Chapter 6
Earth : Dominion or Doom?
As I prepared to write this chapter, news of the largest oil spill in history came scudding across the television screen: the relentless, black wave of oil released into the Persian Gulf by Saddam Hussein's military. This foul slick of 63 to 84 million gallons elongating into a 15-mile malignancy of "environmental terrorism" threatened the wholesale death — and possible extinction — of coral reefs, Hawksbill turtles, Cormorants, and other wildlife. Who can forget the televised struggles of blackened seabirds pitifully flapping their matted wings in a vain attempt to escape the havoc of a madman's making?
This was to be the "Earth Decade," remember? When the preservation of Planet Earth would be the number one concern for the entire global community as the "green tide" gained momentum. But with the black tide rolling across the Persian Gulf, and black rain and soot falling from the burning Kuwaiti oil wells, a more fitting description might be "Environmental Apocalypse."
"God has given us a long rope and big laboratory," says Rev. Glenn E. Olds, Jr., president of the Better World Society. "But the consequences of our greed, ignorance and propensity to violence and power are catching up with us very fast."1
The first chapter of Genesis declares that the land and its plants and animals are for human use. After God blessed Adam and Eve,
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he told them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and other fowl of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth."2
But will it be dominion, or doom?
Beyond the concerns of suicide, homicide, infanticide, and genocide, the coming millennium will require us to turn our attention to biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the destruction of the functional integrity of the planet itself.3
I find it ironic that the major prize sought in the Gulf War was oil. Fueled by our addiction to its use, petroleum is the very substance that could lead to the planet's ultimate demise as a habitat for humanity.
That desecrating the environment is "a sin against nature herself" is a concept that "people across the board are beginning to realize," notes Jan Hartke, leader for the Washington-based interfaith group called the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology.4
There is also — underscored by Saddam Hussein's monstrous atrocity against nature — a growing sense of global interdependence. Many environmental impacts, such as the greenhouse effect, are global in cause and must be global in remedy.
"There has to be in the coming decade a major move toward restoration of the earth," urges veteran conservationist David R. Brower.
We've got to put back together, as well as we can, the things we took apart since the Industrial Revolution. It was a big party. Now the bills are coming in: global warming, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, loss of species and loss of hope. We've got to turn that all around. All we can do is give nature a chance . . . . We can't restore the rain forest, but we can give it our best stab. As for global warming, it's certainly going to be slowed down, and we'd better reverse it. The last moment — or the next to the last moment — has arrived. As somebody said, "The threat of being hanged gets one's attention."5
Environmental goals that should command our attention include
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sustaining natural resources, reducing pollution, and preserving species and ecosystems. And, along the way, the biblical theme of stewardship can help offset the all-too-frequent past emphasis on human dominion, often a euphemism for environmental exploitation. Rethinking our relationship to creation and the Creator will help develop goals and models for the future.
Agenda for the Atmosphere
The Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 1989 Report ominously asserted that for the first time human activities were changing the atmosphere itself, heightening the effect of "greenhouse" gases that are warming the earth and destroying the ozone shield that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. NASA reports confirmed that ozone depletion was no longer confined to the poles; the ozone layer was beginning to thin globally.6
In the longer term, climatic changes — which scientists are still trying to pinpoint as either cyclical or environmentally triggered — may cause sea levels to rise, flooding coastal settlements and islands, while ozone depletion will cause a dramatic rise in skin cancers.
Some reports indicate that the air and rivers in America are getting cleaner not dirtier, and that the pollution scare is largely a media concoction.7 But the effects of airborne pollution seem so obvious — especially in European industrial nations, India, Mexico, and America's major urban areas — that there should be little room for complacency.
Automobiles reportedly spew their own weight in carbons back into the atmosphere every year.8 And though the jury is still out on the precise damage that acid rain is doing to our lakes and rivers, toxic pollutants are treated with grave concern by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Who will pay for the cleanup costs for these and other environmental problems? The answer is hazy, and will remain so into the next century as long as other projects deemed vital compete for public funds. Private industry, despite platitudinous talk, will likely step in only when companies perceive that it is in their long-run economic advantage to do so. One hopeful sign is a booklet, "Shopping for a Better World," put out by the Council on Economic
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Priorities, to tell people which corporations are doing well environmentally and which are not.9
Cleaning up smokestack industries and developing feasible non-fossil fuels appear to be at the top of near-future American priorities. Mercedes is experimenting with a car that burns hydrogen, and many experts say the outlook for automotive power sources such as methanol, natural gas, and electricity has been improving. Still, "any significant loosening of gasoline's stranglehold on the worldwide car and truck fuel market appears to be decades away."10
But energy conservation will likely be in vogue during the 1990s and into the next century; common sense prescribes it and tough new pollution laws will mandate it. At present, California leads the nation in developing alternative energy sources, building up a reserve supply through wind plantations, solar collectors, and geothermal energy.11
Meanwhile, future generations will have to deal with the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which could eventually result in 10,000 cancer deaths. When I attended an all-Soviet conference on evangelism in the fall of 1990 in Moscow, residents of the Chernobyl area emotionally described the continuing health problems in the region — far greater, they said, than generally known by the public.
