BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

TIME TO PAY ATTENTIONS TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

Daniel Hertzler

Reviews of Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth by Lester R. Brown. W. W. Norton, 2001;

Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church’s Response. Edited by Dieter Hessel and Larry Rasmussen. Fortress Press, 2001;

Creation and Environment: An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World. Edited by Calvin Redekop. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

I began to consider the first of these books, by Brown, then became aware of the second. In the meantime, I remembered I had the third on my shelf. Each provides some contribution toward understanding the environmental crisis. All agree that the crisis is real and not trumped up by some "tree huggers." The second and third books are composed of papers read at conferences and exhibit the usual lack of focus caused by a variety of sources. The first has the advantage of sustained attention to the issue. Lester Brown has been engaging this question for a professional lifetime.

How is it that we have come to where we are in relation to our environment? Who has decreed that we should be free to "trash" it? I have heard that some blame Genesis 1 as the culprit. There is some evidence for this, as Dieter Hessel points out. "Especially during the modern period, secular cheerleaders for nature manipulation and destructive development, beginning with Francis Bacon, pursued dominion logic as humanity’s mandate, following the lead of P—the Priestly liturgy, that is, Genesis 1" (Earth Habitat, 190, 191).

But there is also Genesis 2, which has a different perspective. Theodore Hiebert observes that "While the Priestly human has a management role within the natural world, the Yahwist’s [as some scholars refer to a possible source of Gen. 2] farmer is more of an equal member of the community of life and a servant of nature’s processes" (Creation and the Environment, 117).

A Hebrew editor has apparently provided both accounts. How shall we use them? I suppose a typical approach is to choose the one we like best, as Bacon and his followers have evidently done—to justify what they wanted to do anyhow. We need to dig deeper than this.

Larry Rasmussen accounts for our present problems by reference to "the forces of modernity" and "three successive waves of ‘globalization.’" He identifies these as "conquest and colonization . . . post-World War II development . . . and free-trade capitalism" (Earth Habitat, 10, 11). In other words, environmental degradation has come along with the freedom of capitalism to do what it wishes in the world. (Communism, of course, did badly also when it was a force. But its ability is now much diminished.) Calvin Redekop puts it bluntly: "The environmental crisis has developed because of human hubris" (Creation and Environment, 206, 207).

As both of the latter two books acknowledge, the churches are not precisely famous for environmental concern. Dieter Hessel observes that "Christian communions, while claiming to be exceptional, have mostly been quite conventional in relating to environmental issues" (Earth Habitat, 191). Walter Klaassen asserts that "It was the need to survive and not love of the land that produced the expertise and care of the land for which Mennonites have become famous" (Creation and Environment, 142).

Lester Brown has been paying attention to environmental issues since 1974, when he founded the Worldwatch Institute. In the book Eco-Economy, he extensively documents how the environment is being destroyed. He says the culprits are basically three: 1) overpopulation; 2) affluence and overconsumption; 3) the burning of fossil fuels. In Brown’s view there are solutions to all three of these problems, but they will call on all of us to pay attention and take appropriate action.

In numbers of cases, production and consumption are separated in the global market so that consumers may have no idea of what is involved in the production of a given commodity. Two specific examples Brown highlights are gold wedding rings and bottled water. He reports that to obtain the gold for a pair of wedding rings calls for a hole six feet deep, six feet wide, and 10 feet long. "Fortunately, for the newlyweds, this hole is in someone else’s backyard. So, too, is the cyanide used to separate the gold from the ore" (123). Brown returns to the problem of gold several times. "In damage per ton of metal produced, nothing comes close to gold" (129).

Next he takes up the question of bottled water. He indicates that it is no safer than water out of the tap "even though it can cost 1000 times as much. . . ."

Brown observes that "Phasing out the use of bottled water would eliminate the need for the fleet of trucks that haul the water and distribute it. This in turn would reduce the materials needed to manufacture the trucks as well as the traffic congestion, air pollution and rising carbon dioxide levels associated with their operation" (142). Yet everywhere we look these days we see people drinking water from plastic bottles.

Some changes in favor of the environment can be made by individuals. Others require changes of whole systems. Brown has a vision for this also. He would tax environmentally dangerous activities to make clear the total cost to the country. He proposes that "environmental scientists and economists work together to calculate the cost of climate disruption, acid rain, and air pollution. This figure could then be incorporated as a tax on coal-fired electricity that, when added to the current price, would give the full cost of coal used" (23).

