The Bloodwood Tree

January and February of 2009 have seen new records in extreme temperatures for South Eastern Australia. These temperatures combined with the dwindling rainfall totals have been hitting the trees hard - dying trees are becoming a more frequent part of the landscape. None of this should come as a surprise, we’ve been warned of it for over a century now with increasing frequency. When Arvid Gustav Högbom warned the world in 1894 that the amount of coal we were burning would warm the climate his thoughts were considered an interesting novelty. When I first heard of global warming around 20 years ago, many people thought the idea that the climate would warm this much was laughable. When in more recent years it became clear that the warming was happening exactly as predicted, those same voices were saying the warming was natural and only to be expected.

Most recently, we have for the first time a Prime Minister that is prepared to accept the evidence in front of him but has to build our much belated response in a climate of (pending?) recession. Consequently, we’re stuck with too little too late. We’re cutting emissions a little but if the rest of the world doesn’t do a lot better than us, the heatwaves are going to get worse, the rainfall will continue to fall and the trees will starve for water more and more often. Not only will our landscape become increasingly covered in dead trees, but we’re going to see more and more Black Saturday fires.

Into the midst of this come the Koalas. Koalas which can normally get all the moisture they need from leaves were becoming overheated and dehydrated. Their response? Many left the forests and came to humans for help - humans that clear their habitats, humans with dogs that chase wildlife, humans with breath that smells of meat. It seems that stronger than the instinct to avoid a powerful carnivore is some other deeper instinct that tells them to come to us for help. I don’t know the details, but it does remind me again just what our place is.

The Biblical world view puts humans in a separate category to animals. Animals have only their own survival to consider: humans are held responsible for the survival of every species on earth. So when our self-interest leads us to live lives that destroy those species, the Biblical word for it is sin. The Bible says that the earth mourns to God, its suffering breaks his heart. Common sense tells us to expect droughts, fires, floods and other natural disasters until we get our priorities right, but because God is love, he has his own ways of reminding us about the things that matter. So the Koalas come out of the trees and quietly ask for our help.

My suggestion? Time to examine our lifestyles and get our priorities right. I think that repentance might involve using tools like this one to find out how we can waste less and live more responsibly. Have a look at my little video and think it over.