The Earth is the Lord's

Social justice and reduced calcification in planktonic foraminifera

So, you may be asking yourself, what does reduced calcification in modern Southern Ocean planktonic foraminifera have to with social justice? You can either read the study yourself (entitled "Reduced Calcification in Modern Southern Ocean Planktonic Foraminifera"), or read on in this post!

Excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doesn't stay put, thankfully. Various processes in the earth's systems remove carbon from the atmosphere, and these mechanisms have kept atmospheric carbon dioxide levels pretty stable for a long period of time. Everyone knows by now that plants take up carbon dioxide. But oceans absorb a lot more, and there is new evidence that one of the biological pumps removing CO2 from the atmosphere is giving out.

Videophilia replacing love of nature

In the late 1900s researchers like E.O. Wilson and Stephen Kellert began using the term "biophilia" to describe the basic love of other living things that humans seem to exhibit--an affection that encompassed nature, other species, diversity. So strong an affinity, so powerful an affect, was biophilia that the researchers decided it must be instinctive, built into the human brain by natural selection because it was an aid to survival.

Or else it's part of God's (intelligent, by definition) design--to make gardeners who love the garden. I'm betting on the latter hypothesis.

But there's a competing impulse, a dark attraction that fights for the affection of humans. Is it money? Sex? Power?

No, it's actually video screens. There is a strong negative relationship between the amount of time people spend on the Internet, playing video games, and watching television and movies, and the amount of time people spend outside in nature. Humans seem to have a (built-in? instinctive?) love of flat screen TVs and handheld video devices.

Biophilia is being replaced by videophilia.

Videophilia replacing love of nature

In the late 1900s researchers like E.O. Wilson and Stephen Kellert began using the term "biophilia" to describe the basic love of other living things that humans seem to exhibit--an affection that encompassed nature, other species, diversity. So strong an affinity, so powerful an affect, was biophilia that the researchers decided it must be instinctive, built into the human brain by natural selection because it was an aid to survival.

Or else it's part of God's (intelligent, by definition) design--to make gardeners who love the garden. I'm betting on the latter hypothesis.

But there's a competing impulse, a dark attraction that fights for the affection of humans. Is it money? Sex? Power?

No, it's actually video screens. There is a strong negative relationship between the amount of time people spend on the Internet, playing video games, and watching television and movies, and the amount of time people spend outside in nature. Humans seem to have a (built-in? instinctive?) love of flat screen TVs and handheld video devices.

Biophilia is being replaced by videophilia.

Evangelicals get gold star for creation care

Martin Marty is not an evangelical commentator, but he does comment on evangelicals frequently, and his writings are often useful to me, to see how our work is viewed from other Christian perspectives. The Martin Marty Center at University of Chicago publishes Sightings, a stream of reflections on faith in public life. I'm not a current subscriber, but Al Tizon sent me one of Marty's columns last week, on "Evangelicals and the Environment", well worth noting for its paternalistic tone as well as its content.

Marty reviews a recent book from the Wheaton College community called Christians, the Care of Creation, and Global Climate Change, a nice volume for its slimness (would that other books were as economical with their length). It's recommended reading...

But what's particularly interesting to me is the care Marty takes to distance himself from Evangelicals, lest his non-evangelical audience mistake his sympathetic observations for whole-hearted approval.

We'll see more of these sorts of pieces in the future, as more evangelicals join the environmental conversation.

It's a combination of head-patting approval, finger-wagging for being tardy, tut-tutting about our evangelical hang-ups, and instrumental use of our creation care efforts to goad mainliners into action. Nothing lights a fire under Episcopalians and Unitarians on social issues like saying "Look, even the evangelicals are on board with this issue!"

It would be nice if we could get something better than a "most improved" award.

We should also begin to see a standardized proviso emerge in commentaries about evangelical environmental action, as with commentaries on evangelical social action--a note that these new development are encouraging, and that these are native fruit from seeds planted in the evangelical garden long ago by Ron Sider and friends, and watered through the years by groups like the Evangelicals for Social Action.

Green My Hood

Does caring for the environment always come at the expense of jobs? Is creation care something that must be traded off against people care? I'm reading a great book right now that addresses just that issue. I'm reading it with my pastor, Leroy Barber, because we care about the beautiful but broken South Atlanta neighborhood our church calls home. Leroy is president of Mission Year and is a speaker at this year's Flourish Conference for church leaders on creation care.

