October
2006
On using the Earth(s)
I’m a fairly ecologically responsible person, I think. I recycle, for lack of a better word, religiously (my office mates will attest to this!). I live in a very small house (by American standards), don’t eat meat, buy organic food, and I didn’t start driving a car until a little over a year ago, which should count for something. Much to my disappointment, though, when I took the online “ecological footprint quiz,” I found that, if everyone lived like me, our problems would be far from solved. In fact, if everyone lived like me, we would need 3 additional planets to provide enough resources for all of us.
Actually, I am doing very slightly better than the average American, but that’s not really the issue. We don’t have 3 extra planets lying around just now, and the reason we’ve managed to scrape along with just one to this point is that the vast majority of the world doesn’t live like me — in fact, a large proportion of the world’s people live in poverty. This touches on the complicated connection between environmental sustainability and economic justice.
The number of people who live in dire poverty in our world is unconscionable — but the fact is, we do not have the resources, and will not ever have the resources, for nine billion people to live like the average American — even like the average environmentally conscious American. Yet the world looks at us and wants to live like we do — why wouldn’t they? Studies show that developing nations are not making efforts to live sustainably, but to live like Americans. Meanwhile, we are using far more than our share of the world’s resources, and putting out levels of carbon emissions that lead to drought, famine, and flood in exactly those parts of the world which currently are suffering from intense poverty and struggling towards development and wealth along American lines. To put it mildly, we’re leading the world down the wrong road.
Which makes us, as Americans, especially responsible for searching for ways in which we can live differently. And here is where we need to search and act together, as communities. One person recycling, becoming vegan, or riding her bike to work (all things I’ve done), is a great thing, but it’s not enough in the face of the greatest culture of overconsumption the world has ever seen. We need to seek solutions that involve the individual, but go beyond individual decisions to our entire way of life. We need to support one another in personal and political change, and find joy in the way that we do it.
And this is why it’s crucial to bring our faith into our action and our efforts. Without faith, it’s easy to become burned out or to give up. It’s also easy to become self-righteous and isolated. As people choosing to live differently, we are moving against what Paul calls powers and principalities — the great and seemingly unshiftable weight of comfort, ease, and reward that comes from obeying the status quo. The powers and principalities not only passively and actively resist change, but tempt every one of us to let someone else do it (or to ridicule and persecute the people who do). Going it alone against the powers simply won’t work.
So, what more can I do? There are some more things, as it happens — I’ve already found out that my faucets can use aerators, and I can install a low-flow showerhead, and get some of those special light bulbs, and I’m working on developing a low-water-use garden. Progressive Christians Uniting has signed on to the Virtual March to Stop Global Warming, and I’m keeping up on the situation in the world (check out the World Wildlife Fund’s most recent Living Planet Report).
The important thing, though, is to build community, to be not alone in my ecological idiosyncrasies, but able to trust that others are with me, and I with them, in these efforts.
That’s the goal of PCU’s new Eighth Day Project. Knowing that we can’t go it alone, we are working to bring together Christian environmentalists for mutual support, stronger action, and ongoing education and activism. Will you be part of it with us, and add your voice and your resources to our efforts? Contact us to learn more, and to become part of the change we need to see in our world.