Mismanagement and repeated safety violations have occurred at others of the 390 nuclear plants operating worldwide. Fortunately, steps are being taken to correct the problems.12 Public pressure will have to be maintained, however, to ensure safety and proper disposal of nuclear waste.
Agenda for Freshwater, Oceans, and Coasts
Although freshwater sources in the United States appear to be adequate for human consumption for the foreseeable future, water tables are falling in many parts of the country and water for agriculture may be scarce by 2001. We are a nation of water wasters, and we are polluting our freshwater supply at a much faster rate than we are conserving it.13
More than 700 chemicals have been detected in U.S. drinking water; the EPA considers 129 of them "dangerous," including
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industrial solvents, agricultural residues, metals, and radioactive substances. Much of the contamination has seeped from underground chemical storage tanks, mines, petroleum production, and landfills.14
About 20 billion tons of waste end up in the seas each year, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme. The oceans, which have been called "the lungs of the planet," cover about 70 percent of the earth's surface. More than two-thirds of the world's population live within fifty miles of a coast. And coastal zones have the highest biological productivity for fish and other marine life — 90 percent of the worldwide fish catch is taken near the shore.
The oceans, so vital to life and the beauty of the earth, are difficult to protect, and we seem to be doing a poor job. About 80 percent of the pollution that enters the oceans comes from land in the form of sewage, industrial waste, and agriculture runoff; add coastal mining, oil spills, energy production, and pollutants from ocean vessels, and it's no wonder the fragile coastal ecosystems are in jeopardy.15
Reform, cleanup, and conservation programs are urgently needed to preserve the waters and the teeming life within and near them.
Agenda for Land Resources
On the land, deforestation and desertification are the two prime enemies.
Forest destruction has brought on widespread flooding and loss of topsoil, contributed to global warming, and speeded the extinction of plants and animals. Every year huge expanses of tropical forests — the equivalent of one football field per second — fall to the chainsaw and the torch. In the colorful words of entomologist Edward O. Wilson, to destroy a rain forest for economic gain "is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal."16
In a public awareness campaign in a full-page ad in Time magazine, the Environmental Challenge Fund pointed out that America "pays" for the Sunday newspaper by sacrificing more than a half-million trees. So, urges the ad, "If everyone in the U.S. recycled
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even 1/10th of their newspapers, we would save 25 million trees a year. That's a lot of forest for the trees."17 (The ad didn't mention reusing the glossy pages of Time as the vehicle for the environmental message.)
Taking the admonition seriously, one large religious publishing house recycles computer paper and corrugated cardboard, saving an estimated 2,185 trees, 57,486 gallons of oil, and 1,552 cubic yards of landfill space in just five months.18
Ecopublishers are getting into the act, too. From a redesigned Greenpeace to new titles such as Garbage, Buzzworm, and Design Spirit, the ecomagazines are looking for a wider audience. Articles focus on practical subjects — from designing kitchens that make recycling easier to gardening without pesticides.19 Nearly all the publications are printed on recycled paper, of course.
In a special twenty-eight-page section, "Forests in Distress," the Portland Oregonian presented a massive report on years of timber overcutting in the Pacific Northwest, examining the causes, effects, and the future consequences. Over the years, conclude the authors,
logging practices have contributed to declining fish runs, massive landslides, severe forest fragmentation and ruined streams. Many wildlife species — not just the northern spotted owl — are losing ground. The timber industry, long the region's economic mainstay and wellspring of political power, is reaping the consequences of a history of overcutting.20
Tree-planting projects are a practical and effective way to stem — if not reverse — the stripping of forests. One laudable example is the partnership of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and a timber company. Together they have planted more than 3 million trees in Kenya, some of which are already 12 to 20 feet high.21
The word "desertification" isn't in many dictionaries yet, but combating it will increasingly become a part of ecological stewardship in the coming millennium.
