Like many others, this writer has puzzled over the unwillingness of most Christians and their church leadership to acknowledge the looming climatic and environmental catastrophe being brought about by our out-of-control industrial civilization. The evidence is overwhelming. There is a rare unanimity among scientists not in the employ of corporations contributing to the catastrophe that the danger to the human race is real and the situation is indeed grave. The churches are silent. Why?

Recently, I came across an essay by Wendell Berry, who, along with Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, and a host of other thinkers, authors, scientists and teachers, has established a spiritual basis for the care of the earth, that, while it does not explain why fundamentalists have ignored the crisis, sets out a compelling case for Biblical environmentalism.

http://www.crosscurrents.org/berry.htm

Berry suggests that Christians read their Bibles:

If we read the Bible, keeping in mind the desirability of those two survivals--of Christianity and the Creation--we are apt to discover several things that modern Christian organizations have kept remarkably quiet about, or have paid little attention to.

We will discover that we humans do not own the world or any part of it: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein" (Ps. 24:1). There is in our human law, undeniably, the concept and right of "land ownership." But this, I think, is merely an expedient to safeguard the mutuality of belonging without which there can be no lasting and conserving settlement of human communities. This right of human ownership is limited by mortality and by natural constraints upon human attention and responsibility; it quickly becomes abusive when used to justify large accumulations of "real estate," and perhaps for that reason such large accumulations are forbidden in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. In biblical terms, the "landowner" is the guest and steward of God: "the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. 25:23).

We will discover that God made not only the parts of Creation that we humans understand and approve, but all of it: "all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made" John 1:3). And so we must credit God with the making of biting and dangerous beasts, and disease-causing microorganisms. That we may disapprove of these things does not mean that God is in error, or that the creator ceded some of the work of Creation to Satan; it means that we are deficient in wholeness, harmony, and understanding--that is, we are "fallen."

We will discover that God found the world, as he made it, to be good; that he made it for his pleasure; and that he continues to love it and to find it worthy, despite its reduction and corruption by us. People who quote John 3:16 as an easy formula for getting to heaven neglect to see the great difficulty implied in the statement that the advent of Christ was made possible by God's love for the world--not God's love for Heaven or for the world as it might be, but for the world as it was and is. Belief in Christ is thus made dependent upon prior belief in the inherent goodness--the lovability--of the world.

We will discover that the Creation is not in any sense independent of the Creator, the result of a primal creative act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God. Elihu said to Job that if God "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together . . . " Job 34:15). And Psalm 104 says: "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created.... " Creation is God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian, Philip Sherrard, has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden being." Thus we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate. To every creature the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. As the poet, George Herbert, put it,

Thou are in small things great, not small in any.... For thou art infinite in one and all.

We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. To Dante, "despising Nature and her gifts" was a violence against God. We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it. We have the right to use the gifts of Nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more, which is why the Bible forbids usury and great accumulations of property. The usurer, Dante said, "condemns Nature. . . for he puts his hope elsewhere."

I have omitted the footnotes, which can be found in the original document linked above.

With no public announcement, the EPA closed its principal library used by its experts to research toxic substances. The library is one of the main tools used by EPA technical personnel to determine whether substances should be banned. Apparently, the Bush administration is determined to allow its industrial constituency a free hand in polluting the environment when it is profitable, irrespective of whether the public is poisoned.

According to Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER):

Unlike its recent closure of its main Headquarters library and despite federal policy (Office of Budget & Management Circular A-130) requiring that the public be notified whenever “terminating significant information dissemination products,” EPA made no public announcement concerning the dismantlement of the OPPTS Library. In addition, the OPPTS Library was not mentioned in the “EPA FY 2007 Framework” as one of the several libraries slated to be shuttered.

“EPA’s hasty, buzz saw slashing at its library network is now interfering with its mission of harnessing the best available science to protect human health and the environment,” commented Ruch [PEER director], noting that Congress has yet to approve EPA’s actions. “Given the tremendous public health risks, this is absolutely the last place EPA should be cutting.”

