On June 12, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, home to the two holiest Muslim sites: Mecca and Medina. The Saudi leaders whom he met control the world’s largest oil deposits, produce and sell the most oil, and are supported by the Saudi Supreme Council of Religious Clergy.
Tomorrow, Trump will head to Jerusalem, a holy city for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. There he will meet with Israeli leaders, who are developing huge gas reserves off Israel’s coast. They are also supported by religious clergy— this time the Orthodox Jewish political parties. On Wednesday, he will meet with Pope Francis in Vatican City. Despite Pope Francis’ groundbreaking Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home”, as well as the efforts of some Catholic groups to divest from coal, oil, and gas, the Catholic Church remains significantly invested in fossil fuel companies. President Trump, by his own right, is an investor in and supporter of oil pipelines and production. He received the votes of 81% of white Evangelicals, and the majority of U.S. Catholics and Orthodox Jews.
A different world is possible. As human-caused climate change begins to melt the West Antarctic ice shelf, what might be a fitting religious response when a climate change denying, oil-drilling promoting president visits the centers of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity? He would be met with a passionate and withering religious response from the senior religious leadership of those faiths. Those religious figures would issue a plea on behalf of all humanity, all species, future generations, and the Lord Almighty (as Pope Francis, to his credit, may in fact do).
Climate change is as much a crisis of religion as it is a crisis of the environment. Religion is key to moderate consumption, think long term, and promote behavioral change on a mass scale. Yet, for many religious adherents, the issues that are more important to them, and on which they are most mobilized and energized, are stopping abortion, contraception, immodest dress, and transgender bathrooms. If millennia-old spiritual wisdom, ancient practices, and traditions are not able to turn around society to live more sustainably, then that wisdom itself will not be sustainable. Religion will be missing the forest for the trees and endangering our very existence as a result.
Today, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy $110 billion worth of American weapons, anti-missile systems, precision guided munitions, fighter jets, and more. As Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut astutely points out about these weapons in the hands of the Saudis, “In the powder keg that is the Middle East, this sale may simply light a fuse that sends the region, and us, deeper down the rabbit hole of perpetual military conflict.” Let me be clear—the issue is not just about Trump and the G.O.P.; Barack Obama also sold the Saudis $115 billion in arms during his presidency. Where did the Saudis get so much money? From their best customer: the U.S., with their SUVs and multiple cars per family.
Oil and water don’t mix, but in our times oil mixes very well with politics, weapons, and religion. Why do religious leaders support or acquiesce to oil sales and profits? Because oil is money and power, and many religious figures seek connection to power. It might be unrealistic to expect Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Council of Religious Clergy to speak out again the use of oil, since the king appoints all of its members. Indeed, “the royal family and the clergy have always had a very symbiotic relationship,” says Nabil Mouline, author of “The Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia” “They need each other and want to keep the status quo.”
Most Saudi revenue is oil revenue, and they have a vested interest in bringing to market (and into the atmosphere) the vast fossil fuel reserves lying beneath them. The same goes for other large producers of oil, gas, and coal—among them Russia, the United States, Iraq, and Iran. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Yet unless we change course, there will come a time when climate change amplifies the punishing summer heat to make the Saudi desert kingdom unlivable.
Curbing climate change requires delinking oil from politics. Trump elevated the head of ExxonMobil, American’s largest oil company, to lead U.S. foreign policy. As the New York Times reported today, U.S. oil companies have already benefited significantly from a Trump administration. When the world political leadership is so closely tied with and in some cases actually is the oil leadership, then addressing climate change becomes unthinkable. It’s like after asking the wolf to protect the henhouse.
Imagine the following alternative possibility: As the world moves to a more enlightened state, the Saudi Supreme Council of Clerics issues a fatwa calling for the use of solar energy. The Saudi government then invests $110 billion to deploy solar fields across its vast desert, and becomes a huge exporter of solar-powered energy. It then declares that it no longer seeks to export oil, since doing so sells our children’s future for the sake of current profits. It requires long-term thinking from religious visionaries and true leaders to keep fossil fuels in the ground and forego trillions of dollars in potential profits.
The roots of this crisis go deeper than the depth at which oil is drilled. They reach down into a dark addiction. We are addicted to oil. We are addicted to cheap energy that enables personal automobile use, heating and air conditioning, plane travel, and food from anyone on this planet. We don’t want to compromise on any of those things. And as long as we resist, the addiction will continue, and grow stronger.
Each of us plays a part in fueling or freeing ourselves from this addiction, the Pharaoh of our times. When I was a child I was inspired by a member of my congregation, who became fed up with using oil, sold his car, and began biking to the metro and commuting using his legs and public transportation.
You may not be able to change the mind of Donald Trump or Saudi King Salman, but you can decide to buy less of the oil that they are bringing to market. How much oil you consume each day is a personal choice- there is no one in the world forcing you to make a daily or weekly payment to ExxonMobil or SaudiAramco. The mass collective of people is more powerful than the oil companies. But people must exercise their power at the pump, by switching from the gas pedal to the bicycle pedal, train, carpool, and bus.
Humanity can transition to greater degrees of spiritual awareness and living consistent with one’s values. A shift in how people of faith and clergy care for our common home and for each other is imminent. It will catalyze a transition to a spiritually-aware, thriving human society and drive solutions to our sustainability challenges. May it come soon in our days.
