TOPIC:  RAPID SYSTEM CHANGE: SHIFTING PARADIGMS IN THIS EXISTENTIAL MOMENT. On our present pathway, climate change will threaten human civilization as we know it in what UN Secretary General Antonió Guterres has called “collective suicide.” The new and sobering goal that climate scientists have laid before us is to cut global carbon dioxide emissions to net zero in less than 25 years just to “secure a liveable future” for humankind, and to bring it into negative emissions thereafter. What has brought us to this brink is not a lack of clear climate data, but rather culture and an inability to cooperate globally and react adaptively. In large part, the UNCOP climate summits and other mechanisms fail due to entrenched systems of self-interest that benefit from the short-term consumption of fossil fuels, even as these same oligarchies seek to monetize green technology, with little concern for equity or human welfare in general, in a race against time that risks us all. Now, the United States, still the largest per capita producer of greenhouse gases, has again pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty and promised to ramp up fossil fuel production and to “Drill, baby, drill.” Without exaggeration, this step could be the nail in the coffin of human civilization, yet there is still hope. Systems change when their underlying paradigms – the thought structures governing their rules, goals, and mechanisms – change, and paradigms can change in the blink of an eye. This talk explores how embracing a new paradigm of sustainable peace, enshrined in the One Billion for Peace movement, can finally unlock the international, intersector, and interfaith cooperation necessary to hold decision makers in government and industry responsible for ensuring that humankind makes it through this existential moment and then rebuilds in ways that help us all to thrive.

BIO:  Frances Flannery, Ph.D. is scholar-teacher-activist interested in the relevance of biblical studies and religious studies for peacebuilding and for transforming inequitable systems during this climate crisis. In 2019 she co-founded BioEarth (a 501c3), home of the One Billion for Peace Pledge since 2022, now with 1.2 million signatories and growing on six continents (www.bioearth.org). She is an in-demand lecturer and interdisciplinary thought leader who has authored/edited six books and over fifty peer-reviewed academic articles on interdisciplinary topics, including Understanding Apocalyptic Terrorism (Routledge, 2016) and The Bible and Political Debate (Bloomsbury, 2016). She is currently working on a trilogy, An Ecological Theology of the Bible, the first volume of which is The Climate Covenant.