What is a 1/10th tithe of Net-Zero? (Matt 23)

Woe Onto You, Scribes and Pharisees, James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum

by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership

This Bible reflection first appeared in the October 2023 newsletter of Climate Intercessors.

The Pharisees of Jesus’s acquaintance often got tripped up by the numbers, and Jesus’s commentary about them can be instructive of how we approach the numbers of the Paris Agreement, including the targets of preventing no more than 1.5°C and 2°C warmings.

By the moment recorded in Matthew 23, Jesus seems to have grown weary of the Pharisees and their sophistry, their traps and jousting. In verses 23 and 24, he says:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

A tenth of your income or harvest is a tithe, but a tenth of such tiny commodities of mint, dill, and cumin requires a special type of meticulousness. Picture in your mind the conscientious Pharisee leaning over his table or his scales with a pair of tweezers in his hands. He cannot raise his head to see the scenes of merciless and faithless injustice played out in the streets outside his window.

The original Paris target of preventing no more than a 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels has its own mythology. It was thought that beyond that number would be the “worst impacts of climate change,” but worse in what way and worse for whom? When a low-lying island nation like the Maldives piped up and said that they could not survive a 1.5°C warming, let alone a 2°C one, the world took notice of how random the choice of these Paris numbers are. And what are we to make of the 1.2°C warming that we have already breached? If this summer of heat records, floods, and wildfires aren’t the “worst effects,” doesn’t it nonetheless feel “worse enough”? In a recent podcast episode entitled “What Have We Learned From a Summer of Climate Reckoning?” journalist David Wallace-Wells and climate scientist Kate Marvel caution us against abstractly projecting the Paris targets out into the future, and “normalizing” the suffering that we are currently experiencing at a 1.2°C warming. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness are not three members of a chorus waiting patiently for Act 3 of a Greek tragedy when they can say their lines over a fallen 1.5°C target. They want to sing now.

Another part of the mythology in the 2°C target was that somehow it was “do-able,” that reducing carbon emissions enough to meet that target was not asking too much of our nations and their economies, not too unrealistic, challenging but not onerous. Known reserves of fossil fuels could be exploited, built infrastructure could live out its lifespan, assets would not have to be unduly stranded. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness are messy things—but we wouldn’t have to engage them if we could just punch the right numbers into our calculators and work the plan, or so some of us hoped.

I recommend Wallace-Wells and Marvel’s discussion. I’ve listened to it twice and asked myself: “What climate number do I think justice, mercy, and faithfulness would be most interested in?” The answer I arrived at was “zero,” as in “net zero.” Marvel says, “If we zeroed out emissions tomorrow, the consensus among most of the [scientific] models is that warming would stop. You would have a balance between two effects. The oceans would continue to warm up but at the same time the natural carbon cycle would start to slowly remove some of that carbon that has accumulated in the atmosphere, and the net effect of those is essentially no more warming.” In other words, if we ever stabilize at 1.5°C, or 2°C or any other average global warming, it will only be because mercy compelled us to finally zero out our emissions, even if this requires more of us than a ten percent tithe of our GDPs. No Net-Zero: no ending of the warming, no reaching of any target.

Marvel reminds us that while actual warming stops quickly after Net-Zero, Earth’s systems will still need some time to work through its effects, such as in more sea-level rise. After that point however, Net-Zero also informs adaptation. Marvel says, “First of all, no adaptation is not really an option anymore. We have no choice but to adapt to the changing climate because climate change is already here. . . At the same time, you sometimes hear this very glib like, ‘oh we’re rich; we’ll just adapt,’ especially in wealthy countries. There is no ‘just’ to adaptation, because first of all, if you don’t reach Net-Zero, if you don’t stop climate change, it’s a constantly moving target. Adapt to what?” Faithfulness to loving our neighbours and faithfulness to an adaptation plan that can support them to live in peace depends on Net-Zero.

And Net-Zero also informs justice. So long as we still have the “possibility of success, or the chance of winning” at our future targets, we have an excuse to put the poor and vulnerable on hold: “Don’t disturb us,” we say, rationalizing, “We are doing 1.5 for you.” Money right now for Loss and Damage, we tell them, seems like a distraction from the real and urgent work of mitigation. I get it. It’s complicated. Matters of justice usually are. But a Net-Zero focus, as compared to a temperature target focus, allows us to ask, “What about all those decades when we highly-polluting nations operated as net-positive?”

Jesus does tell the Pharisees, “You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” The latter in this case is practicing justice, mercy, and faithfulness. The former is the practice of tithing, and Jesus does say that that practice should not neglected. Tithing not only has its place, it acts as a ritualized pathway from the accounting table (with its percentages, scales, and tweezers) out into the streets where justice, mercy, and faithfulness are so badly needed. The temperature targets of the Paris Agreement have accomplished a lot. Even Kate Marvel describes how the 2018 IPCC report about the 1.5°C target radically changed her mind. And in the end, zero is also just a number. It may be possible to become pharisaical about that number as any other. Nonetheless, I’m grateful to Kate Marvel, David Wallace-Wells, and a fed-up Jesus Christ for a chance to refocus on what’s really important.