Q&A: Why Didn’t God Warn Us About the Climate Crisis?
Why Didn’t God Warn Us About the Climate Crisis?
Question
According to all the studies, the Earth will warm significantly, sea levels will rise, and millions will become refugees, possibly even to the point of the extinction of the human race.
In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), there is absolutely no mention (to the best of my knowledge) of a climate crisis, and religion does not warn us about it, does not tell us to protect the environment, and so on. That leaves me torn between three possibilities:
1. If God exists and He did not say a word about climate, then there is no climate crisis and all the scientists are wrong.
2. If the scientists are right and religion does not warn us about dangers to the Earth and the extinction of the human race, then God does not exist.
3. The Earth will be destroyed in exactly 215 years as a result of climate change, as the prophecy about the seventh millennium says. But then it is surprising that the prophecy does not spell out how the Earth will be destroyed.
Answer
A fourth possibility: the Torah does not warn us about future events that are unrelated to the commandments, just as it does not command us about morality. Those are things one has to understand on one’s own.
Discussion on Answer
See Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13:
“See the work of God, for who can make straight what He has made crooked?” When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first man, He took him and led him around all the trees of the Garden of Eden, and said to him: “See My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. Everything I created, I created for you. Take care not to ruin and destroy My world, for if you ruin it, there will be no one to repair it after you.”
Why should there be such a commandment? Jewish law does not deal with that. Of course the concern itself exists, as in the midrash you quoted.
And here the question arises: why isn’t there a commandment that says to protect the environment and the planet…?