The book is Van Jones' The Green Collar Economy. Van Jones is the founder and president of Green For All, and his work is significant for Christians who want to do community development in environmentally-friendly ways and for those who want to find ways out of the "environment vs. jobs" debate. Jones points out the many ways in which solving environmental problems can be done with justice. His position is that as long as we're going to all the trouble to create a clean energy economy, we might as well make a renewed effort to tackle discrimination and inequality, too.

He addresses the involvement of faith communities directly and challenges the "so-called progressives [who] snarl the word 'Christian' as if it were an insult or the name of a disease." He presses activists to become problem-solvers, to become more about "proposition" than "opposition." In a short list of principles for a new movement, Jones advocates fewer "issues," more solutions; fewer "demands," more goals; fewer "targets," more partners; and less "accusation," more confession.

Leroy's recent post on Sojourners blog captures how he thinks about environmental issues:

Is it possible to create a new economy in the hood that would create jobs, lower energy costs, reduce the carbon footprint of an urban neighborhood, and allow neighbors to get to know one another at the same time? I think there just might be a way to make this a reality. I would like to green my hood.

The problem in urban neighborhoods is that they are some of the most dangerous places, environmentally speaking. Trash dumps, tow lots, expressways, and chemical plants create places that are quite unsafe. Our neighborhoods can begin to help themselves and lower some of the risk by starting their own green projects. We could hire and train people to do home audits for seniors and families in homes that are full of lead paint, leaky windows, clogged gutters, and uninsulated water heaters. This training would give jobs to people and lower energy bills for residents, as well as reduce the carbon footprint of the neighborhood.

We can grow neighborhood gardens and farmers’ markets, which would offer places for neighbors to have better access to nutritious food and vegetables that are otherwise very costly. When we make neighborhoods walkable and livable, neighbors can get around without driving, and that means less asthma-causing air pollution, fewer emergency room visits, and fewer sleepless nights for worried parents. Caring for the environment has hit the hood and is now a major urban issue, and people of faith have opportunity to offer good news in a new way. This is no longer just an issue of global warming and saving rain forests — it is about protecting some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, and feeding the hungry now needs to include providing clean air, safe streets, and healthy neighborhoods for our poor urban neighbors. I am committed to greening my hood for a number of reasons. If you want to learn more about it, you should check out The Green Collar Economy, by Van Jones. This is his idea, and I have become a fan.

Leroy and I are searching for other Christians who have read The Green Collar Economy—or the related work by Thomas Friedman, called Hot, Flat and Crowded (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)—and who have ideas and stories to tell about environmental actions that create rather than threaten jobs, especially in this economy. Please write me if we can feature your work or the work of others you know.

To meet Leroy Barber and other Christian leaders who are looking at environmental issues in a new way, check out the Flourish Conference, May 13-15, 2009 in Atlanta.

Faithful Urbanism

The weekend brought a rare snowfall to Atlanta (four inches at my house) and with it the typical breathless wall-to-wall weather news coverage that every winter event precipitates in the South. With the possibility of ice on the road, I knew, as a responsible Southerner with a reasonable assessment of my winter driving skills, that I should go nowhere near an automobile. So we played in the mushy wet snow all day Sunday.

Snow and ice are disturbances to life as normal, and they reveal much about the underlying structure of life. One of the main things they reveal is how far-flung our relationships are in terms of geography--being forced out of our cars decouples many of us from work, school, church, shopping, friends and family. Such disturbances also cause us to rediscover more proximate relationships, with actual and not metaphorical neighbors, and to find fun in our own neighborhoods, something we'll need to do more in the future as energy costs rise.

Not driving to church (and not having to preach) also meant I had time to pick up some material from my "to read" stack. Yesterday it was the white paper by Michael Van Pelt and Richard Greydanus from the Work Research Foundation in Hamilton, Ontario, entitled "Living on the Streets: The Role of the Church in Urban Renewal." Scott Calgaro of the Coalition for Christian Outreach put it in my hands months ago, and it took a snowstorm slow me down enough to read it. It's a great resource for anyone concerned with social justice, the built environment, and the role of faith communities in urban life. The PDF is available for free download.

Recycling is not enough

I read Tri Robinson's post on "recycling examples from the Bible" over on SustainLane.

In our family Bible reading yesterday we encountered an example of recycling...but not a good one. While Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the covenant and commandments from God, the people of Israel were at the foot of the mountain recycling their gold jewelry into an idol shaped like a golden calf. Then Moses, in anger, recycled the golden calf, melting it down, grinding it into powder, mixing it with water, and making the Israelites drink it.

