like the priests, the people also had obligations of holiness, and would su!er real-world consequences for their failure to live up to these. "e most serious of these consequences was the total withdrawal of God from their midst. For God to dwell anywhere among men required a general setting of holiness. So, what makes biblical religion unique among its ancient peers is the degree to which it blankets the everyday “secular” life of the people at large. "is tendency continues into the post-biblical and rabbinic periods, as the Pharisees, and, following them, the rabbis extend the reach of the requirements of holiness ever farther and deeper into daily life. Orthodox Judaism is the outgrowth of this tendency. On the Pharisees, see G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era. Cambridge: Harvard, 1955, I: 60!. In general, see E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice & Belief 63 BCE - 66 CE. Philadelphia: SCM Press, 1992.

16 Quoted in Sanders, op. cit., 51.

Photo: Edwin Firmage

"e question I would now like to put to you is whether this biblical paradigm embraces us here

tonight. For myself, you may be surprised to hear, the answer is an emphatic Yes, despite the fact that

I haven’t worshipped in a Mormon or any other chapel for 25 years, and despite the fact that I don’t

even believe in God, at least in the sense that my ancestors or my fellow Mormons today do.

What draws me and I hope others to the biblical tradition of Zion is that it is a defining, and, in

some ways, definitive expression of the human search for goodness. It recommends itself, even

imposes itself on us, not because it comes from an omnipotent, graybearded, cosmic tyrant, but

because it is the summary of our own search for meaning and grounding in life. It is an expression of

the human need, if not the divine imperative, to be sanctified. And what is the sanctification that we

seek? It is a comprehensive goodness, a life lived in accordance with principles of fairness,

compassion, and community with others. It is a life based on the rejection of arrogance and

superpower. !e great biblical imperative is that “You shall have no other Gods before me.” In my

secular interpretation, this is our way of warning ourselves against the idolatry of the self and the

worship of our wants and desires.17 "e biblical paradigm of Zion is a way of life that knows

contentment. It’s a way of life that is at peace with the world, in both the human and the physical

senses of the word.

"is is not the American way today. We have been at war with the physical world, our own world no

less, since the day we set foot on Plymouth Rock. No nation in history has enjoyed such natural

bounty, or destroyed it so quickly. In just three centuries, we have consumed our way through a

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 13 of 90

17 "e history of Israel, as viewed by its prophetic chroniclers, is a drama about the e!ects of violating this wisdom. As Israel’s ancient tribal god, Yahweh was never in danger of being formally replaced by other gods, prophetic rhetoric notwithstanding. "e real danger was turning Yahweh into one of the other gods. It wasn’t Baal as rival, for example, but Baal as image of Yahweh that was dangerous. Israel’s God forbad icons of himself in order to insure that the people’s image of him never displaced him. When, despite this warning, Yahweh became assimilated into the religious mainstream represented by Baal, Asherah, fertility cults and the like, when, instead of being the aniconic challenge to the norm, Yahweh became its #gurehead, he ceased to be Yahweh. Yahweh protests, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways...as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways high above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). In my secular midrash, this is the inherited wisdom of generations warning us against elevating our ideas of the sacred above the sacred, and in the end replacing the sacred with mere ideas about it. Map, as they say, is not territory. Religion is a map of the sacred, nothing more. "e moment we forget that, as we seem to do with regularity, we e!ectively begin worshipping ourselves. "e history of religions generally, Judaism and Christianity included, is largely the story of successive idolatries. What makes Judaeo-Christian idolatry particularly dangerous is that we elevate not a cross-section of life but one narrow view of it. Monotheism becomes monolatry, following the path toward monoculture that appears to be our universal destiny.

continent of resources, a continent of virgin hardwood forest that we simply burned, a continent of

prairie that was an American Serengeti, a continent of wildlife where salmon were once so common

they were called poor man’s hamburger. We brought the beaver to the edge of extinction. We

slaughtered 60 million bison and left their carcasses to rot. We dammed almost every river and

stream in America, destroying riparian ecosystems by the tens of thousands. We’ve scraped

mountains to the ground. We’ve and drained and developed wetlands. We’ve poisoned our air with

acid and soot and our water with mercury. It’s not an exaggeration, therefore, or a metaphor, to say

that we have waged war against our own world, just as we have waged war against the native human

inhabitants of this world, with equally deadly results. And always, this has been a war without terms,

without compromise. "e natural world will surrender to us unconditionally.18

Punctuating this perpetual natural war have been spasms of smaller-scale war instigated by us and

directed at other people beyond our borders: Mexicans, Spaniards, Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese,

Cambodians, Laotians, Iranians, Grenadians, Panamanians, Iraqis, and Afghanis. We also fought a

large-scale and astronomically costly cold war with Russia, which sent probably hundreds of

thousands of innocent people to their death as “collateral damage” from proxy wars, political

subversion and revolution, environmental destruction, economic deprivation, and nuclear fallout.

Although Russia never dropped a bomb on us, we exploded over 900 nuclear weapons on our own

soil, 100 of them in the open air.19 "at’s fifty times as many as we dropped on our mortal enemy,

Japan. We even contemplated the possibility of waging nuclear war at an “acceptable cost” of tens of

millions and perhaps hundreds of millions of lives. In saying that the biblical way embraces me, I am

saying that I reject the American tradition of war. And I reject much of what we call the American

dream, which has been the American nightmare for uncountable billions of other living things that

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 14 of 90

18 Incidentally but not coincidentally, the same story plays out with the Mormons. In the battle over polygamy, the U.S. government waged all-out war on the Mormons. Gilded Age America tolerated no alternatives.

19 http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/publications/historical/DOENV_209_REV15.pdf. "e total breaks down as follows: 17 tests on American sites (CO, NM, AK, MI, NV) outside the Nevada Test Site (NTS), 904 at NTS, 3 in the South Atlantic, 106 in the Pacific, and 24 tests conducted in conjunction with the U.K., for a total of 1,054. Of the 904 at NTS, 100 were above ground. "e Baneberry underground test shown here was a ten kiloton bomb the size of President Bush’s proposed “bunker buster” weapons. It was buried 900 feet below ground but still resulted in a radioactive release that reached more than 10,000 feet into the atmosphere. In 2003, I wrote about the dangers of Bush’s “bunker busters” in a short piece that is available on my website: http://web.me.com/efirmage/Supporting_Documents/Writing_on_the_Environment_files/Oppose%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdf.

we have destroyed. Our way today seems to me to embody precisely that worship of the self and of

the selfish that is the great sin in biblical thinking, and it seems to be tending toward the same sort of

result that biblical arrogance did. If there is a Jungian archetype for cataclysmic, self-induced

destruction, we are living it.

"e more I think about the problems we face

today, therefore, the more I find myself, kafir

though I am, gravitating towards the way of

life pioneered by my ancestors and their

biblical models. Does the biblical tradition of

Zion, or the Mormon tradition of Zion, have

anything to say to us arrogant Americans in

Utah today? At the heart of my emphatic Yes

is the notion that inspired Yesha‘yahu 2,500

years ago, the idea of a community that

embraces the principles of fairness,

compassion, and dedication to the common

cause against the worship of self and

superpower.

To be meaningful, the biblical ideal of righteousness, of goodness in action, must be embodied in

community and not just in individuals. As I’ve said, in the Hebrew Bible, the focus is almost entirely on

community. What concerns priests and prophets alike is Israel’s righteousness, not that of isolated

individuals. God’s promises and punishments therefore apply to the people as a whole. If they will be

righteous, he will dwell among them and be their protector. If not, they will perish en masse. "ere is

no promise to or concern with individuals as such.20 "is collective gospel continues in the post-

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 15 of 90

20 "e focus on the individual, and especially on the salvation of the individual, that is characteristic of modern manifestations of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the child of the Greco-Roman period. For an excellent treatment of the subject, see A. D. Nock. Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933, Reprinted 1972. Jesus is thus a transitional figure. He comes announcing the kingdom of God, but his teaching focuses on the individual.

Baneberry “underground” nuclear test, Dec. 1970

biblical ideology of the Messiah, the royal descendant of David, who will lead God’s people in their

ultimate resurgence.21 "e Messiah is not a personal but a national savior. In short, the Hebrew Bible

is a teaching less for individuals than for a people. It is a handbook for creating a holy nation.

"e early Mormons sensed this intuitively if not explicitly. Unlike most of the rest of religious

America and very much unlike other settlers of the American frontier, the Mormons thought from

the beginning in collective terms. "e heart and soul of early Mormonism was the sense of being

called to build a new society, Zion. "is objective of building Zion, or as Mormons called it the City

of Enoch, was what created the first Mormon communities in Kirtland, Ohio, Independence,

Missouri, and Nauvoo, Illinois. From the start, Mormons felt compelled to build new community.

"ey were not content with simply becoming converts to a new religion and living where and more

or less how they had lived before, with just a change of ideology. "ey were not content to be so

many independent selfs trying to live righteously on their own. "us, religion, as other Americans

tended to practice it, held no interest for the Mormons. "ey weren’t out simply to live a pious life

but to create a new world. "is mentality ultimately brought them West when it proved impossible

to build their ideal community among other Christians. And, the Zion mentality is in large measure

responsible for the success of the Mormon saints in an environment that few thought inhabitable.

Common faith gave the communistic Mormons what modern communists lacked, a basis of

voluntary but total commitment, of genuine and total passion.22 "eir common faith gave them

something that frontier expedience, however great, also could not: it made their experience

meaningful. It did this by putting their experience in a context that linked them in common cause to

each other and to generations past and future without end. It made their life a living sacrament.

Sacraments not only connect people to God but people to people. Sacraments are a treasured

inheritance passed down from generation to generation. And they are entered into with others in

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 16 of 90

21 "e post-biblical Messiah is of course modeled on the biblical king of Israel, who is God’s mashîah, or anointed representative (cf. 1 Sam. 9:16; Ps. 2:2, etc.). But it isn’t until Israel has lost her independence as a nation that her future king, or more correctly her divinely appointed regent, begins to take on the character of the Messiah.

22 For a brief resumé of the subject, see Appendix 1.

common worship. In a Mormon temple marriage, for example, bride and bridegroom kneel facing

one another across the altar. Behind each of them is a mirror, and the two mirrors, reflecting one

another, create a series of kneeling couples that stretches on in each direction into eternity. At the

center of this procession of life is the couple being married now. Eternity ends and begins in this

moment. It is in the nature of a sacrament to focus eternity in the present moment. To live

sacramentally, therefore, as the early Mormons tried to do, is to act in each moment with the

awareness of an eternity leading to and from this moment. It is to act with awareness and

appreciation of those who have preceded us and who will follow us in the procession of life.

"is sense of the sacramental in the everyday, the exaltation of the everyday, is what the religious

world view, and above all the Zion world view, even if it is secularized as in my case, o!ers that no

mere ideology can provide. My emphatic Yes is therefore a cry to bring a kind of Zion to life in our

time, a self-su#cient, morally driven, sacramental community that at least on essential points of first

principles is, as Mormon scripture puts it, of one heart and one mind. In such a community,

stewardship of the earth would be top of the list of first principles, because without a sustainable

relationship with earth life itself is not possible. In such a community, responsibility for insuring that

the procession of generations continues would be a first principle, and it would be a sacrament. In

such a community, day to day decisions, like how we build our homes, how we raise our food, how

we get about, are sacramental decisions, because they impinge on eternity. In 1857, Mormon apostle

Heber C. Kimball addressed the saints in Salt Lake. His theme was the sacrament of life.

We dedicate and consecrate the wine or water that we partake of in the sacrament, and we also dedicate the bread to the Lord; and it should be just so with everything; it should all be dedicated to the Lord; and upon all that we do and put our hands unto, we should ask his blessings. We should never meddle with anything on this earth that we cannot lay our hands upon and bless and dedicate and consecrate to the Lord...

Brethren, go out and dedicate your gardens, and when you get a tree that you want to set out, dedicate the ground, the root, and the elements that you are going to place around it, and ask God to fill it with warmth and with power to vegetate. Dedicate the seed that you are going to put into the earth, and then dedicate the earth, and nourish it when it springs forth...and do not say that it cannot be quickened, for I say it can...

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 17 of 90

"e Lord will now bless our labor; he will bless the fruits of the earth, he will bless our tanneries, he will bless our sheep, our flocks, and everything we undertake to handle and manage...and we will dedicate and consecrate them to God, and we will ask God to fill the earth with the resurrecting power; for life is the resurrecting power...and it is that power which brings forth vegetation; it is the same power which brings forth food and raiment; and by the same power we shall be brought forth in the morning of the resurrection...23

Is my hope for a Zion community in 21st-century Utah any more than the pipe dream of Yesha‘yahu

or Jesus or St. Benedict or Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball? Probably not. We don’t seem to be

able to stick with this vision long enough or with su#cient dedication to build the new society that

these followers of the biblical way had in mind. At the same time, I must also confess that I put even

less hope in civilization as it stands. And it seems to me to stand on the brink of self-induced

catastrophe. If there is any hope for our civilization, it is the hope that inspired the biblical tradition

of Zion.

As the boy in the Passover Seder asks, How is this time di!erent from all others? Why should there

be any more hope now for the establishment of Zion than in the days of Yesha‘yahu or Jesus or

Brigham Young? "e answer is that we, in ways that go beyond mere religious belief, really do live in

the last days. If these aren’t the last days of history or time, they are the last days of civilization as we

know it. "ere is an apocalypse on our doorstep. It’s called climate change.

Apocalypse is much more than an old-fashioned word for disaster. We do face disaster, and on a scale

beyond anything we have ever experienced. But we face apocalypse in the truer meaning of the word,

which is literally “uncovering.” "e apocalypse of climate change is the uncovering of the fact that

our present way of life is utterly — root and branch — unsustainable. Climate change is the coming

together, the perfect storm, of the many di!erent manifestations of our worship of self and

superpower. Climate change is the result of the reckless pursuit of narrowly defined self-interest at

others’ expense. It’s the result of the injustice of six percent of the world’s population consuming a

quarter of the world’s fossil fuels and producing 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the

result of the hypocrisy of this six percent wagging the finger at the "ird World about emissions and

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 18 of 90

23 “Increase in Saving Principles,” Journal of Discourses. Liverpool: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854-1886, 21: 187, 189-90.

doing nothing about their own. It’s the result of a health care system that spends billions treating

heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, the diseases of an indulgent lifestyle, while leaving the lifestyle in

place. It’s the result of the worship of consumption, in which no product is too inexpensive and no

true cost too invisible. It’s the result of an attitude that views living systems of all kinds, including

our own bodies and minds, as mere resources to exploit for profit. Climate change isn’t just another

in a series of problems. It’s the sum of all of the many problems that we have faced and failed to solve

or refused to solve in our idolatry of the bottom line.

Standing against this tendency of our civilization is the biblical notion of Zion, the good society that

embodies our deepest aspirations for individual and social transcendence. While these two aspects of

our humanity have always been in conflict, they come to blows now as never before in the problem

of climate change. "e next few decades will either be the moment when humans at last take

something like the path we imagined for ourselves 3,000 years ago in ancient Palestine, or they will

be our undoing. Climate change will be the catalyst for deep individual and societal transformation,

or it will be our Deluge, our Babel, and our Exile. "is is the moment when myth becomes history.

We will create Zion or we will create the Apocalypse. "e choice is ours.

In this endeavor, we will succeed together or fail together. Climate change is the result of systemic

problems in our society, and it will only be averted by a systemic response. "is means that if all we

can muster is random, individual transformation, we will fail. If, for example, it’s just

“environmentalists” putting up solar panels and getting rid of their cars, we will fail. If it’s just the

wealthy doing the environmentally responsible thing, we will fail. If it’s everyone acting on his own,

we will fail. "is is something that everyone must do, and something that we must do together, with

common purpose.

"e change we need is as radical as it is universal. As I discuss in Section III, one of the paradoxical

recent discoveries of climate science is that the piecemeal conservation that we have practiced thus far

is actually contributing to climate change. When just a few people do all of the right things or a few

more people do bits and pieces of the right things, all society as a whole gets is modestly improved

e#ciency. But a more e#cient version of the present system is precisely what we do not want. A more

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 19 of 90

e#cient system that is still essentially devoted to utilizing earth’s resources for profit is not progress.

We need a complete turnaround, societal repentance, a new collective mind. With 6.5 billion people

on earth, soon to be 9-12 billion, we must forever abandon the old way of doing things.

"e good news, and really the only good news, is that crisis is the catalyst of change, for individuals

and for society. And this is why I turn to you here tonight. In my opinion, it is in our communities

of faith that the transformation of individuals and society must begin. It is in communities that have

some understanding of and commitment to the biblical paradigm that this transformation can start,

if it can start anywhere. I don’t say that this is the only place where the transformation can happen.

Anywhere that you have a community deeply committed to the underlying principles of Zion there

is hope for transformation. But this is not what our present American political system is committed

to, nor is it what American business is committed to. Both of these are alike and interchangeably

committed to profit and self interest at all costs. Looking at American society at least, the only place

I see communities that could rally around the idea of Zion is our churches.

"e degree to which politics and business as usual have betrayed us became abundantly clear in

Copenhagen. What happened, or rather didn’t happen, in Copenhagen, even with Barack Obama in

the White House and Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, is the truest expression of the

degree to which American culture has been enthralled by the darkness, the cosmic evil, and I do not

speak in metaphor, that is today’s American capitalism. Copenhagen was an apocalypse, a sneak

preview of the Apocalypse that will surely come if people of faith do not stand up for the alternative.

