America on fracking

A new study just came out from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University on Americans' attitudes toward fracking. Here is what they say:

In our September 2012 Climate Change in the American Mind survey, we asked respondents to answer a series of questions about hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" as the process is commonly known. This issue has proven to be very controversial in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Proponents and opponents debate potential impacts on the economy, energy supply, public health, the environment, and communities. Today we are releasing an extensive analysis of the findings from those survey questions. In "Fracking" in the American Mind: Americans' Views on Hydraulic Fracturing in September, 2012, we find that, surprisingly, Americans have limited familiarity with this issue, and fewer than half of American adults have developed an opinion in support or in opposition to it. The minority who has formed an opinion are more or less evenly split between supporters and opponents. Other key findings: Support/opposition to hydraulic fracturing varies by gender, age, political party, geographic region, and familiarity with the issue. In general, respondents who are female, younger, and liberal are more opposed. Those who are male, older, and conservative are more supportive. Americans who support hydraulic fracturing associate it with economic and energy supply impacts. Opponents, however, associate it with environmental impacts. Important food for thought as Maryland tip toes into the fracking debate and as parts of America are knee-deep in it.

It is a beautiful morning on Mother's Day, and I have two conflicting thoughts.

1) So many peoples and cultures around the world depict the world as Mother Earth. How, we might wonder, would our behavior to the earth and all earth's creatures change if we took this image seriously? What stories could we tell that would evoke in us visceral - and not just economic or political - responses to the earth, the gifts we get from her and the damage we do to her?

(The 1970's commercial which says "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" has become a classic. What if we mined that sentiment?)

This is a bit tricky for western religions, not least of all Judaism, for we shiver at the least sniff of paganism. But we can readily do this within the comfortable bounds of our beliefs, understanding the image as a metaphor. We speak every day in our morning and evening prayers of God's role in creation, bringing on the morning light, guiding the renewing and repeating patterns of day and night. Our theology would be secure.

But I would argue against that, even on this hallowed Mother's Day, not on theological grounds, but because I think it would not be effective. As books like The Giving Tree show us (I will write more about this is a future blog, at my peril, I know), we can easily abuse the loving mother, take all her resources and assets and not ever notice the degradation and pain we cause her.

Rather, I am thinking we need to go another route (and one that might more easily settle into the Jewish soul).

2) What if we began to see Earth as a child in need of our care. For that is now what it seems to be.

A quick step back: If any familial image emerges from Genesis One, it is earth as parent - the full, powerful one that can give to us what we need to flourish and emerge in charge and unscathed. Chapter Two, however, leans in the other direction.  Earth is needy of us and we are put here to nourish it with our labors and bring it, and us, to our fullest blessings and potential.

Today, we have excelled at the story Genesis One, to the earth's detriment, taking resources from and subduing the earth in all sorts of ways. Just this weekend we learned that for the first time in 3 million years, the earth's daily average CO2 reached 400 parts per million (way beyond the 350 ppm scientists tell us are the safe zone for global human habitation).

As the story in the National Geographic tells it, the last time this happened, horses and camels lived in the Arctic. We are in an upward trend that we seem to refuse to abate. Truly we have become a geophysical force, somehow stronger than age-old cycles and influences that determine the very nature of the earth.

We have, in a way therefore, reversed roles, left the world of Genesis One and entered the earth of Genesis Two. We have become parent and the earth a child. While that is frightening, the good news is that maternal love is stronger and broader than filial piety. Perhaps this is just what we need to get the job of saving the earth, and ourselves, done.

(A few clarifications: I wanted to say "maternal or paternal love", to be fair to both parents, but the word "paternal" has been co-opted and possesses a - well - paternalistic, somewhat heavy-handed, "I-know-better-than-you-and-can-make-you-see-that" sense to it.

I could have said "parental" but that sounds too clinical.

So read the phrase "maternal love"as including the essence of both mother and father and all parenting caretakers.  Regarding maternal love vs filial piety - while both are profound, run deep and create high levels of motivation, maternal love is of a different nature, and different quality than filial piety. For one, to honor our parents, especially as they age, means focusing mostly - though not exclusively - on them. Do they have the housing, health care, the daily attention, the honor, the comfort, the quality of life they need now? To tend to our parents, we focus on the way things are now. To tend to the quality of life of our children, however, requires us not only focus on them now and their immediate needs but on what the world will be like for them tomorrow and the day after for decades to come.

Which gets us back to the metaphor.)

Earth as mother calls upon us to thank her for what she did for us in the past. We are grateful for all that was done for us. We put ourselves in the center and our attention in the past. The image of Mother Earth does not readily encourage us to cast our vision into the future. Or look beyond ourselves.

Earth as child, however, calls upon us to imagine tomorrow.  It puts the child, the next generation (of both earth and flesh), not us, in the center. Focussing on earth as child allows us to be both grateful for the gifts our parents bequeathed to us, and mindful of the earth we pass on to our children.

In other words, Mother Earth allows us to be grateful takers. Earth as child calls us to be loving, and worrying, givers. We cannot think of earth of child without thinking about the future of  both the natural world and our own flesh-and-blood, for their futures are inexorably linked.

