Our Be'ats Summer: Splitting Hairs: Or, New Environmentalists Split from Hairy-Legged Tree-huggers

Submitted by Audrey deCoursey on June 2, 2007 - 5:30am.

Preface: Hooray for religious voices speaking out about environmental causes! Hooray! We're being heard! We're making a difference! We can get into the really interesting discussions now, about how the movement should be, as well as that it should be!

And thus, I present my thoughts on current environmental movement (currents).

Argument: As it grows, today's US environmentalism is moving with two fundamentally different currents: it's a bi-doxy (two sets of ideology and worldview) and, more importantly, a bi-praxy (two sets of actions inspired by those 'doxies'). It is a disagreement about the search for what saves us.

We agree that we need to save the world (from the devil of ecocidal humans). But how? Will we save the world through energy-efficient technology that decreases the impact of the most ecocidal lifestyles without altering the fundamental values those lifestyles are rooted in? Or will we save the world by consuming less stuff? Greener technology or simpler technology? Newer or older lifeways? Invest in new systems or divest from the system?

Certainly, we need both; at least, we may need one while we get to the other. But we must not become too carried away in the former (the greener technology), which ought to remain a means to our end of the latter (the harmonious sustainability of simple living). Really, it's a question of timescale: for now, those of us with the privilege of having lots of stuff must shift to having 'greener' stuff, but we must not get stuck there, either, until we have less stuff, period.

Example: I write this blog post on a high-tech, energy-consuming computer. I write this in hopes of change through my writing. I write this so that my children might not have to spend so much of their time reliant on technology, but can spend more of their lives interacting face to face with other members of their Earth community.

Sidebar: The thing is that lots and lots of people are living that more-sustainable, simpler lifestyle right now, and not just because of noble ideals. There is just not enough stuff to go around when some people take so much more than their share. Green technology is not the answer for people who don't have technology. We must not idealize Priuses and solar panels as eco-action, ignoring how many families and congregations cannot afford such things, and that they may be living a less consumptive lifestyle already, just fine, without the help of fancy green products, thank you very much.

We need to move forward in our environmentalism knowing that it is poor people (and people of color and female people and infant people) who suffer the largest brunt of global climate change and environmental pollution. They are also usually the ones contributing least to the problems and the ones systematically denied tools to cope with the global climate crisis.

Environmental Justice movement reminds us of this. Thank God.

There are different kinds of simplicity: there is the satisfying simplicity of freely choosing to want less, and the stressful scarcity of being starved what you need. Christians especially need to not flatten these different situations into one. We must be aware of the consequences of our potentially lethal Christologies of atonement and sacrifice.

More argument: In the end, we cannot buy and invent ourselves out of a mess that was created by buying and inventing ourselves out of our human natures as members of one Earthly body. It was the invention of buying that is the very root of the problem.

Recycling is good, but reusing is better, and reducing stuff-consumption is best.

But simplicity scares people used to depending on the capitalist eco(nomic)-system. Theologian Mayra Rivera Rivera points out the Truth too inconvenient to mention: that it is simplicity, not more (even greener) stuff, that will save us from crisis. That what we must undo is the capitalistic, consumer lifestyles the US federal government is so busy defending in its wars of empire and its rejection of even mild environmental policies.

Sidebar: Forgive me for being dubious of green technology as the exclusive path to eco-salvation, when our President GW Bush commissions a new, US-led summit (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6708995.stm) on global warming with the statement, "The way to meet the challenge of energy and global climate change is through technology." The way, Mr. President? Or, one way?

And is the way of green technology the extent of the challenge of living in the Way?

Some environmentalists try to win allies by asserting that it is not as hard as people think to live a sustainable lifestyle. That is true; many people do so without even intending to. But I think this assurance obscures the real call for change. For the people who are engaged in prodigal ( i.e. recklessly extravagant) lifestyles that are killing our Earth, they will have to change a lot. And it will be hard, not because they are being asked to live inhumanly, but because they will have to completely change their known ways of relating to other people and to their non-human neighbors in the Earth community.

In the face of the climate crisis we are now facing (see the NASA study released this week, reporting that we have 10 years before collapse), we need an environmental revolution . And we will not attain an environmental revolution without a social revolution, overturning all the structures of violent hierarchy and oppressive power that got us into this mess in the first place.

Any campaign, any movement, requires multiple strategies for action. I seek not to judge or curse any of my environmentalist allies. We are on the same team. But I do want us to remember the extremity of the dangers we face in the dominating cultures' drive toward ecocide, and the differentials in responsibility for it, so as to empower us to move beyond 'simple' changes (in technology and energy and knowledge) that do not question consumption itself (of technology and energy and knowledge). I want us to remember that all our steps must keep leading on to a permanently sustainable world, and not get stuck in our successes at taking one step toward more sustainable practices.

We are called by our crisis to lives of deep, sustainable simplicity. At least we will be in the good company of our fellow apostles:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:44-47, NRSV)

Thus: Hooray for environmentalism! Hooray for religious environmentalism! Hooray for every drop of progress that falls from the sky! May the current environmentalist currents grow and intensify and reduce and reuse and become a simply revolutionary third wave.

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