By standing up, I don’t simply mean vocal protest, though that in itself would be a step forward, for

there is precious little protest going on in America right now. I mean first and foremost individual

and collective commitment on the part of people of faith to live the principles of Zion here and now,

and to live them radically. And to the age-old principles that Yesha‘yahu would have known we must

now add a new one: carbon neutrality. Until every church and every member of every church is

carbon-neutral, we Christians are not living the gospel that we profess.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 20 of 90

"e imperative for our time, as for Jesus’s, is to repent. "e Greek word that Mark uses for Jesus’s call

to repentance is metanoeite, literally to get a new mind. Jesus invites those who would be his

followers to realize that the world has changed, and that a new order now governs how they should

act. In Jesus’s teaching, the individual new mind and the new kingdom go hand in hand. Followers

of this way are in fact the very temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16), the source from which the kingdom

takes its strength. "e news of Jesus’s kingdom is an invitation for people to believe that a radically

di!erent way of life is possible, a way that values people as a manifestation of God and not simply as

human resources. Even I as an unbeliever can subscribe to this. I believe that we can become

whatever we imagine we can become.

"e central problem of climate change has nothing

to do with the environment. Ours is not an

environmental problem in the way that living in

the desert or in the jungle is an environmental

problem. Nothing we are experiencing as a result of

climate change is dictated by factors outside our

control, not yet anyway. Ours is a problem of impoverished imagination and will. We cannot think

outside of the desperately narrow little boxes that we mentally and physically inhabit. And the

manifestation of our loss of imagination is neurosis on a scale never before seen in history.24 Our

neurosis, indeed I would call it psychosis, is so profound that we cannot even see that we are in crisis,

despite the fact that evidence of the crisis is all around us in plain sight. In the next section of this

presentation, I’ll have occasion to say something about these obvious evidences of climate change

and their implications.25

Climate change is for us what the threatened destruction of Israel was for the biblical prophets, a

singular opportunity for people to look inward, to reexamine their life at the deepest level. At least

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 21 of 90

24 In linking neurosis with the loss of imagination, I follow psychologist "omas Moore, !e Care of the Soul. New York: Harper, 2006, 26-35.

25 Fig. 1 source: NOAA State of the Climate Global Analysis 2007, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php?report=global&year=2007&month=ann, visited 12/20/09.

Fig. 1

from the prophetic point of view, Israel failed to seize that opportunity. But their failure has been our

gain, for it prompted the most extraordinary outpouring of radical ethics the world has ever seen.

“Prophecy,” writes Heschel, “is a moment of unshrouding, an opening of the eyes, a lifting of the

curtain. Such moments are rare in history.”26

It’s easy, especially those of us who cannot call ourselves true believers, to dismiss the relevance of the

prophets. But I can’t. In what Mormon scholar (!) Hugh Nibley called the long night of human

history, there are precious few shining lights. I think of Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, and the Buddha of

Compassion. And, I think of the prophets. What these men represent for me is the refusal to accept

that the world we create for ourselves cannot be something dramatically better than what we have

seen so far. For me, the significance of these visionaries lies not only in their moral outrage but also

in their willingness to think and to do the unthinkable in the quest to transform their people. "e

prophets asserted, for example, that being God’s chosen people was no protection against folly and

self-induced catastrophe. "ey proclaimed that worship was meaningless, indeed o"ensive to God, if it

wasn’t accompanied by righteous living. "ey foretold the destruction of the temple, God’s own

dwelling. "ey pummeled government o#cials, ecclesiastical leaders, business elites, and ordinary

people. And they illustrated their message with outrageous acts guaranteed to shock. "ere was no

idea so sacred, no person or institution so powerful, that the prophets were unwilling to attack it in

their quest to shatter the people’s complacency. In the biblical view, to be a prophet is to be an

iconoclast. But then, to build Zion one has to be.

At some point, every society, if it is to thrive, must shatter its icons. "ese have their proper place.

But mistaken for God, they become demonic. Our icons — consumption, growth, profit, extreme

individualism, and superpower — now threaten life itself. To overcome these demons, we, like the

prophets, must think the unthinkable and we must do it. And, as in Isaiah’s time, our fate depends

on whether we act while there is still time to prevent catastrophe. What holds us back is our own

success. Politics, business, and religion — booming industries and vested interests all — are

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 22 of 90

26 Op. cit., I:193.

...isolated, self-subsisting, self-indulgent..."e answers o!ered [are] unrelated to the problems, indi!erent to...man’s suspended sensitivity in the face of stupendous challenge, indi!erent to a situation in which good and evil [have become] irrelevant, in which man [is] increasingly callous to catastrophe and ready to suspend the principle of truth...[T]he terms, motivations, and concerns which dominate our thinking may prove destructive of the roots of human responsibility and treasonable to the ultimate ground of human solidarity. "e challenge we are all exposed to, and the dreadful shame that shatters our capacity for inner peace, defy the ways and patterns of our thinking. One is forced to admit that some of the causes and motives of our thinking have led our existence astray, that speculative [or any other] prosperity is not an answer to spiritual bankruptcy...

"e prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency...

Prophecy ceased; the prophets endure and can only be ignored at the risk of our own despair. It is for us to decide whether freedom is self-assertion or response to a demand; whether the ultimate situation is conflict or concern.27

As a catalyst for change, climate change is a godsend. It will challenge us like nothing else in history.

It will be our doom or our finest hour. "e choice is ours.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 23 of 90

27 Op. cit., I:xiv-xv.

II“"e end of the world is nigh, and it’s already been published in Nature.”

— Mark Lynas28

“What ba$es the prophet is the disparity between the power and impact of God and the immense indi!erence, unyieldingness, sluggishness, and inertia of the heart. God’s thunderous voice is shaking heaven and earth, and man does not hear the faintest sound. "e Lord roars like a lion...his word is like fire, like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces...and the people go about unmoved, undisturbed, unaware. What to the prophet is like the sun piercing the thickest cloud remains unnoticed by the people.”

— Abraham Heschel29

So, what is climate change?30 Simply put, it is increasing global temperatures and their related

climate and environmental e!ects. Climate change isn’t a theory about climate, and it isn’t

projections of things that could happen. Climate change is a present reality. It’s a measured, tested,

visually verifiable reality. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, global average annual

temperatures have risen by 1.3ºF. "is is a fact, and it’s not open to dispute. In Figs. 1 and 2, you can

see this measured fact for yourselves.31

"e climate change we’re witnessing today is caused by human-generated carbon dioxide or CO2.

CO2 makes up only four hundredths of a percent of earth’s atmosphere, and human-generated CO2

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 24 of 90

28 Author of Six Degrees. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008. "e quotation is from Lynas’s website: http://www.marklynas.org/2007/3/15/to-the-end-of-the-earth-six-degrees-in-the-sunday-times, visited 1/3/10.

29 Heschel, op. cit., 188-189.

30 "e following section summarizes a much longer discussion of present and future climate change e!ects in a document entitled “A Call for Leadership,” which I prepared in early 2009 as a petition to the administration of the University of Utah. "e petition is available for download on my website: http://web.me.com/efirmage/Edwin_Firmage_Photography/Blog/Entries/2009/2/2_A_Declaration_of_Energy_Indepenence_files/A%20Call%20for%20Leadership.pdf. "e petition was met with glacial indi!erence, not least by faculty members who fear to anger Utah’s reactionary state legislature, which controls the university’s purse.

31 Fig. 2 source: Wikipedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.svg, based on instrumental data compiled by the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia, visited 12/19/09.

makes up only 3.4% of all CO2 generated each year.

But human CO2 is nonetheless important. Natural

CO2 is balanced by natural sinks that recycle it,

keeping historical CO2 levels at 180 to 280 parts per

million (ppm). Human-generated CO2 has no

natural sinks, so extra CO2 accumulates in the

atmosphere. Today’s CO2 concentration is 385 ppm,

a level not seen in at least 800,000 years, and this

number is rising rapidly, and could reach over 900

ppm by 2100. "is rise is unprecedented and

unnatural. "ese historical and

present CO2 concentrations are

also facts and are not subject to

dispute. You can see this for

yourselves in Fig. 3.32

What makes rising CO2

concentrations dangerous is that

they give us too much of a good

thing. Earth is a warm and

hospitable place for life because

the atmosphere, like the earth’s

surface, is full of water. Water

vapor is the most important and

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 25 of 90

32 Fig. 3 source: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), based on research by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/historical-trends-in-carbon-dioxide-concentrations-and-temperature-on-a-geological-and-recent-time-scale, visited 12/19/09. While this graph goes back only 400,000 years, ice core analysis from Antarctica can now take us back 800,000 years, over which time the generalization made here stands.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

abundant greenhouse gas by far. It works by trapping

a portion of the energy coming from the sun. But a

lot of reflected solar energy still escapes back into

space — just enough to keep things here from

endlessly heating up. Life on earth as we know it

exists because of the balance that earth has struck

between too much and too little trapped energy.

What human CO2 does is to throw this balance o! kilter by plugging up holes in the absorption

spectrum of water vapor and preventing more of that reflected solar energy from escaping into space,

as you can see from Fig. 4.33 "is is the cause of climate change.

Who says so? Virtually every credible climate scientist on earth, and every national science

organization on earth without exception. For over two decades now, scientists around the world have

coordinated their e!orts to study climate change under the auspices of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which comprises scientists from 130 countries. "e IPCC’s

latest summary of climate data, which was issued in 2007, involved over 450 lead authors (all climate

experts), 800 contributing authors (also climate experts), and 2,500 peer reviewers, making this one

of the most thoroughly scrutinized subjects in the history of science.34

"e IPCC concludes that the evidence for climate change is “unequivocal,” and that the cause is

“very likely” us. “Very likely” is defined to mean that the odds are greater than 9 in 10. "is is the

considered judgment of 97% of the world’s climatologists.

Now, it may be that the scientists are wrong. But, if you consulted ten doctors about a health

problem, or ten investment consultants about a business deal, and nine of the ten gave you the same

advice, whose advice would you follow?

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33 Fig. 4 source: http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/253.html, based on Climate Website of the German Museum.

34 "is is the assessment of America’s Union of Concerned Scientists, whose review of IPPC methodology is very useful. "e review is available online at http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ipcc-backgrounder.html.

Fig. 4

In fact, the evidences of climate change are all around us, and you don’t necessarily have to be an

expert to see them. Let’s go through these quickly, starting with the temperature increases.

1. Increasing air and ocean temperatures. As I said, global annual average temperatures have increased

1.3ºF since the beginning of the industrial age. It’s important to note that this is both a global and

an average figure. Regionally, there’s

considerable variation from this number in

both directions. In some parts of the world,

such as the western United States and the

Arctic, temperatures have risen between 2.5º

and 3.5ºF.35 In general, the Northern

Hemisphere has experienced more warming

than the Southern, as you can see from

Fig. 5.36 It’s also important to note that

global warming doesn’t necessarily mean

that temperatures increase continuously. As you can see from Figs. 1-3, there is enormous fluctuation

in year-to-year temperature. Climate, in other words, is not the same thing as weather.

Climate is about larger, more permanent phenomena. When defining climate, you look not at

individual events or individual years, but at trends. Temperature trends indicative of climate change

include the fact that seven of the eight warmest years on record in the American West and five of the

ten warmest years nationally occurred between 1999 and 2007, with hottest-ever summers being

recorded in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in 2007.37 And this is not a purely regional

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 27 of 90

35 On western U.S. climate, see Hotter and Drier: !e West’s Changed Climate. Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and NRDC, 2008, available online at http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/west/west.pdf, visited 12/20/09.

36Fig. 5 source: “Global Warming,” Wikipedia, based on NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Map.jpg, visited 12/19/09.

37 For national data through 2007, see NOAA’s State of the Climate National Overview, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2007&month=13&submitted=Get+Report, visited 12/20/09.

Fig. 5

phenomenon. All ten of the ten warmest years on record globally have occurred since 1995.38 In

2003, Europe experienced a record heat wave that claimed the lives of 35,000-50,000 people,

making this the biggest natural disaster in modern European history. In the Arctic, temperatures are

higher now than they have been at any time in the last thousand years, and they’re rising two times

faster than the global average.

Oceans, because of their greater heat capacity are even better barometers of climate change than air.

Here the trends are nothing short of astonishing, and I want to stress, because climate change

skeptics always focus on the use of predictive models, that these too are measured phenomena, not

projections. Arctic ocean temperatures have risen as much as 9ºF in some areas since 2000.39 And,

again, this is not a regional blip. In the waters around the United Kingdom, seven of the ten warmest

years since 1870 have occurred in the last decade.40 It takes a great deal of heat to raise overall

temperatures in vast bodies of water like the oceans. So you can imagine the sort of sustained

warming of the planet that is represented even in a seasonal and regional nine degree (!) rise in Arctic

water temperature much less a permanent 1.3º F rise in global ocean temperatures.

2. !e length and intensity of the fire season. "e fire season in the Western U.S. today is two and half

months longer than it was from 1970 to 1986.41 Fires now are also more intense, destroying six and

half times as much forest as in the 70s and 80s. And fires are four times as frequent. "ese — I stress

the point again — are facts of measured data, not models or projections. "e fire years of 2004,

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 28 of 90

38 See the Global Temperatures summary in NOAA’s 2007,http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=13&submitted=Get+Report. "is trend continues into 2009, with projections that the 1998-2008 decade will be the warmest on record worldwide, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=13&submitted=Get+Report.

39 A. Proshutinsky, et al., “NOAA Arctic Report Card: Update for 2009,” online at http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/ocean.html, visited 1/20/10.

40 Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, http://www.mccip.org.uk/arc/2007/Temperature.htm, visited 12/20/09. See also the European Environmental Agency’s “Rising Sea Surface Temperature: Towards Ice-free Arctic Summers and a Changing Marine Food Chain,” at http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/coast_sea/sea-surface-temperature.

41 A. L. Westerling, et al., “Warming and Earlier Spring Increases Western U. S. Forest Wildfire Activity.” Science 18 (2006), 940-943, available online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5789/940, visited 12/20/09.

2005, 2006, and 2007 were each successive record breakers.42 In 2006 and 2007 alone, nearly 20

million acres of forest were destroyed. "at’s ten times the area of Yellowstone National Park.

3. !e spread of pests such as the pine bark beetle. Fires are not the only threat that climate change

poses to our forests today. With warmer winter temperatures, pine beetle populations, once

controlled by deep winter cold, are exploding all over the Northern Hemisphere. In British

Columbia, for example, 33,000,000 acres of lodge pole forest, 40% of the region’s total forest, have

been destroyed or severely damaged by pine beetle, with projections from the Canadian government

that British Columbia could lose nearly 80% of its forest cover by 2015!43 Tree mortality rates in the

U.S. have more than doubled over the last few decades.44

4. !e melting of arctic permafrost. Permafrost contains almost two trillion tons of carbon, an amount

equal to that of the world’s rainforests.45 As it melts, permafrost emits CO2 or CH4 (methane). "e

latter is 20-25X more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.46 In Siberia, 1,000,000 km2, an area the

size of France and Germany combined, has melted in the last four years.47 In places, methane is

bubbling out of solution so energetically that the water does not freeze even in winter. "is is not a

model or a projection, but present reality, and this one fact alone may spell the end of life as we

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 29 of 90

42 Yearly wildfire data available on the National Interagency Fire Center’s website: http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/fires_acres.htm, visited 12/20/09.

43 “Pine Beetle Moves South in B.C.” Vancouver Sun, 9/18/07, available online at http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=08c2bac3-bcb3-4090-bb08-43f375d8caa7&k=31916, visted 12/20/09.

44 Phillip J. van Mantgem, et al., “Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States.” Science 23 (2009), 521-524. Summary available on at: http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=08c2bac3-bcb3-4090-bb08-43f375d8caa7&k=31916, visted 12/20/09.

45 Edward A. G. Schurr, et al., “Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle.” Bioscience 58 (2008), 701-714, online at http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1641/B580807?prevSearch=%5Ball:%2520schuur%5D%2520AND%2520%5Bpublisher:%2520bioone%5D&searchHistoryKey=&cookieSet=1; Amy Mayer, “Permafrost in Flux: Tracking Carbon in the Alaskan Tundra.” Bioscience 58 (2008), 96-100, online at http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1641/B580203?prevSearch=%5Ball:%2520schuur%5D%2520AND%2520%5Bpublisher:%2520bioone%5D&searchHistoryKey=, visted 12/20/09.

46 See the wonderful collection of useful documents in the Max Planck Institute’s Atmospheric Chemistry Department’s website at : http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/253.html, visted 12/20/09.

47 “Climate Warning as Siberia Melts.” New Scientist, August 11, 2005 at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500, visted 12/20/09.

know it on earth. While Judge Dee Benson doesn’t think we’re in a crisis that merits civil

disobedience, we are and it does. It merits revolution.48

5. Loss of Arctic summer ice. In addition to being home to animals such as the polar bear, Arctic ice

helps to moderate global climate. It reflects 80% of incident energy back into space, while water

absorbs 90% of this energy. Loss of ice thus leads to increased air, water, and land temperatures

throughout the region. Not surprisingly, these have been accompanied by record breaking ice

shrinkage in 2005 and again in 2007. According to one of the world’s leading experts on the Arctic,

this area could be ice-free in summer as early as 2013, decades before the IPCC’s current projected

dates.49 Like the melting of permafrost, with which it’s inseparably connected, the melting of

summer ice is a tipping point that could trigger runaway temperature increases beyond anything yet

imagined by the IPCC.

6. !e loss of glaciers worldwide. Globally, since 1945, the mean mass balance of all glaciers has

declined by about 20%, and rate of shrinkage appears to be increasing. Regional decreases are often

significantly greater. In Europe and the Caucasus, glacial cover decreased by about 35% between

1850 and 1970 and by another 22% between 1970 and 2000. Of Glacier National Park’s original

150 glaciers, only 35 remain today, and these are expected to disappear by 2050. Over the course of

the 20th century, Central Asian glaciers have declined by 25-35%, the glaciers of Afghanistan by

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 30 of 90

48 “Bogus bidder’s global warming defense rejected.” Salt Lake Tribune, 11/17/2009. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson banned climate activist Tim DeChristopher from presenting any evidence on how the threat of climate change influenced his actions in protesting the BLM auction of oil and gas leases near national parks in Utah on the grounds that there was no imminent threat.

