What Does Judaism Really Say About Climate Change?
In almost every matter, Jews have always been ingenious at applying the eternal wisdom of our traditions to the most pressing issues of every era. What has such extrapolation yielded on the issue of climate change?
So far, almost nothing.
If "Climate Change" is indeed the most urgent challenge that humanity faces, this is extraordinary.
Now I risk immediately being branded as a sceptic or a climate change denier, but that is the defense of fools who are convinced of their own folly and unwilling to look carefully at the facts.
The whole Global warming scare campaign whose foundation is the allegation that it is up to us to meet this challenge and thus determine whether or not we leave a livable biosphere on planet Earth to our children and grandchildren is faulty logic, and an extreme example of human vanity.
Stop. Think. Reason. Do you really think that we, mere mortals who have such limited understanding of the Cosmos are in charge?
The very creation of the tiniest microscopic living organism is still beyond our capabilities, yet man has the audacity and temerity to think that it is actually ourselves who control our planet and our destiny.
This is not to suggest by any means that the Torah permits us to wantonly destroy any of the Lord's creation, or to waste the precious materials that He has supplied to us in such bountiful quantities.
Of course we must not pollute. Of course we must care for our environment.
If we are truly damaging the air that we breathe or the ground that we sow, there are three Talmudic Tractates on the subject of damages which teach us about our responsibility for stopping and making good any damage that we are doing to our global neighbors.
But is it really through through excessive CO2 emissions? This is by no means proven. There are other very plausible theories that link warming on our planet and incidentally on other planets in our solar system to Cosmic radiation and its influence on our sun. The fact that Al Gore was awarded a prize or that thousands of scientists have "jumped on the bandwagon" does not make it right! Many hundreds of educated and respectable researchers have the complete opposite view. Might and sheer numbers does not make one view correct and another false! Galileo and Einstein amongst other great minds have proved that it is not the number who "hold" an opinion that determines who is correct, but the quality of the reasoning.
There is absolutely no doubt that our planet has experienced numerous periods of both warming and cooling.
(An acknowledgment that our planet is millions of years old, and that Dinosaurs once roamed and probably ruled the earth is not incompatible with Jewish belief- which refers specifically to the age of man).
That these periods of climate change took place long before the first man ever existed is also without question.
We certainly have some influence on our atmosphere, one has only to look at the fog that covered some cities just one hundred years ago, or the haze that hangs today over many cities today to realize that that pollution is not healthy and that we have an obligation through the cardinal Jewish principle of pikuah nefesh, (to save a life) that should galvanize us into doing something about a problem that could cost hundreds of millions of lives in the next century?
But lets not get carried away.The force of just a single volcanic eruption, earthquake, hurricane dwarfs all human pollution by many thousandfold each year.
We are not on charge, Hakkadosh Baruchu ( the Lord almighty) is!
The Climate does change. It always has and probably always will, long after man has ceased to exist.
Perhaps this is the reason that Climate Change is not mentioned in the Torah.
