I have been a climate advocate ever since I first learned about our slow-moving global crisis as a child. I’ve learned climate change is real. Polar ice sheets and glaciers are melting. Spring is coming earlier. Plants and animals are changing their patterns.

Last year was the hottest in modern history. The 10 hottest years on record? The entire decade of 2015-2024.

We know why it’s happening. In 1856, the scientist Eunice Foote demonstrated that an atmosphere with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide will trap more heat. Burning fossil fuels has increased the carbon in our atmosphere to levels not seen for millions of years.

But climate change presents a collective-action problem. 

Mennonites are great at individual conservation work. We “live simply so that others may simply live” or practice “more with less” or try to be “simply in season.” For years we have encouraged one another to use only our fair share of the world’s resources.

I know many Anabaptists who ride bikes, eat vegetarian or vegan, drive fuel-efficient cars, switch away from gas in their homes, voluntarily reduce their use of airplanes, rewild family farms, plant trees and make other wise and generous conservation efforts. 

These are wonderful ways of caring for the ecosystem. But the Earth doesn’t care who does the polluting. We have already done permanent damage. If we do not end our fossil fuel use and protect the wilderness, we risk triggering tipping points that could cost countless lives.

We can’t just say no to pollution as individuals. Even the collective no of slowing fossil-fuel extraction isn’t enough. 

Our task is to get to yes. To stop the burning of fossil fuels, we have to do something new. We need to build a huge amount of renewable energy infrastructure: solar, wind, nuclear, for sure; with some hope of developing geothermal, tidal and more hydroelectric as well. 

Next, we have to electrify: switch to electric cars and electric heating in our homes. We’ll need buildings made with carbon-neutral cement and new biofuels for airplanes. 

Finally, to reduce consumption and preserve wild spaces, we need to live more densely together. Dense cities are the most climate-friendly places in the United States. When we live close together, we reduce car use and ownership, maximize public transportation, live in smaller footprints, even share utilities and heating and cooling, leaving more wild spaces for nature (we have more forests in the United States now than we did 100 years ago, despite our growing population). 

This transition will require a lot of new things that humans are sometimes reluctant to build. It will mean deserts and lakes covered in solar panels, wind farms on the Great Plains and on the oceans, nuclear power plants built closer than might feel comfortable, transmission lines across the nation, bigger and denser city centers. 

Unfortunately, new factories for electric cars, solar panels and other green technology are being delayed by local opposition. 

Transmission lines, new mining for raw materials, wind turbines and solar farms are all facing yearslong delays. It’s illegal to build new neighborhoods as dense as New York City or San Francisco or even Boston anywhere in the U.S. because we are all so worried about our neighbors and traffic and so committed to preventing our neighborhoods from changing. 

Being a steward of creation has primarily been to say, “No! Don’t build that there! Don’t cut those down! Don’t waste those resources!”

Our “no” remains important. Let’s not cut down the Amazon rainforest or the jungles of Indonesia and Congo. We don’t all need a new car every few years or ever-larger houses. The Mennonite message of simplicity remains essential. 

But “no” is not enough to meet the moment.

My new purpose as a climate advocate has been to say yes. Yes, I celebrate that new solar panel or battery factory, that new apartment building, getting rid of onerous permitting rules or weird zoning restrictions and even welcoming those new windmills we see on the trip home to Kansas. 

In saying yes, I remember Jesus’ message in Revelation 21:5: “See, I am making all things new.”

The church has never been a community of “no.” God’s calling is not just to avoid bad things. 

Christ’s message is also a yes: “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Yes, you are beloved. Yes, you can share with your neighbors. Yes, you belong in the kingdom. 

And when it comes to protecting the environment — to tend the Earth and keep it (Genesis 2:15) — we are going to need to say yes: Yes, we want those new things, that new technology, new science, those new cities.

Yes, we welcome more neighbors next door, skyscrapers nearby, wind farms on the plains and power lines through our vistas. Because the old ways must pass away for God’s future to be fulfilled, where the gospel of all creation is proclaimed and a sustainable human community is realized. 

Samuel Voth Schrag is pastor of Peace Mennonite Church in Dallas.