49 Al Gore quoted this number in his address to the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, citing the research of Wieslaw Maslowski, who later denied that he had made such a prediction to Gore. But in fact Maslowski had made such predictions not once but multiple times over a period of several years. I picked up the number from articles of Maslowski’s that I read in the preparation of my petition for the University of Utah in early 2009. "e change in Maslowski’s willingness to go out on a limb in public is perhaps the result of the “Climategate” controversy, which appears to be making scientists nervous about saying anything that might embroil them in the increasingly frenzied conservative backlash. "ere’s a useful, if brief, summary of the Maslowski flip-flop in Je! Goldstein, “Firestorm in the Arctic: Al Gore Vindicated on Comments in Copenhagen,” Hu#ngton Post, Dec. 16, 2009, online at http://www.hu#ngtonpost.com/je!-goldstein/firestorm-in-the-arctic-a_b_394084.html, visited 2/11/2010.

50%.50 "e glaciers of the Himalayan-Tibetan plateau are the water tanks of Asia, providing water

during the dry season to two billion people in China, India, and Southeast Asia. "e loss of glaciers

could cause glacier-fed rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow

to seasonally run dry. "is prospect should keep you up at night, because it spells disaster for the

entire world.

As you can see, there are many di!erent indicators from all over the planet that global warming is a

present, and a very frightening reality. And all of this from a mere 1.3ºF rise in average temperature.

But we’re just getting started with global warming. "is past year, even in the midst of the worst

economic recession since the Depression, world pollution increased 2%, and it has been rising at an

annual rate of 3% or more for some time. At present, the world’s biggest polluters, the U.S. and

China, have yet to adopt any meaningful steps to eliminate carbon emissions. In fact, in China, a

new coal-fired power plant goes into operation every week or two. "e implications of the

combination of continued growth in carbon emissions and the political stalemate on meaningful

change are what I’d like to turn to now: the coming e!ects of climate change.

1. Increased ocean acidity. "e pH of the pre-industrial oceans was 8.179. Current ocean pH is 8.104.

At the present rate of increase, ocean pH is expected to be at least 7.824 by 2100, a change of

225%.51 Elevated ocean pH and temperature are suspects in the worldwide decline of coral reefs,

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 31 of 90

50 Global Glacier Changes: Facts and Figures. World Glacier Monitoring Service. United Nations Environment Programme, 2008, at http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/glaciers.pdf, visited 12/20/09 and 1/31/10. While controversy now surrounds the prediction of the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, it is a fact that glaciers everywhere are rapidly shrinking, and that this shrinkage is the result of the still modest rise in average global temperatures of just 1.3ºF. "e U.N. study quoted here is a useful corrective to the over-concentration on individual glaciers of the Himalayas that has followed in the wake of the 2035 prediction controversy. Individual glacier behavior depends on many factors other than climate, including latitude, altitude, precipitation, local topography, surging, calving, and debris cover. As in the issue of climate change itself, one must look at general trends across a region and across multiple regions to see the big picture. "e U.N. study, which looks at 36,000 length change observations and 3,400 mass balance measurements from 1,800 and 230 glaciers respectively, clearly shows that the trend in Central Asia and across regions worldwide is toward significant and rapid retreat. "e U.N. concludes that this “may lead to the deglaciation of large parts of many mountain ranges by the end of the 21st century.” If, as seems likely based on the presently increasing rate of temperature rise, we find ourselves in a world that is 11ºF warmer (or more), this prognosis appears, if anything, to be conservative.

51 pH is logarithmic scale, so small numerical changes represent large natural e!ects.

25% of which have disappeared in the last 50 years.52 Another 32% are at risk by 2100. Twenty-five

percent of all ocean life is sustained by coral reefs. Where will ocean life gets its food in 2100 if 50%

or more of our reefs are gone? And where will we get our food if ocean life is threatened? I also

remind you that 50% of earth’s oxygen comes from the oceans. If we kill these, we kill everything.

2. Loss of the Amazon rainforest. "e Amazon is home to 20% of all species on earth, and produces

20% of the earth’s oxygen. Loss of the Amazon would be a catastrophic blow to the biosphere, and as

things are going now, the Amazon will disappear before the end of this century. In 2005, the

Amazon experienced record drought due to elevated Atlantic Ocean temperatures that prevented

trade winds from bringing in moisture. Two to three years of such drought could be catastrophic.

"e Hadley Centre projects that the probability of 2005-level drought in the Amazon will rise to

50% (that is, once every other year) by 2030 and 90% (every year) by 2100. Besides species

extinction and decreased planetary oxygen levels, loss of the Amazon will have other e!ects that are

in themselves climate-changing factors. If the Amazon dries up as predicted, it will be the world’s

largest tinder box, a two million square mile megafire waiting to happen.

3. Mass extinction. According to a study by the University of Leeds in England, one in three plant

and animal species could become extinct by 2050 on the basis of mid-range climate models.53 Fifty

percent could disappear in worst-case scenarios. Right now, we’re on a worse than worst-case

trajectory. According to the IPCC, if temperature rises exceed 6ºF, the extinction rate could climb to

70%. You have to ask yourself at what point does a system so damaged collapse entirely? People who

look at climate change as a matter for future generations to solve obviously do not understand that it

won’t be their great great great grandchildren but their kids who will face a dying biosphere. I may

even live to see it.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 32 of 90

52 John Weier, “Mapping the Decline of Coral Reefs.” NASA Earth Observatory, March 12, 2001, at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Coral/, visited 12/20/09.

53 Chris D. "omas, et al., “Extinction Risk from Climate Change.” Nature 427 (2004), 145-148. Summary at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6970/full/nature02121.html, visited 12/20/09.

4. More severe and more frequent extreme weather events. One of the best, if necessarily oversimplified,

summaries of climate change that I’ve seen is by Stephen Schneider, the editor of the journal Climate

Change. “Global warming intensifies the hydrologic cycle. Where the atmosphere is configured to

have high pressure and droughts, global warming will mean long dry periods. Where the atmosphere

is configured to be wet, you will get more rain...Global warming will intensify droughts and it will

intensify floods.”54 Many scientists suggest that global warming will bring more frequent and more

severe extreme weather. While one cannot say that the occurrence or severity of any one storm such

as Hurricane Katrina, the sixth-strongest hurricane ever recorded, or Hurricane Rita, the fourth-

strongest, we can expect an increase in the intensity of such storms. Hurricane Katrina was the

biggest natural disaster in American history, causing $150 billion in damage. How many such

storms, especially if they become frequent, can our system handle before it collapses?

5. Rising ocean levels. As agents of destruction, future Katrinas will have an advantage over today’s

because they’ll start at one to seven feet higher due to sea level rise. Over the last hundred years,

oceans have risen at the average annual rate of 1.8 mm/year. Since 1993, that rate has increased to

3.1 mm/year, or a foot a century. Since the pre-industrial era began, oceans have risen about

seventeen inches. According to the IPCC, oceans are projected to rise by as much as another two feet

by 2100. But this number is almost certainly far too conservative. "e rise in ocean levels to date is

entirely due to the thermal expansion of water, and does not include increases from melting ice sheets

in Greenland and Antarctica. New data from these suggests an additional rise of three to five feet by

2100. Many of the world’s most populous cities such as Bangkok, Shanghai, and Tianjinn, are

located on coastlines or in flood plains. Millions of people in Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,

and China live in flood plains. And how about New York, Washington, Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles,

and San Diego? Do we imagine that we can dike every city on every coast?

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 33 of 90

54 “Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts.” Washington Post, 8/20/2007, online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081900967.html, visited 12/20/09.

6. Health e"ects. Warming climate enables insect-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and

dengue fever to spread into temperate regions.55 River and coastal flooding compromises drinking

water with sewage, heavy metals, and pesticides, and spreads water-borne diseases such as cholera,

typhoid, and hepatitis. Air pollution from smoke and ozone increases the incidence of asthma and

pneumonia. "ere’s a precedent in America’s own recent past for the kind of health e!ects that global

warming portends. In the Dust Bowl, people experienced what was popularly called “Dust

Pneumonia,” a sometimes fatal irritation of the lungs induced by breathing the fine dust that was

ubiquitous during the area’s frequent dust storms. When climate models suggest permanent Dust

Bowl level drought in the Southwest, you have to ask yourself whether Dust Pneumonia will become

part of our everyday vocabulary, and whether our health system will be able to cope, not just with

ten years of health consequences, as in the Dust Bowl, but with permanently elevated levels of lung

and heart disease and heat-related illnesses. Will our health system generally be able to cope with

possibly epidemic levels of infectious diseases, some of them new?

7. Loss of food production. A few lucky humans can escape the heat in air-conditioned homes. But

farms can’t be air conditioned. And the projected temperature increases bode ill for a planet that

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 34 of 90

55 See, for example, Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions. Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment and Swiss Re, 2005, at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v408/n6809/full/408184a0.html, visited 12/20/09.

must have more food, not less. Over the next century, ignoring climate change, earth’s population is

projected to grow from 6.5 to 12 billion. "at means we need to double our food supply. But a

growing food supply is not what the climate models hold in store. "ey suggest a greater than 50%

decline in India’s wheat-growing capacity by 2050 and a loss of more than 30% of Africa’s maize

crop, its most important agricultural product, by 2030 (IPCC). Overall food production in Africa

could be cut in half by 2080. And don’t imagine that this is a "ird-World problem. As Fig. 6 shows,

temperature increases in our own Breadbasket will be pushing plants to the level of breaking point.56

In the coming century, the climate of Illinois will become like that of Texas, and Texas will become

an oven. Increased temperatures are a direct threat to the stability of agriculture, and they bring with

them other e!ects. Summer heat combined with pollution creates ozone, and ozone is extremely

detrimental to crops. Increased danger from weeds, pests, and disease is also a likely correlate with

higher temperature, as are extreme weather events that will locally devastate crops.

8. Water shortages. One in six people worldwide depend on water from glaciers and snowpack, and

glaciers especially are in steep decline. In areas a!ected by drought, including the western U.S., water

resources could drop by 30%. And even in areas where presently enough water is available, we could

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 35 of 90

56 Fig. 6 source: United States Global Change Research Program, http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/climate-change-impacts-by-sector/agriculture, visited 12/19/09.

Fig. 6

face shortages. According to the IPCC, hundreds of millions in Africa and tens of millions in Latin

America who now have enough water will be short of it in 20 years. By 2100, according to the

IPCC, as many as three billion people may be threatened by water shortages.

Let me bring this particular threat home. From 1999 to 2005, the Colorado Plateau experienced its

worst drought in 500 years, reducing Colorado River flow from 15 million acre feet/year to 3.8, and

dropping Lake Powell to one third of capacity. "at was five years of severe drought starting from a

full reservoir. Two to three more years of such drought would have brought Lake Powell to “dead

pool,” the point at which no water can leave the dam, the point at which the Grand Canyon has no

water. We know from tree ring studies that severe droughts lasting longer than five years have

occurred, and that is without climate change.57

Today, Lake Powell is about two-thirds full, and drought conditions continue. A return to severe

drought could drain Lake Powell, and quickly. "e most thorough study of the Colorado basin to

date, inclusive of climate change, suggests that the combination of drought and continued growth

could lead to water shortages severe enough to depopulate the West’s megacities. By 2022, according

to a conservative climate model, Phoenix, which gets 60% of its water from the Colorado, could

become a ghost town. Nor will Phoenix be the only casualty. Las Vegas gets 90% of its water from

the Colorado, and Los Angeles over 50%. All southern California agriculture depends on the

Colorado.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 36 of 90

57 For this and the following material on the Colorado Plateau, I’m heavily indebted to James Powell, Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West. Berkeley: University of California, 2009. I called attention to Powell’s book and its implications for Utah and the LDS Church in an op-ed published in the Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 2009, available online at: http://web.me.com/efirmage/Supporting_Documents/Writing_on_the_Environment_files/West%20Hurtling%20toward%20Water%20Crisis.html.

Not only are we doing nothing

to prevent this climate-induced

water crisis, we are building as if

there is no tomorrow. Phoenix,

Las Vegas, and our own St.

George are among the most

rapidly growing cities in the U.S.

"rough our growth-for-growth’s

sake and growth-at-all-costs

policies, we are setting ourselves

up for a compounded disaster

that will make the experience of

the Okies look like a cakewalk. During the Dust Bowl of the 30s, 2.5 million Americans were

displaced. Many of the displaced, as readers of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath will recall, ended up in

California. But today’s West is full. "ere’s no place and there are no resources to accommodate

environmental refugees. What will happen, then, when not 2.5 but 10-20 million residents of the

Southwest are forced from their homes because there simply isn’t enough water?

To close out the water issue, I’d just like to show you graphically what our future in Utah under

climate change looks like (Fig. 7).58 It is as bleak as the color scheme of this writing on the wall.59

9. Social unrest and instability. Environmental changes on the scale evident in the foregoing will put

unprecedented pressure on the world’s poorest countries, which are entirely unequal to the task of

responding either to the environmental changes or the consequent social upheaval. For the "ird

World, future climate change will be cataclysmic.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 37 of 90

58 Fig. 7 source: United States Global Change Research Program, http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/regional-climate-change-impacts/southwest, visited 12/19/09.

59 Since completing this essay, I have written more extensively on the water crisis that faces the West. My #ndings are available in a slide presentation available on my website: http://web.me.com/e#rmage/Edwin_Firmage_Photography/Blog/Entries/2010/3/27_Water-"e_Coming_Crisis_#les/Water-"e%20Coming%20Crisis.html.

Fig. 7

But the impacts, direct and indirect, will not be limited to the "ird World. "e U.S. has just spent

$3 trillion protecting its oil interests in the Gulf. What will be the cost of keeping a hungry and

destitute "ird World from destroying itself and the U.S. in the process? How, for example, will the

U.S. react to and be a!ected by a war between nuclear powers India and Pakistan over dwindling

water in the Indus or between China and Russia over the water and food resources of Siberia? And

how will even we, the richest nation on earth, cope with the many demands on diminishing dollars

for agriculture, health systems, coastal cities, desert cities, power systems, and a military all under

unprecedented stress?

10. !e one-two punch. Tough as any one of these challenges would be, we will not face them one by

one but simultaneously, and with increasing intensity and frequency. "ings don’t just get worse

under climate change, they get exponentially worse. And I haven’t even mentioned one other gigantic

factor that we’ll have to deal with while all this other stu! is going on: the end of oil or “peak oil.”

While there is considerable debate about the real extent of oil reserves, a growing number of oil

experts believe that world production is now in or shortly will be in irreversible decline. A U.S.

Energy Information Administration study found that non-OPEC and non-Russian production

worldwide peaked around the year 2006, production in some countries such as the U.S. having

peaked long before that (1970 in the U.S.). How long will reserves last? At present o#cial but

unaudited and highly suspect numbers and at the present rate of production, the reserves of Saudi

Arabia, the world’s largest producer, are su#cient to last for another 70 years.60 But the true size of

Saudia Arabia’s estimated reserves and those of other OPEC producers are questionable. In the

1980s, OPEC introduced a country quota system that sets each nation’s output based on its reserves.

Immediately, estimated reserves rose sharply, raising questions about whether the new numbers have

any basis in fact under the ground. In 2007, Sadad al Husseini, a former VP of Exploration for

Aramco, asserted that 300 billion of the world’s estimated 1200 billion barrels of oil reserves should

be considered speculative and not available for production. In a best case, at least with today’s

extraction technology and at o#cially stated reserve levels and current rates of production, reserves

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 38 of 90

60 For a useful summary, see Wikipedia, “Oil Reserves,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves, visited 12/20/09.

will last another 50 years or so. If actual, usable reserves are as low as Al Husseini states, they may not

last through mid-century.

"ere is uncertainty here at many levels. Not all oil in a field can be economically harvested. Rising

prices and improved technology may make previously uneconomical extraction worthwhile. And,

there is always a possibility, though it is unlikely, that major new sources will be found. All of this is

true. But history is a caution. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, and in spite of then record-high

prices in the wake of the oil crisis of 70s and great improvements in oil exploration technology, U.S.

oil production has continued to decline. Another problem with the notion of the previously

uneconomic becoming attractive is that other factors such as the e!ects of global warming may take

options o! the table that could otherwise be considered. We may simply not have the means,

however willing we are to pay the higher price.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Energy published a report entitled Peaking of World Oil Production:

Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management, also known as the Hirsch Report.61 "e report concluded

that with emergency-level action, “the fastest humanly possible,” and extraordinary government

intervention the world could transition to an alternative, oil-less economy in 20 years without

substantial negative impacts. With less than 20 years, the impacts rise. But 20 years is a best case in a

world that is rapidly becoming less than the best of all possible worlds. Hirsch did not include in his

time estimate the possible impact of other factors such as climate change that might compete for the

attention and dollars that will be required to meet even a 20-year figure. What will happen, for

example, if, under severe climate stress in the year 2025, America experiences two Katrina-level

hurricanes, one that destroys half of the city of Houston and another that levels Miami Beach, while,

simultaneously, wildfires escalate out of control in the Oakland Hills, destroying 30% of the cities of

Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville, and Glenn Canyon Dam reaches “dead pool,” which necessitates

the immediate creation of new and extremely expensive diversion tunnels around the dam? What if

such catastrophes are regular occurrences during the time that the Peak Oil transition is in process?

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 39 of 90

61 Available online at http://www.acus.org/docs/051007-Hirsch_World_Oil_Production.pdf.

"e point is that our ability to respond to Peak Oil without societal upheaval will be constrained by

factors that we cannot now anticipate that may make 20 years seem wildly optimistic.

Given the time, e!ort, and contingencies involved in making a successful transition to an oil-less

economy, and since we do not and probably never will know precisely what the true state of world

reserves is, and therefore what our likely deadline is, it would be highly imprudent to suppose that

the need for action now is anything but acute. One of the most sobering findings of the Hirsch

Report, based on several case studies, is that it will likely not be evident even as little as a year before

production peaks that peak is imminent. In other words, “the world will have less than a year’s

warning.” According to Hirsch, the relative risks of premature action and failure to act in a timely

manner are asymmetric. “Mitigation initiated prematurely would result in a relatively modest

misallocation of resources. Failure to initiate timely mitigation with an appropriate lead-time is

certain to result in very severe economic consequences.” "is is global warming all over again.

