The most profound, foreboding prayer that is read during the Jewish High Holy Days is the Unetaneh Tokef prayer:

“On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed…who will live and who will die..who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague…”

It always strikes me as scary, but somehow the prayer sounded ancient and foreign. I mean “plague”?  

Except we’ve gone through the horror of a global deadly pandemic that took more than 1 million lives in the United States, 7 million worldwide, and now we hear leprosy has been resurrected in Florida.

Well, from the past Rosh Hashanah to this one, we’ve had wildfires, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, heat waves of Biblical proportions. They say they are “1000-year” floods, and “1300-year drought.”

This is the impact of climate change now, and getting worse with the hottest the planet has been in the history of mankind.

“We’re on a pathway to lose everything,” Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (speaking for himself), declared at the New York City Climate March, which drew 75,000 activists from around the country and around the world.

“The cause of heat waves are fossil fuels, and leaders, including Biden, are still approving fossil projects. It’s insanity. This can’t be reversed. Stop fossil fuels or ramp down as soon as possible. I’m terrified for the future. Burning. Flooding. Smoke. Heat waves. How will we feed 8 billion people? Heat waves will kill millions. Every year is worse, the planet is hotter.”

He went on to warn: “This is the only planet in our universe with life. We are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction. A dead planet has no economy, no politics. There is no solution – not carbon capture, not planting trees. There is no plan to deal with the decreasing habitability. We must come together. Fight.”

This summer, 111 million Americans suffered under heat waves. Record wildfires across Canada sent air pollution levels in New York dangerously sky high. Some 40 million people around the world were uprooted from their homes by flood, drought, famine and conflict.  Add to that, 350 million people suffer food insecurity.

At the Clinton Global Initiative, which forges commitments to address the major challenges facing humanity and the planet, the top priorities were food insecurity, migration, conflict, poverty, environmental disaster. Speaker after speaker said they all are interconnected and are rooted in climate change.

“Heat is deadly – in the U.S., extreme heat causes more deaths than any other weather-related event, especially in urban centers,” said Sarah Kapnick, chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Heat is responsible for over 500,000 premature deaths per year. “If all the things continue, that number will grow to 1.5 million premature deaths each year. We are expecting these temps will only go up over time.”

“Humanity has opened the gates to hell,” warned Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the Global Climate Summit held ahead of the UN General Assembly. “Our focus here is on climate solutions – and our task is urgent.”

He warned that climate action was being “dwarfed by the scale of the challenge”, with humanity heading towards a 2.8°C temperature rise, increasing danger and social and political instability.

Greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced 43% by 2030 and reach net zero by mid-century to avoid global temperatures exceeding the dangerous 1.5°C tipping point, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The future is not fixed,” Guterres insisted. “We can still build a world of clear air, green jobs, and affordable clean power for all.”

President Biden gets it. “From day one of my administration the United States has treated this crisis as the existential threat that it is, not only to us, but to all of humanity,” he told the UN General Assembly.

The Biden administration, which has waged the most ambitious climate agenda in history, announced new climate actions including the formation of an American Climate Corps that will put 20,000 young people into the growing fields of climate resilience, conservation, and clean energy; channel $4.6 billion through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program to help states, cities and tribes tackle climate pollution; direct federal agencies to incorporate the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions in key decisions; invest $40 million through the Interior Department to clean up oil and gas wells; new actions to advance the American offshore wind industry; and steer $400 million to states to adopt clean energy building codes.  

Biden also just canceled oil leases in the Arctic Refuge.

Meanwhile, New York State announced new actions with the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 25 states formed to counter Trump’s reversal of Obama’s climate actions.

It’s because of the Coalition, which collectively represents 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the U.S. population, that the United States was able to stay on course toward its Paris Accord commitments.

“It’s critical that we continue the transition to create an affordable clean energy future that benefits all New Yorkers,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “Climate change is the defining challenge of our era.”

Climate actions don’t just mitigate and promote resilience against climate disasters (costing the US $165 billion in 2022), but actually cut costs, create jobs, and improve the quality of life for families today. “Clean energy and energy affordability go hand-in-hand,” Hochul said.

But besides the existential threat the climate crisis poses, there is also the practical reality that makes the transition to 100% clean, renewable energy and a green economy inevitable: There are only 20-25 years worth of oil still in the ground. So we might as well get it done now and reduce the pain, suffering and loss of life and livelihoods that will come from failing to confront the climate crisis.

This Rosh Hashanah Torah portion was the Genesis “Creation” story, where God on the sixth day created humans and gave humans dominion over the plants, the animals “and over all earth itself.”

Some like to interpret “dominion” as dominance – the right to exploit, extract, discard. But others interpret “dominion” as the responsibility to care.

There’s another theme of the High Holy Days, the obligation for “Tikkun Olam” – repairing the world.