The problem is, what should we call this image? "Earth Child" doesn't work. Neither does "Child Earth".  I welcome your ideas!

Happy Mother's Day!

Temporary job opening at an interfaith environmental organization

Friends,

An interfaith environmental organization that I work with (okay, chair) is looking for a part-time, temporary program coordinator to start as soon as possible.

The organization is the Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake (formerly known as the Chesapeake Covenant Community).

You can find the job description here.

Our wonderful Executive Director is being "commissioned" in the Methodist church and will be going to her first congregation.

As we collect ourselves to prepare for our next Executive Director, we are seeking a program coordinator who can carry on the day-to-day work of the organization.

Please check out and share the link with anyone you think may be interested.

Many thanks!

The Genesis of Enviromentalism

Friends, the piece below was written by me, distributed by the Bay Journal News Service and published today by the Baltimore Sun. I thought you might find it interesting too.

In 1967, historian Lynn White, Jr. ignited a firestorm that burns still today. In a widely talked-about article entitled, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” he lay a charge at the doorstep of the Judeo-Christian community: the Bible is responsible for the world’s environmental degradation.

The Bible and its story of creation sowed the seeds of the destructive mandate that animates western civilization: humans were given the right, the calling, by God, to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and master it.”

Charged by this narrative, White argues, the western world has taken dominion of the world as fulfilling the highest order of human purpose and existence. The world, the earth and all its vast resources, are mere fuel and fodder for our consumption, whether fruitful or frivolous.

The faith community has spilt much ink debunking White, arguing that “mastery” and “dominion” here do not mean crass exploitation of the world’s goodness but rather benevolent caretaking, stewardship.

I think that is a truer and richer reading of the text, but I also believe there is a stronger way to respond to White.

I accept the basic critique of White’s charge that the man and woman in Genesis One were given the task to master the natural world around them. Isn’t that what any of us would have wanted if we were thrown naked and naïve into a great wilderness? Imagine the raw vulnerability of early humanity: no civilization; no one to receive or protect them; no ancestors to learn from; no cultural, historical, scientific or technological traditions or resources to draw upon; no place of refuge to huddle in while they figured things out. From the very first moment of existence, they were vulnerable, dinner for any passing large carnivore, munchies for viruses and bacteria. They were cold when the sun went down; hot when it came up. Hungry all the time not knowing what to eat and what to avoid.

That is the picture of earliest humanity that the Bible presents, and that is not unlike the first thousands of years of human existence. The world was so big, then, and we were so small. The world was so powerful and we were so weak. Our task was to survive, and if possible, thrive. We did what needed to be done – we were so insignificant against the vastness of the earth that the world readily absorbed our various missteps and mistreatments.

No longer. Today, almost unimaginably, we have completed the call of Genesis One. We have been fruitful and multiplied, filled the earth and mastered much of it. We have become a geophysical force. While once we worried about how the earth could hurt us, now we must worry about how we are hurting the earth.

The question is: What do we do now? What do we do when the call of Genesis One has been fulfilled? The answer, quite simply, is to turn the page and read Genesis Two.

Here is the story of the Garden of Eden. Here, humanity is presented not as vulnerable creature struggling against a vast expanse of all-consuming wildness but as partner with God called into being so that we may tend to the care and improvement of a needy world: “When the Lord God made the earth and heaven, no shrub was yet in the field…for God had not yet sent rain, and there was no human to work the soil. So God took the human he had formed and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to protect it.”

Here the roles are reversed: it is the land that is vulnerable, bereft of the gift of the renewing resources of nature and man, in need of a wise and caring humanity.

If Genesis One speaks of a world with directions that seemed to read: “Take, use, discard. Repeat,” Genesis Two speaks of a world with directions that read: “Use with care. Leave the earth in a better state than the one in which you found it.” That challenge creates a new narrative and demands a new role for humanity to play in the destiny of the earth.

Those who are fearful of being consumed by the elements do not have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow. But those who have turned the tables on nature, who excel in its mastery and consume it in excess, have slipped out of the story of Genesis One and passed into the pages of Genesis Two.

For the developed world, humanity’s early privileges of Genesis One have yielded to today’s obligations of Genesis Two. That is the sacred text, the calling, of our time.

Launching "Enough"

Dear Friends, 

(This is a public service announcement about a new blog/website I am helping to build. Hope you enjoy. And write for it. And comment on it. And even critique it when you feel so moved!)

The Sova (Enoughness) Project is a blog-spot, sponsored by:

•  the Center for Global Judaism at Hebrew College 
• the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network
• the Heschel Sustainability Center

BJEN (the host for my blog!)  is honored to be in such company.

Inspired by the upcoming shmita (sabbatical) year which commences in September 2014, the goal of The Sova Project is to raise awareness across the global Jewish community about issues of environmental, social and economic sustainability through a multi-disciplinary conversation including activists, economists, Jewish studies scholars, communal leaders and plain old people like you and me who make the world go round. 

We will seek to take the ancient, timeless values underlying the laws and practices of shmita and  apply them to the hurly-burly world today.

To learn more and to join in this critical conversation, please visit us at www.sovaproject.org.