So, we come to this: Humans are creating a new world order, and it’s not an order under which most

humans, or indeed most life forms, will be able to survive. "ese are not changes that we will be able

to fix after the fact with technological wizardry. "e CO2 that we put into the air today will remain

there for hundreds of years, and the e!ects of this gas on our climate will therefore persist for

hundreds of years. "e only cure for climate change is prevention. What’s more, half measures are as

good as no measures. If only half of Antarctica melts, we’re still facing global catastrophe. If only the

Colorado dries up and not the Ganges, we’re still facing catastrophe.

Of all of the dangers facing us, none is more insidious than that form of self-delusion that says that

we can and should move deliberately, cautiously, and incrementally toward sustainability. "is is our

business-as-usual approach to things, and for many things it’s the right kind of approach. For climate

change, it spells disaster. "is is the kind of change that our churches, and universities, and, yes,

environmental organizations have so far adopted. And it is a moral outrage. What we face today is

not primarily an environmental problem; it is a moral problem. It is in fact the moral problem. How

we respond to this moral problem will be the measure of our species. So far, we rate an F.

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IIIWhile this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence, and home to the mother.

— Robinson Je!ers62

So, how do prevent climate change? According to the IPCC, we need to implement IMMEDIATE

and DRAMATIC reductions in greenhouse gases: 50-85% GLOBAL reductions over 2000 levels by

2050. What do these numbers mean? At 50%, the probability of holding temperature increases to a

hopefully livable 3.6 to 4.3ºF increase above pre-industrial levels, is 50%. At 85% reductions, the

probability of staying in that 3-4º range is 85%. Clearly, given the stakes involved, mandatory global

85% reductions over 2000 levels by 2050 should be considered an absolute minimum. "is is a far

cry from Utah’s voluntary 25% by 2025 over 2005 levels or the Obama administration’s pitiful plan

for 17% by 2020.

Now, the implications of these global reductions by 2050 are even more radical for the U.S. For the

world to reach 50% by 2050, the U.S. must reduce its emissions by 88%, and for the world to reach

85%, the U.S. must reduce by 96%! E!ectively, we Americans must set ourselves the minimum goal

of zero carbon emissions by 2050. So, within just 40 years, at most, Americans must replace every

gas-powered engine, every natural gas powered heater and power plant, and every coal-fired power

plant with a clean, non-emitting alternative. We must reinvent agriculture to work without cheap

fossil fuels. We must reengineer our transportation system to work without trucks and airplanes. And

we must do all of this in less than 50 years. If this imperative, this minimal imperative, doesn’t scare

the hell out of you, you aren’t listening, because this means reinventing America in just 40 years.

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62 From “Shine, Perishing Republic” in Richard Ellmann, ed., !e New Oxford Book of American Verse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, 540.

But many believe that the 2007 IPCC goals are not aggressive enough. "e 2014 report is almost

certain to up the ante, and others have already done so. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute

and longtime researcher on climate change believes that the world target should be 80% by 2020.

For what it’s worth, I happen to agree with Lester, because every indication from the science is that

reality is outstripping the projections. What we thought was “worst-case” is in fact far from worst.

An example is the melting of both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Far from giving us an unnecessary

scare, as climate change skeptics claim, science is falling behind reality.

"e need for urgent and extreme action emerges from tipping points such as the melting of the

permafrost. Once permafrost begins melting on a large scale, it has the potential to set in motion

feedback loops that will create runaway climate change that we will be unable to stop

REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE DO. "e feedback loop works like this. Increasing global

temperatures cause permafrost to melt, releasing additional natural (not man-made) carbon dioxide

and methane into the atmosphere. "ese in turn cause temperatures to rise even faster, causing more

permafrost to melt, and so on. "e biosphere as a whole could become a gigantic feedback loop.

Most general climate models to date assume a static biosphere. But, the biosphere’s ability to absorb

CO2 is in fact climate-dependent. At present, about half of anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by the

biosphere (land and oceans). "e land component of this form of carbon sequestration, however,

may become a casualty of climate change. A study by the Hadley Center suggests that the land could

become a net source of CO2 by 2050, and that as a result, atmospheric CO2 concentrations may be

250 ppm higher than predicted by static biosphere models.63 An additional temperature rise of 2.7°F

over and above that predicted by static models (an increase of 75%) would accompany these higher

CO2 concentrations, and this additional rise kicks in further climatic changes. "e caution of the

tipping points is that this is one time when we either do things right the first time, or we die. We will

not get a second chance.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 42 of 90

63 Peter M. Cox, et al., “Acceleration of Global Warming Due to Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks in a Coupled Climate Model.” Nature 408 (2000), 184-187. Summary at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v408/n6809/full/408184a0.html, visited 12/20/09.

So, as we contemplate what our agenda will be, let’s agree on two basic points. We need dramatic

change, and we need it now. Is anyone doing this? Are there groups that we can point to as models?

Yes, to a degree, in isolated pockets. In May 2007, for example, an F5 tornado tore through

Greensburg, Kansas, wiping the town o! the face of the earth. Instead of returning to business as

usual, the town voted to use the opportunity of rebuilding to make Greensburg a model of

sustainable living. And, as American towns go, it is indeed a model. I urge readers to look at

Greensburg’s website to see what a town with vision can do. HEAL Utah, on whose board I sit,

recently hosted Greensburg’s mayor, Bob Dixson, and we have put videos of that event on our

YouTube website.64"ey’re inspiring.

For the most part, though, America is trapped in denial. Recent polls have found that about half of

the populace does not believe that climate change is real, and only about a third believe that it is

caused by human activity. Fewer still understand that this is in fact the biggest challenge humans

have ever faced, and that it is the moral imperative of all time. Now more than ever in human history,

we need unity in common purpose. We need the sort of unity that brought Americans and

Americans and their allies together during World War II.

Our political system today, however, is not about unity. It is more partisan than ever. It’s driven not

by notions of public service but by special interest, corporate bribery, and demagoguery. It’s heroes

are figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. Americans wanting change, if not

necessarily action on climate change, hoped to see a radical about face with Barack Obama. But so

far, even with a Democratic Congress, he has failed to deliver on the issue of climate change, and

appears to be hopelessly bogged down in a stalemate of parties that he seems unable to break. In the

fullness of time, when the American people finally wake up to their plight as agents and victims of

climate change, the politicians will presumably snap out of their ideological funk. But their

awakening will be too late for our planet.

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64 Fall Party Mayor Dixson IV.m4v, Fall Party Mayor Dixson II.m4v, Fall Party 2009 Mayor Dixson III.m4v, Fall Party 2009 Dixson I.m4v.

"e private sector too will eventually adapt, but not fast enough to avoid passing the tipping points.

Right now, the market cannot even begin to adapt because the true cost of the way we live is invisible

to the market. At the moment, our economic system externalizes, that is hides, true costs, and so

there isn’t an economic imperative powerful enough to cause deep, structural change of the sort we

need. We have, for example, no carbon tax that reflects the cost of the CO2 we emit, the cost that we

will pay either in reengineering our society to prevent climate change or in dealing with the

consequences of our failure to reengineer society. Without a significant carbon tax, there is no hope

of large-scale shifts in the American economy. For example, when gas prices reached an

unprecedented $5 a gallon, Americans began to change their driving habits, but only modestly. "e

reason is that gas was not nearly expensive enough, and it didn’t remain expensive.

Even with a carbon tax, however, change will probably not come swiftly enough to prevent us from

passing the tipping points from which there is no return to life as we know it. If, for example, an

improbable carbon tax were passed today that doubled the price of electricity in America, it seems

likely that we would only modify our behavior to the degree that we did when gas prices doubled,

which is to say, not nearly enough. Conservation, at least as we know it now, is simply not enough.

In fact, conservation as we know it is actually counterproductive. In the fall of 2009, Utah climate

scientist Tim Garrett published an article in the journal Climatic Change showing that conserving

energy promotes economic growth, which leads to the consumption of more energy and therefore the

production of more greenhouse gases.65 Garrett’s paradoxical conclusion is that conserving energy

promotes climate change. Talk about cognitive dissonance!

Cognitive dissonance is good, though, if it forces us to think more clearly. Garrett’s article has

certainly given me food for thought. My reaction to Garrett, after due reflection, is threefold. First,

Garrett puts a scientific face on a fact that conservationists have known for a long time: we can’t

conserve our way out of climate change. We need far more radical transformation.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 44 of 90

65 “Are "ere Basic Physical Constraints on Future Anthropogenic Emissions of Carbon Dioxide?” Climatic Change 21 November 2009, available online at www.springerlink.com/content/9476j57g1t07vhn2/fulltext.pdf.

Second, the deeper question is whether energy conservation, though clearly not enough, is

nonetheless worthwhile, even essential. Before examining that issue however, I first of all want to

address those on the political Right who deny that climate change is real or human-caused and who

see in Tim Garrett’s work a scientific justification for their refusal to embrace energy conservation

and alternative energy. Far from providing ammunition for this attitude, Garrett’s message is that

conservation is good for the economy. It’s the energy equivalent of increased worker productivity. If

you can produce more with less or even the same with less, you increase the e#ciency of your

business, creating a greater margin for profit. So, as billionaire George Soros has been saying for

years, truly clean forms of energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal could be the motor of the

world’s economy. Republicans, therefore, of all people, should embrace clean energy and energy

e#ciency as tools to promote growth, which is after all their highest good.

What Garrett has given us is a gift like the gifts the Greek gods were accused of giving, a gift such as

Pandora, that comes with a strong consumer warning. Tim’s gift is a Zen slap in the face, a wake up

call to reality. And, reality has a way of being uncomfortable. For far too long, environmental

organizations like the Sierra Club have been behaving like good corporate citizens and urging

eminently reasonable, responsible, and, as it turns out, remunerative actions like “conservation” in

the form of replacing lightbulbs, caulking windows, and buying e#cient appliances. But that

approach, as Garrett observes, while it salves our conscience and makes us more e#cient has done

nothing to stop our progression toward climate catastrophe.

At some level, we knew all of this before Tim Garrett had the temerity to point it out. For the last

decade at least, environmentalists have seen that the incremental, evolutionary, no- or low-impact

measures deemed to be “reasonable” aren’t working. We’ve seen this, but denied the implications.

We’ve also been living in denial about the fact that as long as economies and populations continue to

grow, anything other than the total and immediate replacement of fossil-fuel-based power with truly

clean alternatives is as good as nothing. "e evidence of our denial is greenwash, or should I say

hogwash, such as Barack Obama’s voluntary 17% reductions over 2005 levels by 2020. "e evidence

of our denial is climate stalemate of the sort that made the Copenhagen climate talks an utter failure.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 45 of 90

Finally, then, and here I part company with Garrett: we need a new vocabulary and a new ethic.

What we’ve been engaged in isn’t so much conserving as economizing — half measures concerned

first and foremost with the bottom line. For example, the EPA, with the full blessing of

environmental groups, has encouraged the creation of the “Energy Star” brand of appliances and

even homes that are more energy e#cient. "e pitch of the EPA is to the budget-conscious consumer

in all of us. We should caulk windows and add insulation so as to reduce heat loss and save money.

We should turn down the temperature on our thermostats and water heaters so as to reduce oil and

natural gas consumption and save money. We should install Energy Star appliances to reduce power

use and save money, and so on. "ese are all reasonable, cost-wise things to do. And they do save

energy, and therefore reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But for all that, this isn’t real conservation.

"ese e!orts reduce the harm the we cause by our lifestyle but they do not eliminate it. Real

conservation is about eliminating the harm. If your lifestyle is unsustainable because it consumes

more resources than the environment can handle, slowing the rate of consumption will not prevent

you from ultimately crashing and burning. You’ll just do so a little later than you might have

otherwise. True conservation is about preventing the crash and burn altogether.

Here is the reality of our lifestyle in America. We consume four to five earths’ worth of resources. As

a model for the world, this clearly is not a lifestyle the world can live with, yet at the moment this is

the lifestyle the world is emulating. China wants the American dream, and so do India, Africa, and

Latin America. Long before they get there, the biosphere is going to collapse. Clearly, even if

Americans conserved 25 to 50% across the board relative to present levels, and we’re nowhere near

that kind of number despite the EPA and the Sierra Club, it would not be enough. Our “reasonable,”

piecewise, economizing approach will not work in the long run, and it cannot therefore be regarded

as true conservation, which presupposes that you’re doing things in such a way that you at a minimum

maintain the present biological status quo.

So, what would a truly conservative approach to energy use look like? Well, instead of looking for

ways to reduce the electricity required for air conditioning, we would eliminate the need for it

altogether. And this is absolutely possible today. "rough intelligent design that incorporates “passive

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 46 of 90

solar” ideas and good engineering, it is possible to build homes that do not require any air

conditioning even in hot climates. In fact, this has been possible for a long time. I have been in old

pioneer adobe homes here in Utah that are comfortable in midsummer without the use of any high-

tech engineering. "e same kind of radical, but often technologically simple solution is available for

heating. "ere are towns in Germany today where people live in homes that require no heating or air

conditioning at all.66 In winter, they retain latent heat that is generated by household appliances,

computers, TVs, showers, baths, and the bodies of the occupants. In really frigid areas where latent

heating cannot deliver enough warmth, geothermal heat pumps could be used. "ese can both heat

and air condition homes and provide hot water using a tiny fraction of the electricity required for

conventional systems, and the small amount of electricity needed could be provided by a limited

solar panel array that would not add prohibitive costs to home construction. "ese are radical and

yet eminently doable changes that would be part of a truly conservative lifestyle. Such changes would

bring about dramatic greenhouse gas reductions that mere economizing has not.

"ere is, in other words, a way out of Tim Garrett’s paradox of “conservation.” "e solution to the

paradox is to realize that what Garrett regards as conservation isn’t conservation at all but false

economy, and that there is a form of conservation capable of achieving radical results. "is true

conservation also won’t single-handedly get us out of climate catastrophe, but it could get us well on

the way, and it could do so quickly. If, for example, the federal government or state and city

governments were to pass zero-energy requirements for heating and air conditioning on all new

homes, we would see instantaneous and significant reductions in energy use. If governments

mandated zero-energy retrofits whenever existing homes are sold, we would get an even bigger bump.

Nonetheless, Americans especially have turned their back on such alternatives, sometimes out of

ignorance, sometimes out of greed and short-sighted “economy,” sometimes out of sheer bloody

mindedness. I recall a recent letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, written by a man who was

outraged by the world’s “Lights Out” initiative, in which people were asked voluntarily to turn o!

their lights for one evening. Even the LDS Church complied. But the writer of the letter, who thinks

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 47 of 90

66 “No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses.’” New York Times, 12/26/2008, available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?_r=1.

that climate change is a hoax, turned on every light in his home in protest. "e great tragedy of our

time is that self-serving Republicans have politicized the issue of climate change and whipped up

public frenzy to a point that people, like the writer of that letter, simply cannot see what is staring

them in the face. Real change on the climate front, like real change on so many other fronts, is

stalled by a morally bankrupt political system whose leaders cannot rise above their own self-interest

and who are bound by their own self-imposed ideological straightjackets. So, how do Americans

break this impasse and start moving forward? How do we turn away from disaster?

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 48 of 90

IVVHU(/09 'W@*(S ).,: ;.,' ;.,' Q.,4'5S09(9 'AO0$#4F,

Day by day my ears invent the steps of a messenger of good tidings.

— Yehuda Amichai67

As I see things, one group, and perhaps the only group, capable of breaking this impasse and forcing

radical change is our churches. America’s churches are a solution in several ways. First, action by

churches to meet their own climate D-day would in itself be a real step forward. "e LDS Church,

for example, is one of the largest builders and furnishers of buildings in the United States outside the

federal government. It could single-handedly change the economics of solar power and geothermal

heating and air-conditioning systems in the U.S. "e LDS Church is also one of the country’s largest

food producers. It is the country’s largest producer of nuts, and it is one of the largest ranching

operations, with 500,000 acres of ranch land in Florida alone. "is is a church with the potential to

make and to change markets. "is is a church with the potential to bring new, clean energy

businesses to life. And there are other churches with this kind of scale, who acting singly, but

hopefully together, could transform the political and business response to climate change.

Our churches can be catalysts of change, agents that cause other agents to undergo radical

transformation. For a conservative organization like the LDS Church to make a commitment to

energy independence within ten years, which is something I proposed to then counselor "omas S.

Monson back in early 2007 (I’ve since cut the suggested time period to five years in a long proposal

that I sent President Monson in Jan. 2010), would send a shock wave through the Republican Party,

which has chosen, rather strangely given the potential that clean energy has to revitalize the U.S

economy, to align itself with dirty and dead-end industries such as coal and oil. Today’s Republicans

have turned their back on their own tradition of conservation and environmental responsibility, as

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 49 of 90

67 From his “Jerusalem 1967.” Hebrew original and English translation in Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Sheep Meadow Press, 1992, 46. Trans. mine.

represented by figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, who created the National Forest Service as we know

it, and Richard Nixon, who created the EPA and who approved an important extension to the Clean

Air Act (1970) and the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments (1972). As a catalyst, the

Church could help to bring the Republican Party to a realization of its public responsibility.

And, last but not least, speaking of Teddy Roosevelt, churches can be the bully pulpit that convinces

the mass of ordinary Americans to change their personal lives. I don’t think that I exaggerate when I

say that if the LDS Church, for example, were to go green tonight, we would see a di!erent set of

Utah leaders in Washington tomorrow. And, we would find a radically di!erent approach to climate

change here in the West. "ere is indeed much that a church like this could do to change the world,

and to be that Zion on the hill, that city of light that a world in darkness needs.

What we need today from our churches is the message of a radically di!erent way of living, a new

“kingdom” based on notions of true sustainability. Practically speaking, the message we need to hear

from our churches is that standing between us and everything we want for ourselves and our children

is the mortal sin of climate change, from which we will either turn away now or perish. And what we

need to see from our churches is action to back up their words.

