Ramblings  on Humanity and a Healthy Planet: There Does Not Need to Be a Breaking Point

From the time I studied environmental education in the 1970’s I have been sensitive to knowing the use of non-renewable resources for consumption and development cannot go unabated without a breaking point bringing deteriorating decline or catastrophe or both. I remember the debate about growth and progress in an international conference in Rome in the 70’s and a publication called “The Limits of Growth.” The very notion of limits is a problem for us – we don’t like to think there is a stopping point. In Laudato Si, the 2015 Papal Encyclical on the environment there is this: “Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress.” It’s paternalistic and selfish of so-called First World countries to think and say all the developing countries (and why do we use that term ‘developing’ to describe a country?) cannot or should not all have washing machines like everybody in the so-called developed nations (to use an actual appliance that changes lives as a metaphor for development – see www.ted.com  for the Hans Rosling “The Magic Washing Machine”TED Talk on resource depletion and development). Even with that, there is the necessity of a change in defining progress since progress now is becoming or has become earth-depleting and self-defeating. We are ravaging the planet.

This would and will continue without what added to the equation makes it a tsunami of hurt: an ever increasing population of human beings (not to mention that simultaneously we are killing off hundreds of other species and creating a monoculture that will be unsustainable). In the Daytona Beach News Journal of June 3, 2017 (we were visiting the East Coast sand and water for some R and R) I caught a Letter to the Editor on Volusia County development and water quality saying “the elephant in the room” is “an every expanding population.” The writer was talking about our inability to set limits on growth.

This, my friends, will not go away. “This” being our critical need to reduce growth and development while renewing the planetary environment while we redefine what it means to progress. I left my undergrad world of  Environmental Science and went to a theological seminary for graduate studies because in my altruism to change the world I thought there could be no solution to the technical challenges of environmental decline until and unless there was a change in attitude and understanding of our human relationship to the divine and thus too to creation as a whole.

I still feel that way but realize we in the church have not overall done a good job of translating our faith and have it contain a direct and not indirect connection to care of creation. The reconciled relationship with God is not realized without the reconciled relationship to the created world. Care of creation is not a sub-set of concern, a social issue, but rather an integral part of the primary concern of faith. We simply do not see this. Again, Laudato Si: “the external deserts of the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast.” U.S President Trump, in announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord focused on the economic and labor impact on American citizens, with a particular emphasis on how Americans cannot and will not afford helping other people, nations, bear the cost of transitioning to sustainable development. This is morally bankrupt on at least 2 fronts: 1) the US has been the prime polluter in greenhouse emissions for the past 100 years, just recently taking 2^nd place to China, and so bears the primary responsibility for the global consequences of warming the entire planets suffers 2) even if we disregarded this past culpability, we have current responsibility to do all we can as much as we can for the common good, not simply our singular best.

What are we to do?

First, serve God by investing time, money, wisdom and energy on all personal fronts: advocacy, stewardship practices (i.e. consumptions, waste management, product use all in the familiar reduce, reuse, recycle vein) to earth care.

Second, help each other redefine progress and level the playing field so all nations can have enough for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Third, work with your local government to produce real zoning regulations that promote growth in designated areas while creating real limits to urban and suburban sprawl (see “first” above regarding advocacy).

Fourth, raise the discussion on the limits of population growth so that our nation and all nations create a population accord which calls for all families to have no more than 2 children.

I know, I know, it’s all hard, especially that last one on population limits, since we have personal and social freedoms with which to honor and contend. But this is not the time to be timid. This is the time to engage with as much heart and soul and good sense that we can muster. We must listen deeply to each other and respect each other immensely. And we must make the changes needed. Faith in God calls for it, humanity’s and the natural world’s survival necessitates it.