As we stagger to the end of yet another record-breaking, overheated summer down here in Florida, and as yet more tar balls arrive on our beaches, I find myself thinking increasingly of global warming and its causes. The world is getting hotter and we know why. The carbon-based fuels that we use to drive ourselves and to heat ourselves and more are pouring their wastes into the atmosphere, and this means that there is a "greenhouse effect," with heat arriving from the sun but unable to escape at those earlier rates that allowed for moderate temperatures.
No one seems to know where this will all end. I recently read a book that sees Miami under ten feet of water, with people clinging to the high spots, or, if they are rich enough, fleeing to Colorado. I used to live in Canada and we joked that we were one country that would welcome global warming, but truly it will be a mixed blessing. The horrendous forest fires in Russia this summer suggest that northern countries could have their share of disasters, and this is not to take into account things like new pests now able to live in the warmer climates.
Yet we seem virtually unable individually or collectively to do anything about it. One does not have to be a genius to see that we need to cut down on our fuel use, that we could start to do this more effectively by moving to public transportation. At the same time that we need to look for alternative sources of energy and to promote them, and that already there are some obvious options. I live in Florida, for goodness' sake, where sunshine is part of our state motto, and yet if you try to find any interest in putting solar panels on the roof and at least heating the water that way, good luck!
I have been thinking about why we are in this mess, and as a historian and philosopher of science, I have been led back to UCLA medieval historian Lynn White Jr.'s classic essay of 1967, "The Historical roots of Our Ecological Crisis." He laid the source of our troubles firmly at the feet of Christianity. Simply, he argued that Christians of all kinds take seriously the early chapters of Genesis (this is true, even of those who would interpret them metaphorically), and therein lies the trouble. The message there is that animals and plants -- the world itself -- are not there for their own benefit but for the use of humans. We have "dominion" over things. Moreover, it is made clear that the world is not a user-friendly place. We must rip it apart to make a living, and we are expected to do so. Greek and Roman thought implied that we humans are part of the picture but that ultimately this is a picture without meaning or direction.
In sharp contrast, Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time as nonrepetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. By gradual stages a loving and all-powerful God had created light and darkness, the heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes. Finally, God had created Adam and, as an afterthought, Eve to keep man from being lonely. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man's benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man's purposes. And, although man's body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God's image.
And so we were set on the slippery slope that leads to today's crisis. We in the West simply think that the world is there to be grabbed by us, and so we grab it. Moreover, since it was all set up by God, there is the underlying assumption that -- like the widow's cruse of oil -- it will go on indefinitely. He's not going to let down hard workers made in his image. And as far as the non-Christian rest of the world is concerned, well, they see what we are doing and simply follow suit. Like us, they want the short-term benefits and forget the long-term problems.
Expectedly, Christians were up in arms about White's thesis, and sermon after sermon was preached on the theme that "dominion" does not mean exploitation but careful tending, and that the world is not inherently something hard and difficult and hostile and hence fair game for our use if we can get it. All of this apparently is a post-Fall perspective and a result of our sin. Really the world is a jolly nice place and we should look after it.
But ultimately White did have a point, and Christians know it. The Christian story does make humans very special and the world is there for our use. The English writer Rupert Brook once wrote a delightful poem about fish and their prospects of heaven:
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook ...
Truly, however, most Christians are pretty sniffy about the immortality prospects for non-humans. God died on the Cross for our salvation, not for theirs. (As one who is English-born, if heaven contains no dogs, then I am not sure I want to go. But realistically, in my case this is no big prospect under the best of circumstances.)
What is the alternative? If you give up the Christian philosophy of ecology (if we might thus characterize it), how else do you approach the non-human world and articulate our (human) relationship to it? What are our rights, and what are our obligations? In recent years, the so-called "deep ecologists" have been at the forefront of non-Christian alternatives. (I know there are others like the ecofeminists and the neo-Pagans, but I think deep ecology provides the best contrast to Christianity and other positions can be fit along the spectrum.) Followers of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naesse, deep ecologists argue that non-human things (animals, plants, the world itself) have value and rights of their own: "The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world, for human purposes."
The problem is with the fine print. What is the justification for all of this? Deep ecologists tend to be a bit fuzzy, but ultimately (and here they are joined by ecofeminists and neo-Pagans and many others) they think the world itself is an organism, probably conscious, and that God or no God, it has equal standing with human beings. If we have rights, then so does the world and its parts. (There are those who would say that because we are part of the world, we only have rights inasmuch as the world has rights.)
This is not a new idea, and it has been very influential, even in Christian America. Probably no one did more for the cause of the environment in the twentieth century than Aldo Leopold, author of the rightly beloved A Sand Country Almanac. A keen Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspenski, Leopold bought right into "hylozoism," as the belief in the Earth as an organism is called:
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
The trouble is that at best, this is a metaphor, unless you take it literally, being a follower of Rudolf Steiner (a biodynamic gardener, perhaps), or a neo-Pagan (and worship the Earth), or a Mormon ("Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am brained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I crest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me?" -- this is the Earth speaking to Enoch and is to be found in the Book of Moses.) Despite all of the hype around the Gaia hypothesis, the brainchild of the English chemist James Lovelock, the Earth is not an organism. Apart from anything else, as Richard Dawkins pointed out decisively, natural selection was not involved in the Earth's origin.