I don't know whether there's any great environmental lesson there, but I'm reminded of the way G.K. Chesterton described the material world. in his great little biography of St. Thomas Aquinas. The material world is good--God made it good.

Chesterton: "That 'God looked on all things and saw that they were good' contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist cannot follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions. That is exactly the one thing it cannot be paved with. But it is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But he cannot make things bad; they remain as on the first day of creation. The work of heaven alone was material; the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual."

From "Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox" by G.K. Chesterton

We can be efficient in our use of materials. But it's what we DO with the material world that brings honor or horror to God.

Taking the World Seriously

An article from last week's Economist <http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109915> reminds us that the big environmental debates are NOT going to be between those who care and those who don't care about God's creation.

No, the big arguments will be over things that people with sound minds and sound theology still find room for disagreement on. The Economist article <http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109915> shows one example: a giant new power transmission line running from the Imperial Valley (where renewable energy sources abound--there is lots of sun, and lots of geothermal energy to be harvested) to San Diego (where lots of energy-needing people live). The approved route twists like a gerrymandered snake through the landscape to avoid protected areas, forests, and Native American lands.

But enviros are fighting enviros over the project. The Economist describes the battle as "tree-huggers versus nerds". Nerds are the pro-technology, pro-business environmentalists (like, they say, Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger). Tree-huggers are the idealists who object that the power line could be used to transmit electricity generated by coal as easily as power from renewable sources.

Gas Taxes with justice

Whew! Gas prices are back down nationwide, to levels not seen in years. Most people are rejoicing, since the last thing they feel they need in uncertain times is to be sending their hard-earned money to oil companies who are already producing record profits.  

But the fact is, we probably weren’t paying enough for gasoline even at its highest levels, because we weren’t paying the full costs of producing and using it. [See this great post for economics students for more details]. Full-cost pricing for gasoline would include not just the extraction and transport costs of crude oil, the costs of refining and shipping gasoline, and the costs of distributing it through a retail network to your local gas station. Full-cost pricing would mean  paying the full social costs of gasoline, the private costs and the public costs imposed on others, including in the price of gasoline the impacts of pollution on human health, the damage mining and shipping does to the ecosystems that provide economic benefits to people, and the cost we impose on future generations by using up non-renewable resources….

Imperiled Wildlife from a Biblical Perspective

The Biblical perspective on biodiversity doesn't directly address the issue of endangered species. Theologians construct the argument for protecting endangered species from various biblical and ethical frameworks. Some are utilitarian are expressly anthropocentric--we protect species because they might be useful for us, as sources of medicine, useful products, or for the services they provide (like the pollination services of bees, written about in a recent Creation Care article). But there are deeper theological rationales for protecting species. Ron Sider was recently cited in the Seattle Times saying, "Let's save endangered species because they come from the loving hand of the Creator." Peter Illyn has a similar take in the most recent Creation Care magazine (Fall 08, Issue 37), where he argues that "plants and animals have an inherent right to be fruitful and to thrive as God has commanded them." Read the essay in full here...

Peter talks about a new threat to God's creature: climate change. In the same issue of Creation Care, we published a beautiful set of images of wildlife in warming world from the Irreplaceable traveling photograph exhibit.  (You can see it if you download the PDF version of the magazine, which features a cover story on C.S. Lewis's environmental vision.)  And Creation Care's expert conservation scientist, Kyle van Houtan, wrote a very informative explanation of extinction and its causes. One passage from his essay is particularly evocative:

“Extinction” literally refers to putting out a fire or light, and some of its early uses appear in Christian texts. A scientific account of animals and plants cannot by itself describe the significance of extinction. Driving an entire group of creatures to oblivion is more than a biological act: it is the extinguishing of a light kindled by the One whom James refers to as “the Father of lights” (1:17). Extinction is a theological act.

Stuck in the Middle on Climate

It’s exhausting to be in the middle of highly polarized debates. Part of me wants to be a bridge-builder, a reconciler, a voice of reason. Another part wants to be “prophetic” and to sit in judgment of both extremes. Yet another part tells me I need to be a better listener, which is hard with all the shouting going on.

That’s where I find myself in the climate debate. Far off on one side I see a few secular, elitist—even extreme—environmentalists who have a not-so-latent misanthropy for the world’s poor. This is the worldview that sees population as the fundamental environmental problem. It doesn’t bother them that poorly-designed climate policy might impose onerous burdens on the world’s poor. As an evangelical Christian, I don’t want any part of that.