Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

I will confess to not being a big John Tierney fan, one of the NY Times op-ed writers.  He certainly has not exactly been a big booster for the earth and its limits, nor a particular friend to environmentalists.  He is libertarian by background, rather arrogantly so, and a proponent of ‘as little government as possible and let folks fend for themselves.’

But he surprised me yesterday with a column that sharply criticized second-home ownership because of the excessive carbon footprint multiple home-ownership carries.  His usual superior arrogance is there (I am so superior because I don’t own a second home), but he makes the important point that our assumption in this society of owning as many homes as our wealth makes possible is ’sinful’ in the context of our climate change crisis.

This is a guy who, back in 1996, came out against recycling (the result being more hate mail than ever received by a writer for NY Times magazine).

In any case, he makes an important point, linking the consumption habits of the affluent to the excessive carbon footprint of this society.  But it’s not just the energy used, it is also the wood from forests, the beautiful spaces put under development, the roads needed to get to these places, and more, that press that footprint more deeply into the earth.

Well, all of this — our lifestyle habits in this society — must be examined.  But only for a little while, because reducing that footprint is an urgent project, doing our part to restore stability to the climate by slowing down the drivers causing global warming.  This will require major changes in the lives and lifestyles of the wealthy — not out of judgment, simply out of necessity.