“I love the nature that is all around me here,” Catholic monk, author, and social activist Thomas Merton wrote from his Kentucky hermitage one cold January day. The words end a cutting-edge missive he sent to Rachel Carson after she published Silent Spring, the tome known for starting the modern environmental movement. “Your book makes it clear to me that there is a consistent pattern running through everything we do, through every aspect of our culture, our thought, our economy, our whole way of life,” Merton remarked. He added, “I believe it is the most vitally important thing for all of us, however we may be concerned with our society, to try to arrive at a clear, cogent statement of our ills, so that we may begin to correct them.”
From November 30 through December 11, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will convene in Paris, France, to craft a treaty to discuss that consistent pattern—a habit of burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels—in time to prevent climate change from becoming disastrous. A global movement has helped bring the issue to the fore. Led in part by faith communities, that activism stands on vivid historical antecedents. This includes Merton, whose words offer thoughts of surprising prescience and power even though they come from a man who died before climate change was known.
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