"e good news about climate change is that it is, at the moment at least, a solvable problem. We

have the knowledge and the technology and the money to fix this problem now. All we need is will

and imagination. In view of the moral bankruptcy of our political process and of corporate America,

I can think of no more critical mobilizer of public will and no better seed communities for

imaginative role modeling than our churches.

But, while I hope to see every church engaged in an all-hands-on-deck e!ort, there is one in

particular that I speak to here. Of the many religious communities that I could point to with some

hope, none is more pre-adapted, in theory anyway, to the present crisis than the Mormons, a people

who espouse the ideal of becoming one in heart and mind and who have already bound themselves

under sacred covenant to create a place in the here and now fit for God to inhabit. If there is any

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 50 of 90

church whose active involvement is needed now to change the world, it is ours. "e world needs to

see the gospel of Zion in action.

And so does the Church, for while the Church cherishes the Zion ideal in theory it does not do so in

practice. One has only to look at the Salt Lake Valley during a winter inversion, or drive down State

Street any day of the year, or look through the barriers of gated communities of millionaire Saints to

see this. Now, you may say that winter inversions are a force of nature beyond our control. But it is

not the inversions that create air pollution. We do, and therefore we can solve this problem if we

choose to. Doing so will not be easy. It will mean, for example, dramatically reducing our

dependence on automobiles in the Salt Lake valley. "at is a big but not insuperable challenge. It

could be done by greatly expanding our present public transportation system. It could be done

through negative economic incentives such as significantly increasing the gasoline tax and using the

proceeds to fund clean transportation initiatives. It could be done by making public transportation

free. All of this can be done, but, as with climate change, which is Salt Lake’s air pollution problem

on a global scale, there is little political will to do it. "e bottom line is that Mormons in Salt Lake

breathe terribly polluted air because they choose to do so, in part through action and in part through

inaction. And the Church is as guilty as anyone in allowing this state of a!airs to continue. Indeed,

because the Church is in a unique position to influence public opinion and legislative action, it is

more guilty than most. Where much is given, much is expected.

"e Church would perhaps answer that this is a “political” problem, and as such not a proper

domain on which to speak or act. But this excuse does not convince. It’s true that living sustainably

has become a politicized issue. But that is not the same thing as a political issue. "ere is no partisan

necessity for Republicans and Democrats to disagree about cleaning up our air. Everyone needs this,

as they need food and shelter. As necessities of ordinary life, indeed as the foundation of life itself,

clean air, clean water, and healthy food are not political issues. None of our environmental problems

are in fact political, although they are politicized. In any event, however, the mandate of the Church

is to create a place in the here and now that is fit for God to inhabit, regardless of political

complications. And Salt Lake City today is far from Zion. Are we not ashamed of our dirty air when

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 51 of 90

we bring visitors here? And if we’re ashamed of this filth before mere tourists, should we not be a

hundred times more stricken as we present this valley to God for his approval?

By choosing not to get involved, the Church abnegates its moral responsibility to be a good shepherd

not only for a spiritual flock but for flesh and blood mortals who will breathe and be killed by the

dirty air the Church chooses not to speak about and act upon. According to the Utah Physicians for

a Healthy Environment, a thousand people along the Wasatch Front die prematurely each year as a

result of the dirty air we breathe.68 "eir deaths will of course not be attributed to air pollution. "e

cause of death will be pneumonia, asthma, or heart attack. And in this way, even our death is treated

as an externalized cost, the ultimate expression of the degree to which our society turns life into

money. “You can have anything in this world for money,” including a free conscience.

Sadly, the list of ways in which the Church is failing in its pastoral responsibility is long. I’ll give just

one more example. In December 2009, my father, Ed Firmge, Sr., sent a letter to the First Presidency

requesting that they take a strong stance against the storage of depleted uranium in Utah. "ere are

many reasons why the Church should do this.

First, there is the fact that without such action Utah will in all likelihood become the dumping

ground of choice for all of America’s depleted uranium, 700,000 tons of which are waiting a for a

disposal site as I write this. "anks to Energy Solutions and inaction across the board in Utah, Utah

is now the dump for 99% of America’s low-level nuclear waste. Energy Solutions has recently begun

importing depleted uranium in quantity, and few in Utah at present, beyond a few activists such as

my friends at HEAL, are protesting. "ere is the fact that depleted uranium, unlike low-level waste,

becomes more radioactive over time.

"en there’s the fact that, again unlike low-level waste, depleted uranium will remain radioactive for

millions of years. "ere’s the fact that the place where depleted uranium will be stored, Energy

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 52 of 90

68 UPHE has compiled a sobering list of studies that demonstrate the many, often deadly, e!ects associated with dirty air: http://uphe.org/library.php. Perhaps the most sobering revelation of these studies is that some of the e!ects are genetic. We are raising a generation of children who will pass on the consequences of our neglect of their health to every subsequent generation. "e fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth stand on edge.

Solutions’ Clive facility in Utah’s West Desert, lies at the bottom of a lakebed that has been filled

with water many times in the last hundred thousand years and that is likely to be filled again, climate

change notwithstanding, at some point in the next few tens of thousands of years. As a result, what is

misleadingly billed as an isolated, arid, and geologically “safe” site, will be destroyed by wave action,

inundated, and dispersed through the length and breadth of the next Lake Bonneville and beyond.

Lake Bonneville came to an end 14,500 years ago when over three hundred feet of it broke through

Red Rock Pass near the Utah-Idaho border sending the largest flood in North American history

tearing through the Snake River plain to the Pacific Ocean. Red Rock Pass remains a possible outlet

for future Lake Bonnevilles. "e deadly legacy of Energy Solutions and of popular LDS greed

(Energy Solutions has bought favor from about three quarters of the Utah legislature) and o#cial

LDS inaction could therefore find itself spread over not just the entirety of western Utah but also

southern Idaho, and the Columbia River basin. "e greatest e!ect, however, will certainly be the

blighting of the eastern half of the Great Basin, Brigham Young’s kingdom. And we are not talking

about destroying a marginal salt water ecosystem. Lake Bonneville was a fresh water lake, and its

successor will also likely be a fresh water lake, which could be the basis for a thriving desert society in

the Great Basin, but not if it is filled with radioactive waste.

Ed Sr. had good reason to hope that the Church would be willing to act on this threat to the well-

being of our region’s future inhabitants. It was he, after all, who convinced the Church years ago to

speak up against the MX missile system proposed for this same area.69 And it was this statement

against the MX missile system that provided the precedent and the conceptual framework for the

Church’s 2006 statement against the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the West Desert.

"e First Presidency’s response to dad’s request this time — how much things have changed in 30

years — was that the Church cannot act on every such issue and that its principle mission is to teach

the gospel of Jesus Christ. "is is certainly among the oddest statements I’ve ever heard from the

Church, because it juxtaposes preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to stewardship of the earth and

care for the physical as well as spiritual well-being of its inhabitants. To my way of thinking, these

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 53 of 90

69 Edwin B. Firmage, “MX: Democracy, Religion, and the Rule of Law — My Journey.” Utah Law Review 2004: 1, 13-56.

things are inseparable. How can the gospel of Jesus Christ be separated from anything that is good,

much less anything that is essential to the well-being of God’s children? Is not our physical health an

essential part of the life God intends for us? Is not insuring our physical health what the Word of

Wisdom is all about, this revelation which more than any other Mormons point to as evidence of

Joseph Smith’s inspiration? And as for the notion that the Church has other priorities, I would

assume that if the Church can find time for its crusade to protect Utahns from booze, it might also

find some time to speak about the dangers of nuclear waste, air pollution, and mercury in our water

and food. While preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church somehow finds time and means to

rebuild downtown Salt Lake City to the tune of five years of concentrated work and a price tag of $1

billion or more. So, you’d think that the Church could take a few minutes to write a statement about

cherishing the earth rather than treating it as a waste dump. "e $1 billion that the Church will

spend on downtown Salt Lake City will be long forgotten and unimportant a thousand years from

now. But the depleted uranium (and mercury and CO2) that the Church, by its deliberate inaction,

allows to pollute our earth, will still be here. "roughout their millennial presence, they will threaten

the life of our descendants.

By refusing to tackle these temporal problems head on, the Church e!ectively tells God that it’s up

to him to solve the problems that we have created. "is is the height of arrogance. It is also fraught

with danger, for when has God ever been willing to let us o! the hook because the problems we have

created are big and hairy? Hasn’t it rather been his modus operandi to let us perish when things reach

such a point? Is that not the lesson of Genesis and of the Prophets? "e lesson of Scripture is that

being God’s chosen people means that you have a heavier burden of responsibility. Yours must always

be the high road, the hard road. And if you are not cut out for such hard work, God will find

someone else who is. I would therefore say to Church leadership, look around you and identify the

seemingly intractable problems that politicians shy away from and that our political process seems

unable to handle. !ose are your problems. If our economic system, for example, can’t eliminate

poverty, then that is your problem. If the political process can’t deal with climate change, then that is

your problem, and you need to solve it. In God’s scheme of things, there is no such thing as a

political problem. "ere are only problems, and they are all moral.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 54 of 90

"e Church may reply, “Well, Brother Firmage, by that logic the Church should be involved in

almost everything.” My reply is, “Absolutely.” "at is what building a Zion society is all about. As in

biblical times and Brigham’s day, there can be no ultimate distinction between sacred or religious

space and secular space. It’s all sacred. It’s all important. I say this knowing that there will be

occasions when a publicly engaged Church will do or say things that o!end me. So be it. Unlike my

liberal friends who would just as soon see the Church shrink into self-imposed exile in its own land,

I would welcome a vigorous, vocal, and bold o#cial Mormon presence in Utah’s day to day life, as

was the case in Brigham Young’s day. "e retreat of the Church into its own self-imposed

insignificance on most temporal issues is a cause for sorrow, not rejoicing. All I would ask of a

socially reengaged Church is that it act prophetically. Brethren, let your tradition and your Scripture

dictate your course of action. If you do that, I have confidence that you will be more right than

wrong in what you do.

In speaking and acting prophetically on issues of the day, the Church will in fact be ceasing to play

political games. At present, the Church is perceived — accurately, I believe — as an extension of

Right Wing American politics. "e Church o#cially denies the connection, and encourages

members to vote their conscience. "en it turns around and installs the former head of the

Republican party in Utah as editor of the Church-owned Deseret News. One could cite a hundred

other examples of actions that belie the Church’s professed political neutrality. "e Church is also big

business. As my mission president once remarked to me about some issue we had been discussing,

“It’s just business, Elder Firmage, and the Church is big business.” To be a big business in America

today is by definition to be political. "e Church’s statement, therefore, that it doesn’t get involved in

political issues is patent nonsense.

If Church leadership truly wants to avoid being “political,” then it needs to start being prophetic.

"e biblical prophet, as defined by the example of Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Jesus, is not a

fortune teller but a speaker of the truth, the truth of the responsibility of leaders to principle, of

people to principle, and of leaders to people. "e biblical prophets spoke truth to power and truth to

the people, without consideration of the consequences, without worrying whether they were being

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 55 of 90

political or politic. Not surprisingly, because they told the truth, the prophets to a man were always

in conflict with the political and economic establishment.70 Abraham Heschel writes of them that

“they are some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.”71

A full discussion of ways in which the prophets were disturbing would be beyond the scope of this

article. But take as an example the divine injunction to Hosea first to marry a prostitute and have

children with her (Hos. 1:2) and then to marry an adulteress (3:1), to symbolize Israel’s infidelity to

her covenant with God. Or take the injunction to Ezekiel to lie on his side in the street for 390 days

and make a meager meal of water and bread baked with human feces to illustrate the fate that awaits

the people (Ezek. 4:9-15). Ezekiel himself protests at the o!ensiveness of this, so God relents and lets

him use cow dung instead. "ese men spoke uncomfortable truths and illustrated them in ways that

people then as now would have found deeply o!ensive. "ese men, who define what it means to be a

prophet, would have laughed at the notion that “political” issues were o! the table. Samuel, for

example, attacked the notion of kingship, which was the basis of government in most of the ancient

world (1 Sam. 8:11-18). "at may not sound radical to us descendants of George Washington and

"omas Je!erson, but it was to many in the ancient world. In most places, such talk would have

ended your life on the spot. It would be the equivalent of President Monson attacking the notion of

laissez-faire economics at a Republican convention in Utah, something, by the way, that I’d love to

see him do.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 56 of 90

70 "is is a challenging concept for Latter-day Saints because in the LDS tradition the prophet is the establishment. “Prophet” is just another way of saying corporate president, head of the church. In biblical Israel, however, the prophet was not the head of the “church” but the political outsider. "e ecclesiastical establishment was led by priests, and priesthood was passed down exclusively within the families of the priests and the Levites. Accordingly, prophets did not speak by virtue of any priesthood or ecclesiastical authority, for they had none (except in the accidental and exceptional case, such as Ezekiel, in which the prophet also happened to be a priest). Speaking for God and speaking for the corporate “church” were therefore two di!erent things. "e prophet’s only authority was moral. Now, ideally, of course, the priestly establishment would have taught and embodied the principles of the Torah. Ideally, there would have been no need for prophets (cf. Num. 11:29, “would that all of the Lord’s people were prophets”), for God has already told his people what they need to hear. In the view of the prophets, however, Israel’s leadership, religious and civil, did not live up to its scriptural calling. "ereon hangs the tale of conflict between the establishment and the independent idealists whose only authority was their claim to have been appointed personal messengers of God. "eir message was a call for national repentance, a call for leaders and people to live their principles. "e prophets of the LDS Church are thus in the impossible position of having to be their own worst critics. To be a prophet, you have to stop thinking like an ecclesiastic and a CEO.

71 Op. cit., I:xi.

But Samuel’s political radicalism does not end with his attack on kingship. If we substitute the word

“president” or “executive” or “real estate developer” for “king,” we begin to see just how radical he

was, for the abuses he cites were not and are not unique to kings. Samuel could just as well be

speaking of any powerful, centralized government or organization or successful millionaire General

Authority. His condemnation of economic exploitation would certainly apply to today’s high-handed

American corporations that treat their employees like serfs. Employees at Walmart, for example, had

to sue the company for the right to go to the bathroom!72 "ey had to fight to get even modest

health insurance. And, like generations of American workers before them, they have had to overcome

corporate bullying to form unions. I have no doubt about what Samuel or Hosea or Jeremiah would

say to the CEO and shareholders of Walmart. In 1965, American CEOs earned 24 times the salary

of the average employee. In 2005, that ratio was 262. At its peak, before 9/11 and the bursting of the

mortgage bubble, the ratio was as high as 300.73 I have no doubt what Amos would say to the heads

of the Fortune 50. But when was the last time you heard a General Conference sermon about the

evils of Walmart or Enron or AIG or Bank of America or GM? When did you last hear a modern

LDS prophet attack the Republican Party for its opposition to an increase in the minimum wage?

I could go on at great length, but my basic point is clear: to live in today’s society and refuse to

become involved in the messy issues of daily life is in and of itself a political decision of the worst

kind. And it is not the sort of decision that the biblical prophets would have approved of. In

disclaiming the world of “political issues,” most of which in fact have nothing to do with politics, the

Church winks at abuses of power that have always been the primary focus of prophetic action. How

dare we, then, preach the “value” of justice while we ignore the injustice that will be visited upon the

world’s poor by climate change. How dare we talk about love while our way of life guarantees that

hundreds of millions will perish. "e God who spoke through Hosea said, “I have hewn them in

pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth” (Hos. 6:5). "e words of our

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 57 of 90

72 See the scathing exposé of Walmart and other American companies that use minimum wage labor in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.

73 “CEO-to-Worker Pay Imbalance Grows,” Economic Policy Institute, at http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621, visited 12/31/09.

present prophets wouldn’t cut through butter much less bone or sinew. "e disturbing thing about

today’s LDS prophets is that they’re not disturbing.

To preach a prophetic gospel much less a gospel of Jesus Christ, the champion of the poor, without

social and economic, and, yes, political consequences is a contradiction in terms. And, if the

prophets of the Bible are to be believed, it is an o!ense against God. Isn’t this the plain meaning of

the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37)? Who are the real villains of this story? "e

priest and the Levite, the General Authorities of their day. Who is the hero? "e outcast Samaritan,

the man without a temple recommend. And what is the fault of the priest and the Levite? It isn’t

something that they did. It isn’t even something that they thought. It is something they didn’t do, and

didn’t even think to do. "e priest and the Levite are models of orthodox belief and conventional

rectitude, models, in other words, of what the Church today would call “values.” "ey think the

right thoughts and believe the right beliefs. "ey also do the right things, at least as prescribed in

Scripture and tradition. "ey observe the Sabbath, and do their temple work. "ey pay their tithing.

In short, these are not bad men pretending to be good. By ordinary standards, they are good. "ese

men would have had no problem getting a temple recommend. Indeed, they are the ones who in

today’s church would be giving out the recommends. But in Jesus’s story, they’re the bad boys

nonetheless. Of course, none of this is said in so many words. But what sense would the story have if

in fact the priest and the Levite were bad men or obvious hypocrites? So what if a jerk walks past an

injured man? You’d expect that of a jerk. You wouldn’t expect it of a General Authority. "at is Jesus’s

point. In Jesus’s kingdom, goodness that ends at the boundary of the conventional is not what’s

wanted. If all you can muster is conventional goodness, you’re not part of this kingdom.

In Jesus’s day, as in ours, righteousness was measured in terms of orthodoxy and religious observance.

