27 October 2007...8:27 am
Survival of the survivors
“The speed at which mankind has used the Earth’s resources over the past 20 years has put “humanity’s very survival” at risk, a study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded.”, according to an article cited by Fr David Macgregor.
Should we care? Should we be concerned about this?
More than a century ago a town meeting in Durban was discussing the sale of townlands, and a speaker urged caution, saying, “we must think about posterity.”
“Why should we think about posterity?” asked another speaker. “What has posterity ever done for us?”
And that seems to be the attitude of many people today.
The report cited by Fr David Macgregor goes on to say:
The environmental audit, for the United Nations, found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can supply.Thirty per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in ten of the world’s major rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea.
The bleak verdict on the environment was issued as an “urgent call for action” by the United Nations Environment Programme, which said that the “point of no return” was fast approaching.
A neopagan blogger comments on the guilt trip that people the advertising industry is trying to lay on us all:
During that period [while watching TV with all other lights and appliances switched off], we are exhorted maybe four times to save electricity by turning off all non-essential appliances, leaving on maybe a light to see by and of course, the television. Else how would you get to know how badly you’re wasting power?The huge dial and needle fills a corner of the screen, and some bureaucratically designed homily fills another, telling us things like ‘Electricity consumption has eased but is still high.Please switch off all non-essential…’, or ‘Electricity consumption has stabilised. You may switch on some non-essential…’.
Aaargh.
How dare they?
As if the production of that warning message hadn’t already cost more killowatt-hours than I’m going to be using the entire day.Wander down the street sometime and take in the streelights burning all hours in the daylight.
Marvel at the cellular giant’s perfect golf course, floodlit and deserted every single night.
Gawk at the giant advertising hoarding, some not only consuming electricity equivalent to an entire suburb each and every night, but many using just as much power during the day, because someone doesn’t know how this timer-switch thing works.
It’s a joke that we should feel to blame for the country’s power failures.
But while objecting to corporate and government resource wasters trying to blame individuals, Aquila ka Hecate is nevertheless concerned about the fate of the planet and life on it:
But it’s far more than a joke that we should feel responsible for the fact that our Mother is dying.Yes, each one of us can do our part- drive a small car if you must drive, don’t splurge on electricity usage, recycle your waste responsibly. And so on-I don’t need to tell Pagans.
But this feeling that each one of us can be held directly accountable for the sickening Earth is perhaps something a little more sinister.I am not, and have never been, in a position to make those decisions which have stripped Her of Her mantle, drained Her marrow and poisoned Her blood. So why the Hel am I taking on this huge feeling of guilt? …
I don’t advocate freeing your conscience and running off to the nearest 4×4 dealer, not at all. If it would help a whit, I am perfectly willing to die for my Mother.
But what I’m not willing to do is lay down my life for a Multinational Abuser with a severe case of womb envy who wants me to think that I’m the bad guy.
Neopagans are concerned about the environment because they believe that the earth is our mother.
Christians are concerned because they believe that God created both the earth and us, declared his creation good, and that we are responsible to God for the mess we make of it.
And it was these kinds of considerations that led to the formation of SAFCEI — the South African Faith Communities Environmental Institute.
For a long time I wondered about the need for such organisations. Why did one need organisations for “faith communities” or “people of faith” in a secular society? What about people of no faith? Should they not be concerned about the environment too?
I could understand a Christian church or denomination promoting environmental awareness among its members. I could even understand an ecumenical Christian body doing such a thing. But why one for “people of faith” as opposed to people of no faith? Why not just have Greenpeace or some other non-sectarian group?
But then a new generation of militant atheists appeared on the scene, preaching the gospel of atheism with evangelistic fervour. Their arguments are not much different from the militant atheists I encountered in my youth, and I find them no more convincing. The difference is that back then we were far less aware of the environmental crisis that is facing us.
When someone asks “Why should we care about posterity?? What has posterity ever done for us?” people of faith can answer it. The new breed of militant nihilist atheists cannot, or at least not in a way that I find convincing.
The answers of “people of faith” may be different, they may be based on different premisses and different assumptions, but at least they can give some answer, they can say why they think we should care about posterity.
I’m not saying that the new militant atheists are out to destroy the environment (that would be just a variant of the old “atheists are immoral” argument). Many atheists are more “moral” than many “people of faith”, even though their worldview makes morality meaningless and absurd. I’ve written about that before, so I wont rehash it all here.
If one takes a nihilistic view, then death is simply a part of life. Animals die, plants die, every living thing we see dies. So why shouldn’t a planet die? There are billions of other planets in the universe — what difference will one more or less make? We see a supernova through a telescope, and we know that a sun has died, died thousands or millions of years ago, along with any planets and civilizations that may have orbited it. Earth will die sooner or later — why should we care if it is sooner rather than later?
Why should we care about posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?
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