The tragedy is that once a library is closed, the librarians will leave for other positions and the materials themselves will become inaccessible and outdated in a short time, thus making it nearly impossible to start back. This outcome is obviously intended by Bush and the incompetent ideological hacks he has been appointing to run federal agencies. It's a mindset incomprehensible to anyone with the slightest concern for public welfare, but second nature to those possessed by the right-wing philosophy that pervades our one-party government. That alone should be sufficient reason to vote them out of office tomorrow.

Read an inspiring story in Orion Magazine of how North Dakota farmers succeeded in banning genetically-modified wheat from their state and in doing so visited a humiliating defeat upon a powerful and politically well-connected corporation bent on controlling the world supply of seed. Factoid: John Ashcroft, senator from Missouri before being defeated for reelection by a dead man and elevated to the exalted rank of lord high attorney general, was once known as the senator from Monsanto.

The National Environmental Trust has released a report on a recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal to weaken reporting of toxic chemical hazards in communities. Under the proposals approximately ten percent of communities that are included in the Toxic Release Inventory would no longer have the benefit of information on potentially lethal sources of industrial chemicals in their area. The Toxic Release Inventory was created by Congress when it enacted the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, signed into law by President Reagan. It was designed to prevent accidents such as the one at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, that killed thousands of people.

Weakening these protections will, of course, benefit industries that deal with large amounts of toxic chemicals. It's a short-term benefit, though, as any relaxation of regulation toxic waste increases the likelihood of a disaster. Time and time again, large corporations have shown that they will leave no corner uncut in their drive to reduce the costs of doing business, regardless of danger to the public. Even a small disaster will create tremendous political pressure for far tighter regulation than they now experience.

But corporate finance and governance are structured towards short-term gain. CEOs and others at the top have every incentive to increase profits and the share value of corporate stock, secure in the knowledge that the bad times will almost surely come after they have left the corporation and cashed out their stock and stock options.

A sensible public policy would give fewer rewards for short-term gains and greater rewards for long-term gains. A change in the taxation of executive compensation, stock options and capital gains would be a good start, but only a systemic restructuring of the entire financial (and monetary) system can eliminate the manic suicidal drive for immediate return on investment that characterizes our present day practices. I will shortly be publishing an essay/review for the JP based on Bernard Lietaer's The Future of Money that explores some of the alternatives, many of which are already being tried on a small scale around the world. Until we tame this monstrous system that destroys families, communities and even nations in the name of profit, most of us are destined to witness the progressive loss of what makes our lives on this planet tolerable, even possible.


The deadline for comments is today. Sorry I didn't find out about it sooner. Make a Comment which will be sent to the EPA administrator.

The National Environmental Trust

Analysis: Nearly 1,000 Communities Across U.S. Would Lose All Toxics Information

Text of proposed rule and supplementary information. (Note: this is a large .pdf file and the actual text of the amendments begins on Page 74 of the document)

Right to Know Network (Part of OMB Watch. Features databases copied from EPA TWI database you can use to investigate toxic release in your area)

Poet and farmer Wendell Berry writes a particularly relevant article in Orion Magazine on agriculture. Now that realization of the limitations inherent in dependency on oil is sinking into our collective consciousness, we are gradually realizing that agriculture, which depends upon heavy inputs of petroleum, both in the form of fertilizer and fuel, will change because it must. If it doesn't change it will collapse. Berry, whose book The Unsettling of America (1977) was a revelation to many of us who were not raised on a traditional farm, has not only examined the philosophy and consequences of modern industrial agriculture, but he has also explored the social and spiritual dimensions of living on the Earth as part of an ecosystem and a human society. He is like a prophet, that is, one who sees more clearly than the rest of us where our actions are leading. There is not a person alive today that cannot learn from his knowledge, wisdom and vision. In a sane society, The Unsettling of America would be taught in every school.