Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

[LOOK FOR THE FIRST EDITION OF OUR ONLINE ZINE EARLY NEXT WEEK!]

Many people are talking about how the new administration coming to Washington in January presents a real opportunity to gets some things done. Yesterday saw a real positive sign in the ousting of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) from the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, replaced by a fairly strong environmentalist, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA).  Dingell has been perhaps the single greatest obstacle in all of Congress to moving this country away from its CO2-emitting transportation habits, an opponent of nearly every effort to shift our auto industry towards a green, climate-saving direction.

Per capita carbon emimssions - 2002 - Kevin Gurney & Vulcan Proj. Purdue Univ.

It’s one of those signs that the new Congress, with a new president, would actually like to get some business done on climate change.   One of Waxman’s arguments in his favor was that President-elect Obama is committed to new cleaner energy policies, to a new generation of hybrid and plug-in cars and renewable fuels, along with more mass transit, and the House doesn’t want this old obstacle sitting there in the way.

But I just want to remind us all that the big changes necessary to stanch the spewing of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from U.S. industry and private vehicles will not happen if we do not stay engaged.  For instance, Obama is a big supporter of corn ethanol, a very bad idea. You can type the term into our search engine to find many posts on why corn ethanol is not a clean or green alternative for our fuel tanks (one example).  While we are as thrilled as anyone that we have achieved such an inspirational moment in U.S. politics, we remind ourselves that Mr. Obama is a slightly left-of-center, pro-business Democrat.  And he scares us a bit when he talks about the war in Afghanistan.

We need all our voices joined together to steer the coming policy debates in the right direction.

Meanwhile, as we move into the Thanksgiving week and the other holidays to come, I want to make a little plea here that we use this moment of ecological and economic crisis to reflect deeply on our lives, how we live here, what is wrong with the way we have conducted business on this planet for the last couple of centuries, and why it matters utterly for our future that we not try to come out of this crisis by trying to reconstruct those old and destructive ways.

Air pollution off eastern U.S. coast - NASA

Because many of us will not be doing much shopping this year, maybe we could use some of our family and community time to reflect on our planet, the gifts it has given us, the wonder of this fabric of life that holds us — now becoming so frayed and fragile — and ponder what we might do as individuals, families, communities, congregations, neighborhoods, towns and villages to help heal what is broken, ease the human footprint, and allow the Earth to begin to regenerate and renew its rich and diverse ecosystems.

We have often said that recycling, changing light bulbs, and buying hydrid cars (still too expensive for most of us) is important, but far from enough. What we also need to do is look at the patterns and habits of our lives and see how we can really ratchet down our demands on the Earth’s compromised resilience. As many biologists and ecologists will tell us, when the Earth begins to lose its resilience, it loses its ability to bounce back from the abuse we inflict. When that resilience is gone, we are in big trouble.

Suggestions for things to talk about and to do:

* No more purchasing of bottled water. If you are worried about your tap water, buy a filter, then get involved in local efforts to measure the health of your drinking water supply and do advocacy to ensure its safety. But water is not the only thing put in energy-wasting, toxic contaminated plastic bottles. So is soda. Stop drinking soda; it’s not good for you. Find drinks that are in biodegradable containers. Think about what you put in your bodies and in your trash and recycling bins in terms of the planet and your health.

* Buy local. Broccoli does not grow where I am in the winter, so the broccoli in the supermarket here has traveled a long, CO2-emitting distance to get to the store, and is probably deficient in the nutrients of fresh local broccoli anyway. Wait until summer. Buy local winter vegetables instead.

Industrial poultry farm - Photo by Larry Rana - US Dept. of Agriculture

* Stop eating meat and poultry that come from industrial livestock farming. If you eat these animal products, make sure they are locally produced, are free of hormones and antibiotics, are free range and/or grass fed. As you will see in our Zine next week, industrial livestock production is a major source of climate changing greenhouse gases and toxic contaminants in our food and water. It is extremely bad for our health and engages practices that are mind-numbingly cruel to these living creatures.  Better to eat organic tofu this Thanksgiving than a turkey raised on an industrial farm!

* Consolidate your grocery-shopping and other errands. Do them together with neighbors and friends. It’s more fun, and it’s how we learn to live more gently on the planet — by living in community, rather than as isolated individuals.

* Instead of purchasing throw-away stuff for Christmas, give meaning. I can remember giving my Godson Aidan a ticket to an indoor soccer game here in Milwaukee as a Christmas present in 2006. He loves soccer! Still, I could see that little bit of disappointment at not getting a ‘thing’ instead, or in addition. He made some comment about it. But the two of us had an absolute blast, and I imagine that he will remember that time together a whole lot longer than any ‘thing’ I could have given him that year.

* Stop flying all over the place. Of course, most of us can’t afford to now anyway. Airplanes are tremendously polluting. Stay home more. Spend more time with intimate others, families and friends.  That goes for businesses and non-governmental groups as well!  The planet can’t handle all your travel habits.  We must find other ways to meet (teleconferencing, for example) and reduce air travel to a minimum.

* Don’t stop there.  We must reinvent the way we do business, the priorities of our economy, the kinds of jobs we create, the kind of meaning and values reflected in our economic choices.  Right now, our economy needs to be reorganized around the project of recreating the human presence on the planet.  Our educational systems, transportation and communications systems, our energy systems, how we define ‘development,’ how we live within our local bioregions — these need to be the core issues of our economic life, not profit-margins, concentration of wealth for the few, not corporate power or self-interest.  Get involved with groups working to protect the Earth right where you are, and with those working for economic and Earth justice.

Well, we could make a long list. What I am trying to say is this:

we must, we MUST, reinvent the human project on this planet if we are to survive as a species, if our beautiful blue and green planet is to remain beautiful.

We are living in crisis now, a crisis created by how we have lived, by our striving for inappropriate, unsustainable affluence and comfort. In getting used to that way of life, in our assumptions that there is no other way to live, we have found ourselves on the brink of catastrophe.

We can use crisis to get freaked out and to attempt to put those old pieces back together. Or we can use this opportunity to ponder what brought us to the brink, to determine not to continue in that direction, and to begin to reinvent the human project towards just and sustainable modes of being.

But with this caveat: I don’t much like the word sustainable anymore. We are already living beyond sustainability. What we must do is ease our ecological footprint enough that the Earth can regenerate and replenish its ecosystems back towards sustainability. And we must learn how to live again within that balance of life.

Add those steps above to the light bulbs and recycling and push for hybrids and renewable fuels, and we are at a starting point for where we need to go.

What better time, as we prepare to give thanks for the bounty and goodness of the Earth.

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Photo credits:

Per capita carbon emissions map, Vulcan Project, Purdue University, from Wiredscience
Air pollution off U.S. eastern coast, see NASA Earth Observatory
Industrial poultry farm, Environment News Service
Earth from Apollo 8, NASA