I am beginning to wonder if this all is at least part of our problem. If you are not a Christian, then you will reject the Christian perspective, but even if you are a Christian it is going against the tide to cherish the Earth except as something to be exploited by us. If you argue that as Christians we ought to be looking after the Earth, there is always the sneaking suspicion that God will save us if it comes to the worst. He hardly wants creatures made in his own image to go extinct.
And the alternatives don't seem a lot better. I for one didn't give up my childhood faith to bow down to wood and stone, as the old hymn has it. I like animals, but I simply don't give them the same status as humans, and I am not about to start. And it seems to me to be just silly to argue that cabbages have moral standing. (It is interesting in these discussions how people who want to argue for the moral standing of non-human organisms always focus on panthers and redwoods, and never on dandelions or rats.)
I am old, so in a way the global warming problem is not my problem. But I care about future generations of humans, and I would like to see it tackled. I am not sure it can be solved, but I would like us to try. However, one thing we are going to need is a firm philosophical foundation for what we do. Folk who say that we don't need any such thing are usually folk who already have a foundation and it is false. At the moment, I don't see where we are going to find such a foundation. I really don't. Perhaps there isn't one. There is no guarantee that every problem can be solved. But we have got to search. We do need one, and if we don't search ,we are not going to find one.
The Pagan mindset is just that it makes right relationship more urgent, ... and that we need to adapt faster or it won't be a good harvest down the road.
There's a reason that the climate change deniers and those looking to 'punish sinners' and those who say 'Make a lot of money to show God's favor, and treat the Earth as a 'false idol,' smite the heathen environmentalists, so we'll be OK when it all goes to crap again, just like the scientists (also false idolaters of 'evolution') and treehuggers keep saying...." ...are all the same people.
For Christians and the Christianized atheistic types, this is part of your challenge.
Can you dismiss others who see the world more systemically and our own lives and actions and even economy as integrated with that living world, as 'No better?'
Does that comfort you somehow?
All I know is that as long as it's a 'debate' the less is being done.
And the harder a shock it's going to be. When denial stops working.
In many ways, the reason 'the solution' eludes us is precisely because so many thinkers and theologians and politicians and everyone *break it all down into separate issues and play each 'issue' off each other as a zero-sum game.*
We'd be doing about seventy percent better if we just *organized what we have.*
So many of our problems, energy, security, environmental, health, social, international, interfaith, ...inter-city, don't call for an authority to take the 'right stand on one thing at a time,' yet they're always played off against each other as some 'zero sum' between conflicting 'issues.'
What actually needs to happen is in fact more systemic and cyclical and *organic* thinking. More sharing and coordination: it's not 'freedom' to drive around in circles making a selection of consumer choices, when you're chained to a single way to get them: it's not 'freedom' to be in hock to the energy company for what it takes to heat or cool a poorly-insulated house, or if you can't get to work without feeding an off-road truck that you never get to take off road.
'Progess' used to be some idea of shrink-wrapped suburbia, ...we got all the 'things' that's supposed to be, only problem is, ...it kinda sucks.
The fact is, we could be living a lot better with the Earth before we even *get* to deprivation if we were just more careful and aware. We could be living much better lives if we *didn't* waste so much on and in a consumption=reward model.
We don't have to go 'back to the land and dig potatoes with sticks, at least not if we save these wonderful modern things and resources for the really important things. So much of modern life is just a treadmill of consumption trying to eat itself. Things we do day in, day out, expending still more resources just to pay for where we're lazy or thoughtless.
Waste doesn't make our lives better. It doesn't have to be a 'sin/punishment, privation/reward' thing ritualized in plastic and traffic jams. Or even senseless austerity where efficiency will do better. Denial won't keep us our nice things, *our* nourish our souls.
Appreciating the world can.
If you took a trolley to work every day, then you could take your '69 Charger out the occasional weekend nights and be better for the environment. Make *even that* sacred, if that's what you want, instead of paying for lazy and sitting in traffic. Actual better, healthier, happier life.
If you try to think it's as simple as a dismissive 'They worship the Earth,' you're missing out on a lot, and probably assuming that means 'worship as Christians do some distant inexplicable, yet demanding God character,' ... Where we do 'worship the Earth' as Goddess, this neither limits Goddess nor is divorced from our living relationship *with* life and Earth.
It does, however, go beyond simple intellectual premises and verbal assertions: when we advocate ecology, it's not claiming, 'cause Goddess Says So.' We use the obvious science. Sometimes, where appropriate, speak of a living relationship with a living, and spirit-filled world.
To our experiences, it's all part of the same thing. And so are we.
One thing that's clear to Pagans is, however you worship or don't, we can live in balance with and hopefully respect for, that which keeps us alive, as well as Gods that guide us, or there won't be much to be 'guided' about, 'stewards of' or 'have dominion over.'
Reality.