But in Jesus’s teaching, righteousness has little to do with either. While Jesus does not reject

orthodoxy or customary observance, his message is that these are not enough. Never once does Jesus

tell a parable about the importance of proper belief. He seems similarly uninterested in customary

forms of ritual and worship. He does show interest in basic morality. But this is typically just a

starting point for uncovering a deeper kind of morality that his hearers are ignoring, something that

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 58 of 90

goes beyond the conventional. “And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good

thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him...if thou wilt enter into life, keep

the commandments..."e young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth

up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give

to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young

man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions” (Matt. 19: 16-22). If

Jesus were speaking to us today, I suspect he would want to know what the Church is not doing. Or,

to put it positively, what the Church is doing that goes beyond the ordinary. If other good Christians

are doing X, what more than X is the LDS Church doing? And God forbid that the Church should

have to confess that it isn’t even managing X.

Like the Jewish church of Jesus’s day, ours is zealous in belief and zealous in conventional observance.

It spends millions, for example, sending its young men and young women and old men and old

women into the world to preach the gospel. "e Church spends vast amounts of time and money

trying to get people to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he restored the

gospel of Jesus Christ in these latter days. It works hard to get people to believe that the Book of

Mormon is Scripture. It cares a great deal that people recognize today’s successors of Joseph Smith as

prophets, seers, and revelators. "is preaching and believing is what todays LDS prophets apparently

regard as the purpose of the Church. "at is all fine and good. But to what end is all of this earnest

believing and preaching? If it doesn’t result in a dramatically di!erent way of living, who cares what

people believe? In the kingdom of brick and mortar that the prophets preached and that was our

ancestors’ version of Mormonism, what mattered was less what you believed than what you did and

what you and others who shared your faith did together. What mattered was what happened after the

missionizing was done and people gathered to Zion. "e point was ultimately not to tell other

people about the gospel, but to show it to them by living it. "e point was to build Zion.

And how do today’s ordinary Mormons, the world’s most industrious evangelizers, live? Are we as a

people significantly better or indeed any better than the rest of America? Do we — I have to chuckle

as I write this — break the bounds of the conventional? Does Salt Lake City, Utah, distinguish itself

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 59 of 90

when compared with Portland, Oregon, or Madison, Wisconsin, or Boulder, Colorado, or any other

pleasant, well-run city in America? If 50% of Salt Lake City and 60% of Utah is LDS, and if Latter-

day Saints have, as we say, a saving truth, where is the living manifestation of this in Salt Lake City

today? Are we a living example of Zion? To this observer, at least, members of the Church today,

from top to bottom, talk like saints but live like Americans — like typical thoughtless, careless, self-

absorbed Americans, who have done more than any other people to bring the world to the brink of

catastrophe. We profess a belief in the kingdom of God, but, apart from missionizing, have done

nothing since the passing of the generation of first converts to make this kingdom a reality. For those

Saints, there was no dichotomy between preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and living it politically,

economically, and socially. For Brigham Young and his generation, there was no such thing as a

“political” issue that the Church could not and should not tackle. Economics was not o!-limits as a

province of Church action. Social reform was not taboo. Indeed, radical economics and social change

were an essential part of Brigham’s gospel. For Brigham, everything had spiritual meaning, whether

you were talking about getting your endowments, darning your socks, or buying supplies from the

Church-owned co-op. Nor would Brigham have thought it an untouchable “political” issue to attack

government and local business for wanting to turn his Great Basin kingdom or the earth into a

dumping ground. Everything that happened in the community of the Saints was subject matter fit for

the Church to speak and act upon. Brigham too believed that he lived in the last days, and this belief

was cause for urgency, not just to preach the gospel, as the Church does today, but to build a brick

and mortar kingdom that would last a thousand years. Is there anything in contemporary Mormon

society, except the temples that Brigham built, that is likely to last a thousand years? At the rate we’re

destroying things, we won’t last a century.

Today’s Mormon reality is that as a people we’re just average, unforgivably average, if you believe that

of those to whom much is given, much is expected. "is is the inconvenient truth of contemporary

Mormonism. As a commercial institution, the Church has unquestionably succeeded. It belongs, for

example, by many estimates, to the Fortune 250. Not bad for an organization that was on the brink

of collapse in 1890. But the Church is not called to be a commercial success; it is called to be a

model of societal transformation. As a force for such transformation, even on the scale of Salt Lake

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 60 of 90

City much less the world, the Church has unquestionably failed. And, it has failed in spite of massive

missionary work. Why? Because when the missionizing is over, people are still untransformed. "eir

conversion is a kind of head game only. Once I was a Democrat, now I’m a Republican. Once I was

Catholic, now I’m a Mormon. What passes for conversion today is an ideological shell game, because

it is principally about changing one’s beliefs. Until the conversion of the head becomes something

deeper, something that gets people out of their heads and out into the world, the Church is kicking

against the pricks.

"e tragedy of contemporary Mormonism, and the reason I think that it will ultimately fail unless

there is a course correction, is that the Church has chosen to withdraw into disembodied belief,

belief without social consequences, except in the bedroom. To say that the Church’s role ends at the

preaching of “values” is the end of Mormon uniqueness. As I noted at the beginning, what made

early Mormons distinctive was our social gospel, the belief that we are called not only to live pious

lives but to build a new world order. For our ancestors, this was not just ideology, but a battle plan

for constant, concrete, world-shattering action. It was that vision and that kind of action that

brought early Mormons into conflict with their neighbors in Kirtland, in Independence, in Nauvoo,

and in Salt Lake City. "at vision and that willingness to be di!erent has all but disappeared as

Mormons have assimilated into mainstream American society and bought into the devilish notion

that a Church’s proper role is limited to advice on “morality.”

Of all of Mormonism’s so-called “political” issues, the ones today’s ideologically obsessed and

sociologically inert Church seeks to avoid, none cries out for action like climate change. In its

reluctance to become engaged and in its silence on this issue, the Church shows how far it has come,

or, more accurately, regressed, from the brick and mortar gospel of its first generation. "e Church’s

inertia in responding to climate change is a tragedy, not only because of the unimaginable human

su!ering that will result but also because a bold, vigorous response to climate change could be such a

force for positive, spiritual transformation within the Church. For Americans, who generally live

wildly beyond their means, the social revolution that will be required to prevent climate change and

other ecological disasters that are in the o#ng will be the greatest shock we have ever experienced.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 61 of 90

But Mormons have at least the cultural memory of a radically di!erent way of life, the sort of life

that preventing climate change must entail. If any group of people in America can adapt to this way

of life, it is the Mormons. If we will embrace this opportunity, we will find that the exigency of

climate change is the greatest blessing in our history, for in our return to first principles lies the key

to the future success of the Church.

"e key to success as a transformed and transformative organization is precisely that old-fashioned

Zion ideal that our ancestors lived and died for and that Saints in the interim have forgotten about

in their pursuit of comfortable American mediocrity. "e LDS Church, as another moralistic,

conservative, evangelical religion, much less as a successful business, has nothing to o!er the world.

As crass as this sounds in the context of speaking about Zion, let’s look at the issue from the point of

view of a marketing plan. "e Church’s success will be limited by the degree to which it looks and

feels like the other religious “products” on the market. "e more it does so, the lower, ironically, its

appeal. For the Church to succeed in a religious marketplace where people have many options to

choose from, the Church must define for itself a niche. "ere is a superabundance of groups that

preach family values. "ere are plenty of groups that are only too happy to persecute gays and

lesbians. "ere are groups that teach sexual abstinence before marriage. "ere are groups that have

better and more comprehensive dietary restrictions. Now, the Church can preach and practice all of

this, if it wants to, but wherein will it di"erentiate itself from the competition? "e answer is obvious:

in its unique theology of Zion. If the Church will live that, it will become what people wanting the

truly good life will seek out. It will in fact and not just in word be the ensign on the hill, the beacon

in the darkness. And it will succeed.

Here, then, is the great paradox for Latter-day Saints. We can continue with our headlong

assimilation into the American religious mainstream and fail, or we can buck the system and succeed.

We can continue to eliminate every vestige of the church of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, from

polygamy to communitarianism to bold ideas about the nature of man and God, or we can embrace

the past that we’ve been fleeing since 1890 in our desperate attempt to convince Americans that we’re

just like they are. It so happens, however, that those long-discarded and now denigrated ideas like

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 62 of 90

communitarianism are in fact exactly what the world needs. Our poster boys, Mitt Romney and

Glenn Beck, can’t say enough bad things about the “redistribution of wealth,” but that is exactly

what Brigham Young preached as an essential foundation of a Zion society. Until and unless we are

willing to embrace that inconvenient truth and the other radical social inconveniences of our

particular gospel, we have nothing to o!er the world.

So, to summarize thus far, in climate change, the Church faces a seemingly intractable problem that

the political and business world cannot or will not tackle. It’s a problem with both temporal and

spiritual dimensions. It’s a problem that has Apocalypse written all over it. "is looks like a job

tailor-made for prophets to handle.

"us, I come to this conclusion: it is in how the Church responds to climate change that the future of the

Church will be determined. I don’t mean simply that the Church, like every other institution, is

threatened by climate change. I mean that the present crisis is the ultimate turning point for the

Church, the moment in which it will at last start to live up to its theology or shrink into irrelevancy.

As the reality of climate change begins to dawn on an unprepared and sleepy America, the Right,

which has invested its entire energy in opposing e!orts to prevent climate change, will lose its final

vestige of relevance. Churches, which by their action or inaction have allowed the agenda of the

Right to prevent needed social change, will be caught with their pants down, a particularly

unflattering pose for those who claim to be seers. "e choice before the Church now could not be

clearer. It can continue on its present course as the kingdom of devout inertia or it can return to its

roots as the kingdom of faith in radical action.

According to LDS theology, we live in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, when all of God’s

purposes for earth and her inhabitants come to fruition. Chief among these, as far as Latter-day

Saints are concerned, is the divine injunction to build God’s kingdom here and now. "is is not a

kingdom of words and ideas and moral concepts alone but a flesh-and-blood kingdom of

transformed people living their principles. And until such a society exists, until we build it, the

heavenly kingdom of God cannot return to earth.

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"And righteousness will I send down out of heaven...and righteousness...will I cause to sweep the earth...to gather out mine elect...unto a...Holy City...and it shall be called Zion...

"And the Lord said unto Enoch: "en shalt thou and all thy city meet them there...and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other;

"And there shall be mine abode..." (Moses 7:62-64)

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 64 of 90

You seduced me, Yahweh! I’m seduced.You ravished me, and had your way.All day long, they laugh at me, all of them mock me,for when I speak, I cry “Violence,” and “Ruin” when I call out.So I said, “I won’t mention Him, I won’t speak in His name again.”But there was an inferno inside me.I grew weary and couldn’t hold it in.

— Jeremiah 20:7-974

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for youAs yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;"at I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bendYour force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,But am betroth’d unto your enemy;Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,Take me to you, imprison me, for I,Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

— John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 65 of 90

74 Trans. mine. In this interpretation of v. 7, I follow Heschel, op. cit., I:113. Pittîtanî can mean simply “you deceived me,” but the verb also frequently has the connotation of “seduce,” and regularly means this in modern Hebrew. For this use of the word, see Ex. 22:16 [Hebr. 22:15]; Job 31:9; Hos. 2:14 [Hebr. 2:16]. For me, the necessity of this reading comes first of all from the sequence of actions, seduction followed by forcible violation. Simply being deceived does not naturally lead to being overpowered. But being seduced does, particularly in Israelite thinking. "e verse from Hosea is especially instructive: “I’ll beguile her (mephatteyha), lead her into the countryside, and win her heart” (and presumably more than her heart). In Israelite law, a betrothed girl who is violated by someone other than her fiancé inside city limits was presumed to be guilty of adultery and was stoned, on the assumption that she could have called for (and presumably gotten) help. If, however, she claims to have been raped in the countryside, the burden of guilt falls on her attacker alone, because she would have been unable to get help (Deut. 22:23-27). Hosea’s Yahweh, in typically provocative language, proposes to take Israel into the countryside to woo her, where the outcome of the wooing is beyond doubt. "e finer points of philology aside, this is the only reading that makes sense. Jeremiah’s point here is not that he has come to doubt the truth of Yahweh’s message. He is in no ordinary sense deceived. Jeremiah’s complaint is rather that he has become an object of ridicule and hostility, as a floozy is ridiculed and subject to popular outrage. Yahweh’s message is as true as ever, but the people don’t believe it and regard the messenger as an a!ront to public decorum. Jeremiah is exposed as God’s floozy until such time (v. 11) as Yahweh emerges as Prince Charming to save the day and rout Jeremiah’s persecutors, who, unlike Yahweh (tûkhal, v. 7), will not have their way (lo’ yukhálu).

VWith this long prologue, I’d like now to o!er a few elementary ideas about how the Church could

respond appropriately to climate change in ways that are consistent with the its theology and history,

and which could be the first baby steps toward building a Zion society in the 21st century.

1. Establish a five-year plan to make the Church energy-independent through the use of solar panels and

geothermal heating and air-conditioning systems. "is plan would also include steps to make all new

church buildings maximally energy-e#cient, thus reducing and even eliminating the requirements

for heating and air-conditioning. Among the changes to future church buildings would be extensive

use of “passive solar” design principles such as orienting buildings to minimize exposure to summer

sun and to maximize winter sun, designing interior spaces to create convection currents (thus

minimizing the need for fans), use of solar lighting, landscaping that focuses on providing shade in

summer and sun exposure in winter, etc. Behavioral changes would include greater use of buildings

during the day to take advantage of sunlight and minimize electricity requirements for lighting. "e

plan would also outline stringent energy (and water) conservation measures to begin immediately.

Energy independence is not only a matter of protecting society from catastrophic climate change,

but a principle of self-su#ciency that is appropriate at any time. And, it is a principle of prudence,

when our electrical grid is vulnerable to volatile energy prices, natural disasters, and terrorism.

2. Make this energy-independence plan public. Never has there been a greater need for visible

leadership. "e Church as a conservative organization can do this better than any other. "e Israelis

have a saying that, “Only Menachem Begin could go to Cairo.” It is certainly an irony that it was not

the progressive Labor Party that finally brought an end to Israel’s decades-long war with Egypt but

the party led by a man whom many considered little better than a Jewish terrorist. With progress on

climate change being blocked by almost monolithic opposition from Republicans at both the local

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 66 of 90

and the national level, I believe that only a powerful conservative organization can break the

deadlock.

Quite apart from the need to alter the political landscape, however, public action by the Church is

vital for the sake of its membership. If this and the other changes proposed here are to help kindle a

recommitment among members to build a Zion society, then the Church’s acts of leadership must be

bold and they must be public. "e men in the pulpit need to speak with the energy and the

pointedness that Brigham Young did. "at kind of energy has been missing from our pulpits for a

very long time.

3. Create an o#ce of sustainability. "e goal of this o#ce should be to insure that the Church operates

on a 100% carbon-neutral and true-cost basis by 2020, thus more than meeting Lester Brown’s 80%

by 2020 goal. As I’ve already explained, this is not the way the Church or any other institution does

business today. As a non-profit, the Church of course has no reason to externalize costs. But to the

extent that it buys products and services from for-profit companies, the Church necessarily becomes

a party to the dishonesty that is inherent in today’s business world. In a real sense, our way of

externalizing costs is a form of living beyond our means. It is the most insidious form of “bubble”

economics, to which our society appears to be increasingly liable. True-cost accounting insures that

the Church is as honest in its dealings with the living planet as it encourages its members to be in

their day to day lives.

4. Make the existence and purpose of this o#ce public. Only when members see that the Church itself is

committed to sustainable and honest living, will they feel compelled to make the same commitment.

In fact, as part of its publicity around this o#ce, the Church should encourage its members to

institute similar programs in their own businesses.

5. Adopt a “Go-Organic” program for all Church agricultural and ranching operations worldwide, and

make this public. Agriculture contributes substantially to greenhouse gas emissions (about 18% of the

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 67 of 90

total).75 "e imperative for going organic derives not only from the need to prevent catastrophic

climate change (and with it the destruction of agriculture) but also from the fact that we will in any

event run out of oil in the coming century. "is will force a revolution in farming whether we like it

or not, as Cuba experienced in 1990 with the sudden loss of Soviet oil. How Cuba reinvented

agriculture is a model and an inspiration.76 In Havana today, half of the food consumed in the city is

raised within city limits, and 80% of it is organic. "is is a degree of true self-su#ciency that

American cities, the Mormon capital included, can only dream of. And yet, it was the norm in Utah

in the memory of people living today. As in so many respects, our sustainable future will resemble

our sustainable past more than it does the present.77

6. Reinstitute aggressive stake, ward, and home gardening programs. It isn’t only large-scale farming that

is unsustainable. It’s our very diet.78 "e wisdom of the Word of Wisdom, with its counsel to eat meat

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 68 of 90

75 "e percentage attributed to agriculture varies depending on what is included as “agriculture” and what is categorized under some other heading, such as transportation or land use. At the low end of the scale, is the EPA’s 6%, which uses a very restrictive filter for what goes in the agriculture bucket (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads09/GHG2007entire_report-508.pdf ). "e Pew Center, using similar methodology, pegs the number slightly higher at 8%: http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures/us_emissions/usghgemsector.cfm (U.S.) "e 18% number is that of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html. "e di!erence between the high and low numbers lies in the fact that the FAO includes emissions from all sources connected with agriculture, including transportation and land use and land change practices (esp. deforestation), which the EPA treats under separate headings. While not applicable in all respects to the U.S., where deforestation, for example, is not an issue, the FAO’s method is generally the more honest and accurate. Transporting cattle, for example, is an inherent cost of today’s livestock industry. It would appear, for example, on the balance sheet of any farm, and it should therefore be treated as an agricultural contribution separate from that of the larger transportation sector, and so on down the line. Not to do so, again, externalizes the true environmental cost of, say, eating a hamburger or a steak, which turns out to be quite high. "ere’s a useful discussion of the issue at the University of Missouri’s Agricultural Extension, http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=G310.

76 See the documentary, !e Power of Community (http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php). I cannot recommend this extraordinary, life-changing film too highly.

