Much commentary linking the COVID-19 crisis and climate change has a "we told you so" quality. The emergence of the virus and its rapid spread across human boundaries highlights both the harm mankind has caused to the natural environment and the existential risks this harm carries. Hopeful voices look to heightened consciousness and both the political will and changes in behaviors that might arrest changes to climate, while more pessimistic observers see fewer resources and less attention going to the challenge as the focus shifts sharply to public health and economic survival. The moral dilemmas emerge starkly, as scholar Evan Berry highlights: "With less traffic and less noise pollution, wild animals are able to move about with much more freedom. With so many fewer cars on the road and so many factories temporarily shuttered, the air quality in cities around the world has rapidly improved. Critics, however, point to the misanthropic quality of such sentiments, which celebrate environmental flourishing as something that follows from human suffering. It is certainly true that global economic collapse and massive fatalities would mitigate against climate change, but to champion such outcomes smacks of moral corruption. Such a view is, in essence, the converse of the depraved notion that 'protecting the market' justifies mass death."

A series of reflections on the Berkley Forum last week highlights the diversity of religious approaches and reactions to emerging lessons. Veering between hope and resignation, they look to important religious guidance pre-COVID-19: Laudato Si, Pope Francis' influential encyclical; the Earth Charter, a document that looked to the 2000 turn of the millennium with a multireligious and multisectoral lens; indigenous wisdom linking nature and humans; and teachings of Eastern faiths. This 2020 Earth Day is likely to inspire more reflections - intellectual, political, theological, and spiritual.

(Based on: April 14, 2020, Berkley Forum blog series and April 22, 2020, Faith Communities Earth Day campaign)