A similar tax should be collected from automobile and truck transportation, a system which is highly subsidized in this country. According to Brown the subsidy is $111 billion a year (243).

"We can now see what an eco-economy looks like," writes Brown. "Instead of being run on fossil fuels, it will be powered by sources of energy that derive from the sun, such as wind and sunlight, and by geothermal energy from within the earth. . . . Cars and buses will run on fuel-cell engines powered by electricity produced with an electro-chemical process using hydrogen as fuel instead of internal combustion engines" (83).

Some countries have already taken steps in this direction. Denmark, says Brown, is the leader. Costa Rica hopes to be altogether "on renewable energy by 2025." Iceland has set out to be the first country to shift to a "hydrogen powered economy" (81, 82). Brown asserts that "As the new century begins, the sun is setting on the fossil fuel era" (98).

Supporting news arrives on the Internet from Earth Policy Institute. It summarizes the efforts of five European countries to implement taxes on environmentally destructive products and at the same time reduce taxes on income. As the report indicates, changing taxes affects behavior. "The goal of tax restructuring is to get the market to tell the ecological truth."

As may be expected, the U.S., as the biggest economy and the biggest polluter, is the slowest to change. It appears that the problem is made worse by having "oilmen" such as George W. Bush and Richard Cheney in the White House.

An editorial in Mother Jones magazine (July-Aug. 2002) says that Bush missed an opportunity for progressive energy leadership following the September 11 disaster. "Rather than seize the moment and confront the issues head-on," says the editorial, "Bush and his vice president did exactly what we should have expected from two businessmen from the Texas oil patch—continue to dismiss energy conservation as a matter of ‘personal virtue’ and proceed with an energy plan . . . that ignores the potential of renewable alternatives and emphasizes yet more drilling and more mining."

Yet, as the magazine reports, changes are coming despite a foot-dragging government. In the same issue, Bill McKibben writes of a trip he took in his new Honda Civic hybrid which delivered 59 miles per gallon. Alex Markels reports that wind generation for electricity is catching on. Even some big energy companies have discovered that there is money to be made from wind. (We ourselves have several small "windfarms" in western Pennsylvania.)

While we wait for the government to catch up with the Europeans, who are well on the way, there are things for us to do as individuals. As simple as anything is to drive a smaller car. Leslie Stahl has reported on the CBS program "60 Minutes" that improving gas mileage by one or two miles per gallon would save more oil than could be found in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yet some are not paying sufficient attention. In the centerfold of the August 2002 issue of Smithsonian magazine is an ad for the Ford Explorer, a gas-guzzling SUV. We see ads like this everywhere, but it annoyed me to see it in what I consider a "quality" magazine. I sent them an e-mail complaining about the ad, especially the slogan "Seek and ye shall find no boundaries." Thus the ad used Jesus to endorse American greed. I urged upon them Lester Brown’s Eco-Economy.

In a summary chapter in Creation and Environment, Calvin Redekop offers four "Practical Suggestions for Everyone." The fourth is "Finally, we can begin by changing ourselves" (213). I could have wished for something more specific like Bill Mc-Kibben’s 59 mpg Honda. It may be that my friend Cal, like others of my generation, remembers church discipline that was unimaginative and heavy-handed. Yet since environmental problems have arisen through specific actions, they will only be solved through specific actions.

Brown would have us know that global warming is a fact. Nothing we can do today will deliver us from it. But there are things to do to solve the problem in the long run. How soon will we begin?

An irony highlighted by the ad in Smithsonian is that Jesus uttered his saying in a culture where there were shortages of just about everything. According to Richard L. Rohrbaugh, about two percent of the population sat on the top of the heap and owned most of the agricultural land. For the rest there was scarcity.

In contrast, ours is a society where there is an overabundance of just about everything. Even my local auto mechanic observed recently that there are too many automobiles. Yet it seems that all the Ford company can think of to do is to manufacture more cars and press them upon us. When the American people hold back on spending, there is a recession and the government starts to worry.

These three books agree that we need a better vision than this. Our destiny is not fulfilled in the "no boundaries" of the Smithsonian ad, but in sensible discipline, and unwillingness to accept capitalistic doctrines at face value. And what about those gold wedding rings and the bottled water?

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, drives a Honda Civic, but not a hybrid like Bill McKibben’s. Yet he can testify to having seen one last spring at the local dealership. As McKibben testifies in his Mother Jones article, they don’t look any different. They just get better mileage.