77 For a fascinating look at the sustainable past that lives on in America’s Amish and Mennonite communities, see Eric Brende, Better O": Flipping the Switch on Technology. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Of particular interest is Brende’s observation that in the 15 years that his particular community had been in existence, not one farm had failed, while oil-dependent, technology-heavy American farms were going out of business left and right (162). Indeed, the farmers of this community were debt-free. Farm equipment powered by oil represents a modern farmer’s largest capital investment, and correspondingly one of his greatest liabilities. Also of interest here is the life work of Joel Salatin, a pioneer in sustainable, small-scale farming (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx).

78 Among the many books on this subject, I recommend the following: Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food. New York: Penguin, 2008; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: !e Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Houghton Mi$in, 2001; Richard Robbins, Diet for a New America. Tiburon, CA: H. J. Kramer, 1998. Originally published 1987; Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. 4th Edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2007.

sparingly, becomes more evident every day. And yet, this, arguably the most important element of

the Word of Wisdom as regards both individual health and the environment, is not the aspect of the

Word of Wisdom that we focus on today. If we want to be healthy and to live sustainably, the core of

our diet should be what we raise ourselves, and this, for us, as for most people throughout history, is

grains, fruits, and vegetables, not meat. And Americans can do this as well as Cubans. During World

War II, for example, urban Americans planted “Victory Gardens,” where, it is estimated, we grew

40% of the food consumed nationally.79 "e Church should encourage members to rip out their

lawns and create productive permaculture.

7. Establish a low-cost food co-op program that parallels Deseret Industries. "is co-op program would

provide mostly whole foods from the Church’s own farms where feasible (as in part of Utah,

California, and the Northwest) and from local organic farms where the distance to Church supplies

is prohibitive. "e co-op program would also be a venue in which members could exchange their

own produce from home and community gardens. Healthy, basic foods should be accessible to

everyone in the community without having to spend a fortune. Sadly, today, “junk food” from

chains such as McDonalds is often cheaper than truly nourishing, unprocessed foods. Healthy food

is an even more fundamental necessity than clothing and the other goods that are provided by

Deseret Industries. What a wonderful thing it would be, therefore, for the Church to become known

as the place where people can get back to this fundamental human value. Co-op outlets could be

anything from a Deseret Industries store to a local stake center. "is is also a way for the Church to

positively engage local communities and local skill sets everywhere. As Cubans discovered, not least

of the benefits of their urban gardening revolution was the way that it helped to foster the sense of

neighborhood community. "e Church thus gets the additional benefit of strengthening and being

seen to be strengthening community. "is is practical bridge building, as opposed to trying to

convince people through media alone that the Church is not divisive.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 69 of 90

79 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden, visited 1/19/10. In fact, Victory Gardens by other names (Potato Patches, Liberty Gardens, Depression Relief Gardens) have been a feature of the American urban landscape for over a hundred years. "e story is beautifully told at Sidewalksprouts, http://sidewalksprouts.wordpress.com/history/vg/.

8. Reinvest in Utah agriculture. It’s vital that the Church, as the wealthiest and most powerful

organization in Utah and the one with the most at stake, help to preserve what’s left of Utah’s arable

land as a hedge against hard times and as a surety of self-su#ciency. "e Church’s advocacy of

“provident living,” if it is to be meaningful, must go beyond mere penny pinching in the home. A

community that depends entirely or largely on distant farms and oil-based food distribution systems,

as ours in Utah does, is scarcely provident or self-reliant.

And even if we didn’t have environmental, health, and economic reasons to return to locally grown

food, there is a spiritual imperative. People need to be involved in raising their own food as a

principle of stewardship. We need to reconnect with the earth as the ground of being. Writing in

1947, apostle John Widtsoe, Mormonism’s great exponent of desert agriculture, expressed the

opinion that, “"e people who have descended from the pioneers still cherish the thought that the

majority of the members of the Church are farmers and hope that it may ever be so..."e earnest

belief in farming as the cementing element in all social and economic progress is one of the major

contributions to the world of the people who settled the Western American deserts.”80

As an example, let’s consider Utah fruit. At the peak of production in the 1920s, Utah boasted nearly

2,000,000 fruit trees, most of them located in the stretch of land from Santaquin to Brigham City.

Of all places in the Intermountain West, it turns out, our ancestors picked the only ones where large-

scale, sustainable fruit growing could be practiced.81 In the words of Sam Edgecomb, former head of

Utah State University’s horticulture department, “No place in Canada or the U.S. o!ered the

opportunities for fruit production that were o!ered here in Utah.”82 "is unique resource is being

paved over for shopping malls that will not feed us when times get hard. And even as we plow under

the orchards, we now import apples from China and Japan. What a disgrace! What remains of this

precious land along the Wasatch Front (from Brigham City to Santaquin) should be preserved now.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 70 of 90

80 How the Desert Was Tamed. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1947, 18, 20.

81 "e story, and the reasons for Utah’s uniquely fertile fruit industry, are found in Carrol Firmage, A Land of Milk and Honey: Family, Food, and Faith in Utah (Master’s project, University of Utah, 2009). Carrol and I are presently working on a joint history of Utah agriculture, of which her thesis is a part.

82 Quoted in Clarence Ashton, “Recent Developments in Utah County’s Fruit Industry and Its Future Possibilities” in Eleanor Bishop, ed., Utah Fruit Tree Survey 1965. Salt Lake City: Utah State Dept. of Agriculture, 1965, 28.

And valleys once too cold for agriculture that will become prime agricultural land as climate warms

also need to be preserved. "ese areas include Cache Valley, the Heber-Kamas-Coalville area, and the

corridors along I-15 and Utah Highways 24, 28 and 89, areas that even the federal government now

recognizes as the Mormon legacy.83

9. Lobby for no-growth policies in communities throughout Utah. “Growth for the sake of growth is the

ideology of the cancer cell,” as dear old Ed Abbey used to say. It makes no sense to implement energy

conservation and renewable energy e!orts in part of a community only to have saved energy

swallowed up by continued growth. And the problem of growth extends far beyond energy, though

that is what drives climate change. Here in Utah, we are going to face an enormous challenge in

meeting our water needs and our need for locally grown food, which may well end up (and which

should end up) being the majority of the food we have to eat. Utah must have a population level that

can be sustained using local water and food resources, both of which will be under environmental

stress. If Utah is to be self-sustaining, and in my mind that is what true sustainability in Utah means,

it must preserve remaining arable land for food production. Indeed, some developed land may need

to be returned to agriculture. No-growth is a step in this direction. And it will have other immediate

benefits. "e Wasatch Front already has some of the unhealthiest air in the U.S. "e prospect of

adding another 500,000 people to the Salt Lake valley, as anticipated by some, staggers the

imagination.

An example of the desperate, if politically unlikely, need for no-growth policies is Washington

County, which until the recent recession was often first or second on the list of fastest-growing

metropolitan areas in the United States. At present, unlike other fast-growing desert areas such as

Phoenix and Las Vegas, Washington County is able to meet its water needs without the use of

Colorado River water. Given the likelihood (discussed above) that the Colorado will not be able to

support the present much less the future population of the Southwest, this is a state of a!airs that

must continue. But this is not what Washington County leaders want. "ey foresee as much as a

three-fold increase in the area’s population by mid-century. To power that growth after they have

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 71 of 90

83 As indicated in the recent historic highway designation of the same name.

exhausted local water resources, they propose to build a pipeline to carry Colorado water to St.

George. If they are successful, southern Utah is set for compounded disaster, because it is destroying

whatever native resiliency, whatever natural reserve, it would otherwise have to respond to climate

change. What’s more, if the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline is built, and if, as seems almost certain,

the promised water proves to be temporary, Washington County will be saddled with a $1 billion

debt that the local water utility will have to bear. In a word, the moment Washington County gets its

first drop of Colorado River water, it signs its own death warrant.

10. Establish a Perpetual Energy Fund to enable members to make their own homes energy-independent.

Apart from ignorance and inertia, the biggest impediment to the popular adoption of solar energy

and geothermal heat pumps is their high up-front cost, which for most existing home owners is still

prohibitive, though it is declining. My term Perpetual Energy Fund — the pun is deliberate —

derives from the Mormon institutions of the Perpetual Immigration Fund and the Perpetual

Education Fund that respectively helped Mormon immigrants get to Utah and to get an education.

What I have in mind is a Church-sponsored financial system that fronts money for clean energy

investments and that are paid back from what would otherwise go to the utility. "is kind of thing

seems to me to be an incomparably better way to spend Church money and Church-raised

investment than building a new chapel. "is is a real investment in the flock.

In parallel with the Perpetual Energy Fund for existing homes, the Church should encourage the

passage of city and state ordinances requiring all new homes in Utah to have both solar and

geothermal systems, the cost of which, when amortized over the lifetime of the home, make them

not only a!ordable but a sound economic investment. Builders presently have no incentive to install

such systems, because, as I noted above, there is no market-based mechanism for recognizing the true

cost of the alternative. As long as that remains true, the only way to get us moving is through

regulation. And here in Utah, that will require action by the Church, because our political leaders are

among the least environmentally savvy and progressive in the world.

11. Encourage members to dramatically reduce their environmental impact. "is needs to be done not as

one instruction among many, but as part of a call for all hands on deck. It needs to be preached with

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 72 of 90

the intensity that drove Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball in their sermons of the retrenchment

movement in the late 1850s. "e challenge we face today is in fact far more serious than any faced by

the early saints after their initial settlement here. But we are not presenting the situation as a crisis.

Indeed, Church leadership does not yet perceive that there is a crisis.

In fact, what we need is a new Word of Wisdom that defines us today and for the future as essentially

as its predecessor has for the last century and a half. What purpose is there in encouraging saints to

keep the present Word of Wisdom if they ignore the even bigger threat to their health that looms in

climate change? "e message that members need to hear from the pulpit is that climate change is

real, that it is the problem of our time, that changing our way of life is not only a practical but also a

moral necessity, and that such change is part and parcel of building Zion here and now.

In the 2007 letter that I wrote to counselor "omas S. Monson, I included a sample First Presidency

message that might launch a shift in the way the Church deals with the issues presented here.

“When Joseph Smith revealed the Word of Wisdom in 1833, he could scarcely have imagined how

this list of basic dos and don’ts for healthy living, given, as the Doctrine & Covenants puts it, “not by

commandment” but as words of counsel ‘adapted to the capacity of…the weakest of all saints,’

would subsequently define Latter-day Saints as a people. A century since the early Church’s most

distinctive practices such as the United Order and polygamy disappeared, what defines LDS people

today in the eyes of the world is the fact that we abstain from co!ee, alcohol, and tobacco. In

addition to defining us as a people, as any peculiar practices might, observance of the Word of

Wisdom also in fact makes us healthy. No one imagines the Word of Wisdom to be the last word on

healthy living. But it commits us as Saints to being concerned about health. "at commitment has

had unexpected, far-reaching, and defining consequences for us as a people.

“"e story of the Word of Wisdom is a lesson for life. "e simple things we do each day are often the

most important things of all. Taking care of our bodies, raising happy families, performing daily acts

of kindness — these are real Christian living. What these things have in common, and what defines

them as essentially Christian, is the attitude of love. As the apostle James said, pure religion is not a

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 73 of 90

matter of belief but of love in action (James 1:27). "e prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years earlier, had

said much the same thing, ‘To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices’ — we might say

church meetings, fast o!erings, or temple endowments — ‘…who hath required this at your hand?

…Learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the

widow’ (Isa. 1:11,12,17).84 Jesus’s final charge to the Twelve was simply ‘feed my sheep.’ "e message

of these and countless, similar passages from biblical and modern prophets is that God is concerned

less with what we believe than with how we live. Are we in deed as well as in word good stewards of

the life He has given us?

“In that spirit, we encourage the Saints to take thought for their responsibility to the earth and to the

generations of beings of all kinds who have yet to inhabit the earth. We live in a time when our own

success as a species has put unprecedented stress on the earth, upon which we all depend for our very

life. From the beginning, God has taught us that the earth is not ours but His, and that our use of

the earth is conditioned upon exercising the restraint and love that God Himself shows to us and to

all of His other living creations. God’s gift of the world to us — our ‘dominion’ — is our chance to

prove that we can govern ourselves with forbearance and wisdom and treat the earth with love. Our

failure to do so carries its own punishment, as well as the anger of God.

“We o!er the following suggestions as a word of wisdom for our time, as counsel for those who call

themselves saints. We encourage you to take these suggestions not as the limit of our responsibility

towards the earth but as the beginning of a life rededicated to wise and sustainable use of the

miraculous home that God has given us. "e earth is here not for our profit but as a source of

happiness and well-being for us and for other living things, who, like us, are under commandment

from God to fill the measure of their creation. Let us become a people as noted for their prudent and

loving care of the earth as for their good health, for these two qualities of saintly living cannot

ultimately be separated.”

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 74 of 90

84 "e overwhelming weight of the prophetic message is precisely on these simple manifestations of caring that have absolutely nothing to do with belief, dogma, or ideology. Cf., among many examples, Amos 2:6-7; 5:11-12; 8:11; Isa. 42:1-4; 56:1; Jer. 22:15-16.

"is message was the introduction to what I proposed could be a Church-published pamphlet listing

what I called “ten steps for good stewards,” ten simple, low- and no-cost actions that ordinary

members could take to begin reducing their carbon footprint. I won’t try readers’ patience by listing

or discussing them here, but the document is available online for anyone who is interested.85

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 75 of 90

85 [URL to be supplied.]

VINo bitterness: our ancestors did it."ey were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too."eir children will learn to hope for a Caesar.Or rather — for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists —Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keepPoverty and Carthage o! until the Romans arrive.We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.

— Robinson Je!ers86

Before wrapping up, let me anticipate and try to answer some objections to the agenda that I’ve

proposed here. "e biggest likely objection, that this is a “political” issue and therefore outside the

proper bounds of Church action, has already been addressed at length. Let me take some of the lesser

objections one by one.

1. We’re in the last days. All of this, however, painful, is part of God’s plan. It has been foreseen by prophets

and can’t be stopped. "ere are, of course, those such as myself who doubt that this has been foreseen,

who in fact would say that it is not foreseeable. But approaching the question from the vantage point

of LDS belief, I reply that we’ve been living in the last days since the Church was founded in 1830,

and that living in the last days has never been a legitimate reason for not doing the best we can. On

the contrary, living now, as one sees in the verse from the Book of Moses quoted above, is a mandate

to build a radically better society. And until that society exists, the end of this phase of earth’s

existence cannot come. We may be living at the end of time, but the final curtain won’t fall until we

finish the work that we’ve been assigned, which is to build Zion.

On a more practical level, consider the exemplary life of our pioneer ancestors, who were chased

from three cities before they came to Salt Lake, and who, even after arriving here, were often called

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 76 of 90

86 “Ave Caesar,” in Ellmann, ed., op. cit., 547.

to leave yet again and settle some remote corner of the Mormon hinterland. Wherever they went, for

however short a time, they built to stay. "ey built sustainable, beautiful communities. "e women

of Nauvoo, for instance, ground up their china to make the temple walls sparkle, and they did this

knowing that they would soon have to leave the temple forever.

One of the most inspiring little stories along this line is that of Lorenzo Young, Brigham’s brother. In

the spring of 1848, a year after his arrival in the Salt Lake valley, Lorenzo planted seed for 40,000

apple trees. Shortly after the trees sprouted, the Mormons experienced the first of several infestations

of crickets, which ate all but 17 of Lorenzo’s 40,000 apple tree sprouts. Undaunted, in 1849 Lorenzo

decided to try a di!erent approach. He returned to St. Louis and purchased 200 sapling trees, which

he planted in a special wagon filled with dirt. He then set o! for Salt Lake. By the time he arrived, all

but three of his saplings were dead. Such was the heartbreaking, backbreaking beginning of Utah’s

thriving fruit industry. Lorenzo had every reason to give up, and could well have said, as I have heard

many Latter-day Saints say to me, that it doesn’t really matter what we do now because we live at the

end of things. God will take care of the present mess. "is attitude is a denial of everything our

pioneer ancestors stood for. In short, my answer to this objection is to hold up the life of Brigham

Young and his fellow saints, for whom living at the end of things simply meant that they had to get

busy.

2. !e Church is now a global institution and cannot think narrowly in terms of action focused on Utah.

"e Church does indeed have a global responsibility, and what is proposed here is for the Church to

act globally. But, the Church is uniquely positioned to make a di!erence in Utah, where over 60% of

the residents are LDS. Nowhere else does the Church have such popular and political leverage. "e

Church should do most where it can have the most impact, and that is here in Utah. More

importantly, by creating a model community in Utah, the Church achieves the most important

possible goal: to show the world how a community can become sustainable. A small number of

individuals can live sustainably in isolation. But that is not an answer for the world. "e world needs

to see a way for everybody to live.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 77 of 90

3. We can’t a"ord it. "e Church is in the process of spending at least $1 billion on Salt Lake City’s

Downtown Rising project, which benefits mostly those living in Salt Lake. It’s a worthy project for

reinvigorating Salt Lake’s economy. But, it’s hardly a mission to save the world. If the Church is

willing to spend this much money on a business venture that benefits few, how can it possibly reject

a proposal that benefits an entire nation, and that could well, as a catalytic example, save the world?

"is objection is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

"e bottom line in any event is that we can’t a!ord not to. "e consequence of failure will be the

devastation of Utah and of the world and the loss of everything we think we’ve saved by refusing to

do anything now. At some point, as the e!ects of climate change and peak oil start to squeeze the

world, the Church, like all institutions, may find that it no longer has the means to act. "e Church

must act now while it has the means. It must act now while it can still make a di!erence.

4. We’re already doing many of the things you talk about. Not by long shot. "e Church, for example,

recently formed what it calls the Global Energy Management Committee, which is apparently

charged with creating an energy plan that includes renewables. And the Church has begun work on

three pilot solar chapels here in Utah. "is is a good beginning. But the Church is moving far too

slowly and deliberately, and it is moving in secret. I doubt that any of the readers of this journal, for

example, will have heard of either of these energy initiatives of the Church. As I’ve said, it is

imperative that the Church act publicly if it intends to bring the LDS populace along with it on the

journey to community resilience. From my perspective, until the Church has a plan to become

carbon-neutral across the whole spectrum of its operations by 2020, it is not doing enough. Until the

Church is 100% carbon-neutral, it is not doing enough. And until all active Church members can

say that they too are carbon-neutral, the Church is not doing enough. If from this moment, the

Church erects a single new building that isn’t carbon-neutral, the Church is not doing enough. And,

if the Church isn’t shouting this message from the rooftops, it is not doing enough.

