Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

At the root of our ecological crisis is a profoundly abusive relationship with nature that goes back centuries.  Correcting and healing that relationship is, therefore, key to salvaging Earth’s amazing creativity and capacity for Life.

So this morning I just want to share a couple of examples of this abusive relationship:

Along the Delaware River, governors are arguing about whether or not to dig a deeper channel through the river so that large cargo ships can steam up the river to the Philadelphia port.  The environmental implications of this are huge.

Hey, you know, the river just ain’t deep enough for us, and the Pennsylvania governor, Edward Rendell says dredging the river will make the port of Phildelphia more competitive with other cities.  It’s about economics, and the delicate ecosystem of the river be damned.  This is about putting the river to use for human economy.  The environmental record of this kind of project is not exactly a positive one.

Then there’s this story – that many residents of the northwest who suffered damage from fallen trees in the vicious storms that passed through there a couple of weeks ago have a perfect human solution:  get rid of the trees.

Well, you know, insurance is expensive.  But here’s part of the secret of this story embedded in the linked story — that development itself — bulldozing trees for houses, building roads and homes in a way that damaged tree roots, lack of proper care and downright negligence — is behind what weakened these trees to begin with.  Now that we have damaged them so badly, let’s just get rid of more of them. 

It’s like the logic of building homes in areas prone to forest fires and then being upset when there is a forest fire.

I am intrigued by this story’s headline — that residents see trees differently after the storm.  But how do they see them differently?  Certainly not with humility over the awesome beauty, power, strength, and vulnerability of trees.  And certainly not with an attitude that says, oops, maybe we made a mistake and need to learn how to live with the trees and in a right relationship with them. 

Wrong lesson, I’m afraid.

Okay, and then there’s this abomination — yet another assault on our Earth by the current resident of the White House.  No, folks, don’t even think about changing your lifestyle or cutting back on your carbon dioxide-spewing vehicles — we’ll drill in Alaska’s Britol Bay instead.

Submit, submit, nature, to the will of Man [sic]!

Submit most of all to the will of the corporate world, to developers, to people who see you as an inconvenience to be destroyed, exploited, abused, manipulated so that we can continue to live in this delusion: that destroying nature does not mean that ultimately we will destroy ourselves.

Folks, the ecological battle is joined.  We must defend this Earth, our only home, from any more of this kind of abuse.  Don’t let Bush and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne have the last word on Bristol Bay.  Don’t let developers have the last word on your local wetlands, forests, and parks.  Don’t let GM and Exxon Mobil have the last word on carbon emissions.

You get the idea.  Get involved.  Get to work.  There is so much we need to do.