Sure helps to live in it, and with it, that's what I think. Certainly our own thoughts about it are less convoluted than some of the ways others 'justify' what isn't being done yet.
We've been waiting for *some* churches and others at least to get on board, here. Finish debating, start doing. We don't have the numbers to do it *for you,* but we can help.
WTF?
How about the "non human" philosophy that wiping out most life on the planet (let alone human life) is kind of sucky short sighted?
I have no idea what religion, let alone philosophy has to do with with it. It seems self explanatory for anyone that isn't a nihilist, and I don't think nihilists actually exist. So I have no idea who the author is talking about
Nuts anyone? We can eat them and carrots but plant us next to the carrot and the carrot will absorb our body. All life is precious. All life is equal but different. All life is a unity in the mind of God or a pattern in God's image. All life is eternal because we came from the Creator of All and we return.
That's what my traditional Cherokee religion teaches me. It also teaches me that my spirit chose to be here in this place for a reason. That being a spark in the mind of God could not. We all sit around the fire and describe what we see. But the fire is always different and we try to turn that release of sunlight into a "thing" that can be worshiped. All that can be worshiped is the Creator of All and the places where that Great Mystery stopped along the way. But why? To say thank you and get to work learning our studies lest we be stupid when we return.
As a scientist may I just propose that one begins with science and NOT with musty bronze-age, mythology dreamed-up by nomadic Arab goatherds so ignorant of earth processes they did not even comprehend the simple mechanics of rainfall (although their contemporary Greek overlords did).
In fact, my I suggest further that one not simply "give up the Christian philosophy of ecology" but one should rather run as quickly away from any such nonsense as possible.
So, you're just going to be arbitrary then? Humans are special animals because we think we're special?
"It is interesting in these discussions how people who want to argue for the moral standing of non-human organisms always focus on panthers and redwoods, and never on dandelions or rats."
Yeah, funny isn't it? I can't understand why they wouldn't focus on organisms like weeds and rats that seem to adapt well to human destructiveness.
I find it hard to get past this piece of nonsense. Looking at the temperature trends of the past 6,000 years of so of the Holocene, the overall trend is clearly and unquivocably downwards. Just as you would expect in an interglacial such as ours, an interglacial which is probably in its last legs before the icesheets return. Looking at the temperature trends of the past 100 years or so, we have had approx. 30 year cycles of relative warming and cooling superimposed on a very gentle warming trend since around 1850 or so. It looks very much like we are at the start of a similar cooling cycle.
So, it is reasonable to ask, 'what do you mean by hotter,and over what timescales?'.
The second part of the sentence also has me reaching for my nonsense-detector. The climate system is quite poorly understood. All agree it is well beyond our competence to model in any kind of predictive way. The complexities of many feedback systems on many space and time scales make 'we know why' seem quite untenable.
So, I could not bring myself to read the rest, despite my general sympathy and respect for Christianity as one of the most humane and progressive of modern mass-religions. It should get off the climate alarmism bandwagon, and concentrate on theology and pastoral care instead.
The global concentration of CO² in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years. Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19 century according to NOAA.
It would appear your nonsense detector has reversed it's polarity and is fooling you to think you are making sense.
I don't think it has a nonsense detector, el s. It has a nonsense generator.
Here is a quote from SecondTime that is but one week old: "leftists are both usually wrong on all that matters and make disastrous interventions"
It's as if it has "leftists" confused with George W Bush.
Decades from now "SecondTime" will be on his deathbed in a much hotter world, having seen the collapse of ecosystems, the fifth great extinction event in the planet's history, drastically reduced crop yields, massive famine, etc., and in his mind he will still be "right"!
Inundating the worlds coastal communities with sea water would be the worst disaster man kind will ever suffer. And probably long before that, our agricultural systems will suffer enough to cause unprecedented famine. If your philosophical foundation is that people matter more than animals, what more do you need?
And to address that foundation, I'd just like to say that people depend on the entire ecosystem, and animals are a necessary part of the ecosystem we have and need. There's no way to separate us from the rest of it.
No, we need scientific answers to Climate Change. If we used the Bible as a science book we'd all think the world was only 6,000 years old and that the Earth is at the center of the universe.
Let's start with the common Christian notion that only Christians can be trusted to be moral. Christians who look to their Bible or their religion to keep them in line morally, can't imagine that other people, even the Christians themselves, derive their moral principles from places outside the church. The fact that the various Christian sects disagree on morality should give you a clue that they're not a particularly good source for it.
Then there's the linear nature of time in the Christian myth. If the universe is living through a one-time drams with a recent beginning and an imminent end, then there's no particular reason to take the long view of sustainability through harmonizing with the great and small cycles of nature.
Finally go easy on the side comments in parentheses. I know they're tempting - I'm tempted to use them myself. But these comments and asides merely distract from your main line of thought. If the stuff in the parentheses is important enough to write, work them into the main narrative. Otherwise they're distracting. When I hit a left-parenthesis, I immediately search for its right-parenthesis mate so that I can continue reading what the author really has to say. If I can't find it easily, I give up and move on.