"e Church has extensive and admirable welfare and preparedness programs. But these should not be

confused with the kind of community resilience that I’m talking about. "e Church’s existing

programs will not begin to meet the long-term needs of members should systems begin collapsing as

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 78 of 90

scientists project. "e only way to respond appropriately to climate change is to prevent it. To the

extent that members feel “prepared” for climate change as they’re prepared for a two-week power

outage, their preparedness is an impediment to the kind of change that must now occur. In this

respect, the Church’s existing programs may give a false sense of security. If they prevent the

sweeping changes I’ve talked about, they will have done the Church the greatest possible harm.

5. In spite of what you say, we don’t believe that climate change is the earth-shattering problem you say it

is, so we’re not going to put our money into preventing it. It may be that I and 97% of the world’s

climate scientists are wrong. But what if we’re not? By the time we accept beyond a shadow of doubt

that the scientists were right, we will have passed the tipping points. If that happens, we’re

committed to catastrophic change no matter what we do. "e risks are therefore totally asymmetric.

If we act now, and climate change isn’t what we think it is, we’ve spent a lot of money to buy energy

self-su#ciency and community resilience. "at’s by no means a bad deal. If, however, we don’t act

and climate change is catastrophic, we will live to see our civilization and all of the money we “saved”

disappear. "e prudent decision seems utterly obvious.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 79 of 90

My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!Oh, the walls of my heart!My heart beats wildly;I cannot keep silent;For I hear the sound of the trumpet,"e alarm of war,Disaster follows hard on disaster,"e whole land is laid waste...

My grief is beyond healingMy heart is sick within me....For the wound of my beloved people is my heart wounded,I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.Is there no balm in Gilead?Is there no physician there?Why then has the health of my beloved peopleNot been restored?O that my head were waters,And my eyes a fountain of tears,that I might weep day and nightFor the slain of my beloved people!...Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem,Or who will bemoan you?Who will turn asideTo ask about your welfare?

— Jeremiah 4:19-20; 8:18-9:1 [Hebr. 8:18-23]87

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 80 of 90

87 Trans. Heschel, op. cit., I:120-121.

Conclusion“"is is what the prophets discovered. History is a nightmare...What saved the prophets from despair was their messianic vision and the idea of man’s capacity for repentance.”88

Zion, by definition, turns its back on business as usual. It is the quintessential expression of the

challenge that biblical prophecy and early Christianity were in their time to the always inadequate

status quo. Amplifying on Kierkegaard’s ironic observation that “Christianity has completely

conquered — that is, it is abolished,” Harold Bloom observes that you “become a Christian only in

opposition to the established order.”89 "e same could be said of becoming a son of Israel according

to the prophets, who decried the “the coalition of callousness and authority.”90

For the LDS Church today to realize its full potential, it too must o!er a clear alternative to our

present way of life, not only in “morals” but in every dimension of life. It too must o!er a vision not

only of individual goodness but also of societal redemption. Plenty of other churches preach morals

and goodness as the LDS do. What will make us di!erent is the comprehensive, unifying idea of an

alternative society. One sixth of Americans today live below the poverty line in the richest and most

professedly Christian nation on earth. Millions more, including many Mormons, are without access

to a!ordable health care. As a nation, we are increasingly subject to the diseases of excess and self-

indulgence. Our air and our water are polluted due to unprincipled devotion to the profit motive at

all costs. And now, towering over all of these evils is the specter of climate change, which is the

profoundest expression of the human capacity for destruction (and self-destruction) ever. For the

Church not to speak out on these problems and especially on the problem of problems is an

abnegation of its prophetic responsibility. For Church leaders to call themselves prophets and not to

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 81 of 90

88 Heschel, op. cit., I:185.

89 Jesus and Yahweh. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005, 27.

90 Heschel, op. cit., I:16.

be the outraged and vocal opponents of the status quo that the biblical prophets were is to make

mice of the lions of the Lord. One expects more. “"e prophet is a person who, living in dismay, has

the power to transcend his dismay. Over all the darkness of experience hovers the vision of a di!erent

day.”91 Today’s LDS prophets must have and communicate such a vision. A prophetic church, if it

takes its biblical mandate seriously, must likewise be something vocally, visibly, and radically

di!erent.

Not least of the characteristics of the alternative lifestyle that the Church must represent is joy.

Latter-day Saints are unusual in regarding joy as one of the purposes of being. But, for joy to have

meaning, the Church must fight to insure that the ground of being is not destroyed. We need the joy

that can come only from clean air and water, healthy food, and a beautiful environment. We need

the joy that can only come from living at peace with the earth. Our dependence on fossil fuels

threatens all of these. Climate change threatens life itself.

"e world must change, and the Church, as the institution that claims to represent God, must lead

the change. In this crisis or any other, slow, incremental change is not only inappropriate, it is

morally indefensible. Incremental change is the political and commercial norm, but it is not the

proper response to crisis and it is not the way of repentance. “Others may be satisfied with

improvement, the prophets insist upon redemption.”92 "e Lord asks us not to gradually abandon

sin, but to forsake it all at once. “And another of his disciples said...Lord, su!er me first to go and

bury my father. But Jesus said...Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead” (Matt. 18:21). In other

words, “Come follow me NOW.”

"e imperative of building the kingdom of God brooks no delay. God will not tolerate our

continued refusal to build his kingdom. Earth also has a non-negotiable deadline for us. We either

meet it, or perish. God and his creation call upon us to forsake our ignorance, selfishness, greed, and

arrogance, which are the root causes of the present crisis.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 82 of 90

91 Heschel, op. cit. I:185.

92 Heschel, op. cit., I:181.

If we will do this, we can change our society in undreamed-of ways for the better. "is is the silver

lining of climate change. Real transformation, whether of individuals or of society, always occurs in

times of crisis. We face the greatest crisis of all time. We therefore have an opportunity like no other

in history to create the new kingdom and the new man that Jesus and the prophets preached so

many lifetimes ago.

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Each evening God takes his shining waresfrom the shop window —mystical chariots, covenant tablets, pearls of great price,luminous crosses and bells —and returns them to dark boxesinside and closes the shutters. “Again,not one prophet came to buy.”

— Yehuda Amichai93

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 83 of 90

93 From “Poems of the Land of Zion and Jerusalem,” Amichai, op. cit., 85. "e translation here is mine. I’ve taken a small liberty with pnînîm yaphôt that I hope LDS readers will appreciate. It seemed particularly apt under the circumstances.

Appendix 1:

A Profile of Early Mormon Community94

Perhaps no other factor was more important in the ultimate survival of the Mormon people than

their collective identity, a sense of belonging to a peculiar community that borders on the ethnic. In

his study of the Mormon village, based on settlement records of towns such as Escalante, Ephraim,

American Fork, and Cardston, Lowry Nelson, son of Mormon homesteaders in Ferron, Utah, and

later professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, identified a number of attributes of the

typical early Mormon community, of which the following eight are perhaps the most crucial.95

1) At settlement, land was distributed equally by lot, with no preference being given on the basis of

ecclesiastical or social rank.

2) Holdings were small (< 25 acres) so that all members of the community could own land.

3) "e Mormon pattern of settlement was unique in the West and especially unusual among farming

communities in dividing land into three di!erent types. Each settler received a small holding,

typically 1% acres, inside the town for a residence, vegetable garden, and orchard. In addition, each

resident received another plot of about five acres outside the town for raising animals and grain. In

Salt Lake City, this outlying agricultural area was known as the “Big Field.” Finally, everyone in the

community had rights in common land still farther outside the town where livestock could graze.

"is pattern of land use encouraged the development of tightly knit communities in which people

associated with one another on a daily basis in town. "is form of town life stands in stark contrast

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 84 of 90

94 For this material, I am indebted to my wife’s master’s thesis, A Land of Milk and Honey: Family, Food, and Faith in Utah, cited above.

95 !e Mormon Village. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1952.

to that of much of the frontier West where homes were located miles from one another and where

town life took a backseat to farm life.

"e notion of fundamental equality among the residents of a town was taken at times to strange

lengths. For example, to insure equal access to common land, residents of some towns mandated that

no one could use the commons before a certain date. On that date, the town would hold a dance to

which everyone was invited. Only when the dance was done, were people allowed to go out and

stake their temporary “claim” to a portion of the commons. In this way, everyone literally started

from the same point with equal odds of access to any part of the commons. After a certain point in

the fall, the commons was thrown open so that anyone could graze their animals anywhere.

4) All town residents shared responsibility for building forts, roads, irrigation ditches, and other

public works and public buildings.

5) In larger towns, the Church established cooperative wholesale stores to provide a market for

exchange. "ese were not commercial stores in the usual sense. "eir intent, as illustrated by the

reaction of Charles Smith to the introduction of the coop program, was in fact to prepare the saints

for the fullness of the communitarian Gospel, the “United Order of Enoch,” that was shortly to

come.

“I went to Ward meeting Bro A M Musser and G Q Cannon occupied the time. !ey spoke upon this

matter of our trading with those who are not of us. He shewed the advantages from our cooperating

putting our means together...!is movement was intended to make us more united to bring us closer

together, according to the pattern of the Gospel. Bro Cannon Said it was very evident that men were

Seecking to get rich and build themselves up, and to form that distinction of class in society, which

thing was an abomination in the sight of God. He referred to the Nephites shewing that when they

began to get rich they Drew o" in Classes and despised the poor. !is matter to which our attention

was now being called would bring about good results, and would prepare the minds of the people, to

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 85 of 90

receive further those principles that pertained to the order of Enoch...At the close of the meeting

subscriptions were handed in to carry forward the movement of a cooperative Wholesale Store.”96

6) Agriculture, which formed the basis for all Mormon communities, though it became in time a

business, was first and foremost a matter of subsistence and self-su#ciency. "is modality continued

well into the 20th century. Writing in 1947 for the state’s centennial history, Arvil Stark, former

secretary of the Utah State Horticultural Society, observed, “In general, the commercial orchards are

small, averaging less than 5 acres in size and the fruit crop is usually associated with other kinds of

agriculture to make a diversified agriculture. In other words, farming in Utah is usually a way of life

rather than the highly specialized business characteristic of some other areas.”97

7) In most cases, towns were not created helter-skelter by individuals seeking their own place to settle

down. Instead, the Church would “call” people, that is, request them, to settle an area in order to

promote Mormon control of essential territory. Members of each “mission” were chosen for their

particular skills so as to provide an e!ective basis for self-sustaining communities all around the

Mormon pale. "us, personal empire building was subordinated to that of the kingdom of God. It

was not unheard-of for people to be called to settle one area only to be asked in subsequent years to

move to another.

8) "e culmination of the Mormon communitarian experiment was the heroic, if short-lived,

attempt at true religious communism known as the United Order of Enoch, or United Order for

short. In this system, individuals voluntarily gave all of their property to the Church and received

back what they needed to live on. All surplus was distributed within the community. "is form of

communism was never universally practiced, nor was it mandatory even in places where it was

attempted. Nonetheless, the attempt itself indicates the tendency within the early LDS Church

toward community.98

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 86 of 90

96 Diary of Charles Smith, 1819-1905, Typescript BYU, quoted in Leonard Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska, 298. Punctuation is original.

97 “History of Growing Fruit in Utah.” Utah: A Centennial History. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1949, 1:114.

98 See the chapter on Orderville in Wallace Stegner’s Mormon Country. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska, 1942, the most beautiful evocation of Mormon life prior to WWII ever written.

No detail was too mundane for consideration in Brigham Young’s United Order, because the Order,

as the truest manifestation of the Gospel, encompassed all aspects of life, even the trivial, and

ennobled them by putting them in the context of the bigger objective toward which the saints were

striving.

Instead of having every woman getting up in the morning and fussing around a cookstove...for two or

three or half a dozen persons, [Young] said, he would have a village dining hall a hundred feet long

with a cooking room and bakery attached. !is would mean that most of the women could spend their

time profitably making bonnets, hats, and clothing, or working in factories. Confusion in the dining

hall could be avoided by installing a system by which each person could telegraph his order to the

kitchen, and this order would be conveyed to him by a little railway under the table. “And when they

have all eaten, the dishes are piled together, slipped under the table, and run back to the ones who

wash them”...In order to remove the laborious burden of big family washings, he suggested they have

cooperative laundries. !ese would not only relieve the women from drudgery, but would also “save the

husbands from steamy walls, soap suds, and ill-temper.

!e community would eat together, pray together, and work together...

“Half the labor necessary to make the people moderately comfortable” under their present

arrangements, he said, would make them “independently rich under this system. A society like this,” he

concluded, “would never have to buy anything; they would always make and raise all they would eat,

drink and wear...”99

Part beer hall, part chapel, Brigham’s dining room and its toy railroad illustrate the degree to which

he was willing to rethink every aspect of conventional life, especially when it came to the family. "is

vision of a Mormon communal utopia, though conceived with an entirely di!erent purpose in mind,

and the attempts that were made to bring the vision into life anticipate the longer-lived, but also

only partly successful experiment of the Israeli kibbutz (literally, “collective”).

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 87 of 90

99 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 326, paraphrasing and quoting Brigham Young’s sermon of Oct. 9, 1872.

To these attributes of the Mormon village, I would add one more. Not unlike the kibbutzniks, but

modeling themselves on a much older Palestinian paradigm, the Mormons were also bound to their

land in a way that was in theory at least and often in reality quite di!erent from that of other

Americans. To begin with, Mormons viewed themselves as players in a sacred drama, in which the

land and their relationship to it are defined by Scriptural precedent. "ey thought of themselves

quite literally as the children of Israel, descendants of the Twelve Tribes being gathered in at the end

of time. To this day, Mormons receive “patriarchal blessings” in which they are told the tribe of Israel

from which they descend. "us, their persecution in Illinois was necessary to separate these children

of Israel from “the world” (the flesh pots of Egypt, etc.). "eir journey westward was the analogue of

Israel’s exodus, the Great Basin was their promised land, and Brigham Young their Moses. And here

in the Great Basin, they would not only settle and at last enjoy freedom from persecution but would

also build the Kingdom of God. "is was no mundane search for a home but a mission imposed on

them by God. "e city of the saints or rather the cities of the saints were therefore no ordinary

settlements but rather outposts of Zion, harbors, like Yehuda Amichai’s Jerusalem, on the shore of

eternity. Like the Israelites, the early Mormons believed that their occupation of this land was by

divine concession, and therefore subject at all times to God’s pleasure. Failure to live up to their part

of the covenant with God would jeopardize their entitlement to the land.

But the sense that God had called them to settle here also had a more immediate justification, for, as

I’ve noted, many were in fact called by their church leaders to settle specific areas. And those who

were not called to settle an area may have had reason nonetheless to regard their presence there as a

sort of divine test. As a result, many original settlers and their descendants remained even when

conditions deteriorated to the point of disaster. Describing the extraordinarily challenging years of

the Dust Bowl in Utah’s marginal areas, Brian Cannon writes:

...decades following his removal from the town of Widtsoe, one farmer recalled a promise made by

Mormon apostle Melvin J. Ballard to the community’s residents. !e valley would be a Garden of

Eden if its inhabitants kept God’s commandments and stayed out of debt, Ballard had prophesied. If

they did not do so, it would be taken from them. Ballard’s words had infused the land with sacred

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 88 of 90

meaning, rendering the valley a symbolic link between the area’s residents and God. Remembering that

promise, the people clung to their land as long as they physically could. To move away was to admit

spiritual as well as temporal failure. Although all but two families eventually moved away, some

former residents of the area still remember that promise, speak of their valley reverently, make annual

pilgrimages to it, and speculate that it may one day blossom.100

In these ways and in the equally radical attempt to redefine marriage, early Mormonism was the

antithesis of the American dream. No sharper contrast can be imagined than that which existed

between the Mormonism of the United Order period and its contemporaneous American

counterpart, the Gilded Age. At the very point in time when capitalism and not-so-enlightened self-

interest were transforming America into an industrial and commercial paradise (if that isn’t a

contradiction in terms), Brigham Young was preaching sermons such as the following:

Let the calicoes be on the shelves and rot, I would rather build buildings every day and burn them

down at night, than have traders here communing with our enemies outside and keeping up a hell all

the time and raising devils to keep it going… We can have enough [hell] of our own, without their

help… We sincerely hope that the time is not far distant when the people will supply their own wants

and manufacture their own supplies; then and not until then will we become independent of our

enemies.101

Brigham’s chief enemy was capitalism, and his kingdom would be its ultimate victim.

In no other place in the West did Europeans create such a legacy of sustainable community. As a

result, it is quite nearly true that there are no Mormon ghost towns. "e Mormons came to stay.

"ey are the West’s ultimate “stickers,” as Stegner felicitously called them. In the years before WWII,

even with the encroachments of capitalist America, Utah had achieved a high degree of the self-

su#ciency that Brigham Young so earnestly sought. "e state produced, for example, enough food of

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 89 of 90

100 “Struggle against Great Odds: Challenges in Utah’s Marginal Agricultural Areas, 1925-1939. Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (1986), 320.

101 Brigham Young to H. S. Eldredge, November 20, 1858. Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, March 28, 1858, as cited in Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 196.

all types to meet its needs and more.102 And, despite being the second-driest state in the nation, it

had developed water resources more than su#cient for its needs, without the help of the Bureau of

Reclamation. Indeed, the Bureau’s e!orts by comparison are a colossal failure. "e Mormons actually

accomplished what the Bureau never did, despite its mandate to do so: a reclamation of desert land

for the small-scale farmer.

Firmage, Light in Darkness, 90 of 90

102 H. H. Bancroft, History of Utah. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1964, 720.