Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

That’s what I want to talk about today — what is wrong with us.

When I think about how dire our situation is — ecological overshoot combined with climate change and the widespread toxic contamination of the planet — and with 2-3 billion more people about to join us over the next 40 years — I continue to marvel at human inability to grasp dire situations and make the appropriate changes.

Especially here in rich countries of the west, like the U.S. of A. — we are so spoiled that our affluence doesn’t feel like affluence; our sense of entitlement and exceptionalism are simply birthrights rooted in our supposed social and cultural superiority, or products of our ingenuity rather than of luck and power.

And then this capitalist growth economy that we think of as part of human DNA, rather than a human invention, and an unjust one at that, not to mention profoundly abusive of the natural world.

I feel despair most when I see the resistance not just to change, but even to the information and evidence all around us of the profound nature of our planetary crisis.

So I just want to give some examples of the problem:

I start with this tidbit from the NY Times — that a scientist sharing this past year’s Nobel Peace Prize, ecology professor Steven Running, member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, had a talk cancelled at a high school in Montana — because of complaints that there would not be an opposing point of view. The article, Climate talk’s cancellation splits a town.

What?! Are so many still stuck in this place, that climate change remains a topic of debate, like true or false? Don’t make me listen to the science because I simply refuse to change my way of life no matter what happens to the planet all around me?

Yes, many are still in that place. Fault not only them, but the cultural, moral, religious, and political leaders for still not being straightforward about our predicament. Fault the teachers for their fears of bringing real earth science into our schools so that our young people could be aware of the world they are growing into and for which they must bring their measure of hope and commitment.

Don’t fault a 17-year-old student, Kip Barhaugh, who told the Times reporter:

I was insulted as a high school student prepared to enter the world I need to hear both sides of the story. I don’t feel there is another side. Global warming is not a controversial issue, it’s a fact. We need to be prepared to deal with it.

Thank you, Kip, for your simple and profound wisdom. We need you in this world.

Here’s one that really hurt, because it is about a part of the natural world that I especially love. Worry in Michigan as Forests Change Hands , from yesterday’s Times. Why worry? Because timber companies and developers are about to invade, destroy, sell to the affluent, or in their terms develop, millions of acres of forest in the Upper Peninsula.

In a sane world, these profit-makers would have no rights to do this and we would simply prohibit it. In a world at all sensitive to the womb of our being, we would find this to be violence of the worst kind. Instead, it will become places for second homes for happy urban people who want a pretty place to escape the woes of the world — thereby destroying nature and beauty, and bringing to this area the woes of the world.

Why should I no longer be allowed to see this world in its natural beauty? Why should these people be allowed to destroy places so many of us love and cherish? What is wrong with us that we still see these places as source of enrichment and profit-making?

We are a biological species so out of balance in this natural world that birthed us, in which we live and move and have our being.

More, this time from across the ocean. This is European imperialism of the worst kind — imperialism over the natural resources of poor nations for the pleasure of the European palate. It is an article about how Europe, having depleted its own waters of the fish it covets, has moved to the waters of Africa to such an extent that the livelihoods and well-being of Africans are threatened as Europe now depletes those waters as well.

As overfishing destroys the lives of African coastal communities, one result is migration. This is one of the issues we write about often — the anticipated rise in environmental refugees who will simply have to move when their own lands and waters have been overused and destroyed. And we all know how Europe and the US are addressing the rise in immigration. Many Europeans are none too fond of all those Africans coming ashore in search of survival, kind of like those Arizona landowners along the Mexican border.

One of the very scary things in our world right now is how rapidly we are overfishing the oceans, what this will mean for human communities who depend upon fish for food and income, and what it will mean for the ocean ecosystems.

And then I add this reflection, an Op-Ed that was in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but which first appeared in the St. Petersburg Times. The writer, Robyn Blumner, in a column entitled, America is consuming its greatest ideals, reflects on the alluring nature of consumerism and how it has overwhelmed most everything else in our lives, from our care for the planet, to community, to reading books, thinking, taking a walk. Her reference is to the book by Benjamin Barber, professor of civil society at the University of Maryland, entitled, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens whole, a book I must get now if for no other reason than its fabulous title. (On the website, look for the interview with Brian Lehrer of NY public radio, WNYC, about the book.)

Because the market does all that. It overwhelms all our other sensibilities, numbing us from appreciating our situation, robbing us of meaning, depriving us of depth of life. And as we are unconscious and/or unwitting slaves of its power over our lives, we continue behaviors that are in the process of destroying the fabric of life within which, and only within which, we live at all.

If we still think the Earth here for our pleasure and enjoyment, for our enrichment and comfort, if we continue this behavior, it will not be long before there will be neither pleasure nor enjoyment, neither enrichment nor comfort, on this planet. If we don’t learn, and soon, how to live within the precious and life-giving limits, the intricate balance of the Earth’s living systems, our species, and millions of others, are fated towards a terrible future.

Blumner is absolutely right:

Breaking this conformist hold is the secret to a happier life and healthier nation, I’m convinced of it.

But more, it is essential if we are to save the Earth’s fabric of life, and thus the human prospect.

[tags] consumerism, michigan upper peninsula, deveopers destroy forests, overfishing oceans, environmental refugees, Benjamin Barber[/tags]