Desertification refers to the huge tracts of land that are becoming worthless desert through erosion, overfarming, and climactic changes.
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The UN's Environmental Programme estimates that 35 percent of the earth's land surface is threatened by desertification, and that three-quarters of that has already been moderately degraded.22
The vicious spiral feeds itself. Loss of cultivation increases erosion and warming, which cause worsening droughts and floods, putting more pressure on remaining arable land and ratcheting up a new round of desertification and loss of topsoil.
Surging population and diminishing productive lands are on a collision course. The result: environmental degradation, which hits the poor the hardest.
Here again, there are some positive models that need to be multiplied in the 21st century.
Christian relief and development agencies like World Vision and World Concern are zeroing in on ecological development in Third World countries. Self-help projects for the poor are geared to economic assistance while restoring the environment through reforestation and terraced farming. Here at home, World Vision has implemented FutureQuest, a program to educate children in Christian schools about their responsibility for the earth.
Another humanitarian organization with a biblical base is World Neighbors, a people-to-people, nonprofit organization working on the front lines to eliminate hunger, disease, and poverty. Efforts are concentrated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America through simple technologies, environmental conservation, and sustainable agriculture. World Neighbors' training in soil and water conservation in the Philippines and elsewhere is helping to eliminate "slash and burn" farming, which has contributed to the degradation of 77 percent of the developing world's rangelands and dry forests.23
Agenda for Biodiversity and Biotechnology
On this remarkably diverse planet live an incredible variety of species in an incredible variety of habitats. We have only managed to classify about 1.5 million of the world's species, and scientists aren't sure if there are 5 million — or as many as 30 million — in all. They predict that, if the present rate of destruction of ecosystems continues, perhaps a quarter of the earth's living things risk extinction
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within twenty to thirty years. Up to one million species may vanish by 2001.
Thus, conservation of biodiversity should be a top international priority, with special emphasis going toward tropical forests. More than half of the known plant and animal species dwell there, but less than 5 percent of the tropical forests receive any protection.24
Protecting endangered species is essential, but voting legislation to prohibit fishing, hunting, or the killing of farm animals for food, or laboratory animals for vital research, is going too far. Doubtless, though, we will see increasing activism by animal rights groups in the coming years.
Also, a word needs to be added here about the potentially dangerous spread of introduced species into the environment through biotechnology in crop and animal production. New traits could be accidentally transferred to "wild relatives" of domestic species. Hardier weeds might be created, for example.
Alvin Toffler postulates that in future "eco-wars" — which he thinks will become more common and sophisticated in the decades ahead — nations "may unleash genetically altered insects against an adversary, or attempt to modify weather." There will be a need, then, for eco-intelligence to verify compliance with environmental treaties and provide Distant Early Warning systems for evo-wars.25
Another worry is that mass production of clonally propagated crops could seriously inhibit the natural diversity that exists, driving thousands of species to extinction.
In an effort to learn more about establishing a sustainable ecosystem, in 1991 eight "ecopioneers" were sealed into Biosphere 2, a superdome structure of steel and glass encompassing a miniature 3-acre "earth" near Tucson, Arizona. Home for thousands of carefully selected species of flora and fauna representing five ecosystems — rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh — this $150 million private-venture experiment will last for two years. As cut off from the desert that surrounds them as if they were in a space ship, the human inhabitants will get nothing from the outside but information, electricity, and sunshine.
We can expect additional colonies of scientific and environmental pioneers to inhabit both underseas and outer space habitats in the early 2000s, if not sooner.
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Agenda for Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Chemicals
In December 1984 a toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed 2,500 people, injured 150,000 and caused the evacuation of 200,000. It was the worst industrial accident on record. But it could be matched or even surpassed in the coming decades.26
Every chemical is a potential hazard if used incorrectly or released by accident in large quantity. Almost nothing is known about 38,000 of the 48,000 chemicals listed by the EPA, and only about 500 have been tested for their cancer-producing, reproductive, or gene-mutation effects.27 Heavy metals, organic pollutants, and toxins from fertilizers and pesticides daily contaminate our air, water, and soil, endangering the health of both present generations and those to follow.
Every year some 200,000 American children who drink heavily leaded water experience a loss of brain function, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, we are sinking in garbage: The EPA estimates that within twenty years, 80 percent of the landfill dumps now in operation will be stuffed to capacity with the garbage of our throw-away society. Each person in the United States generates an average of almost a ton of trash each year.28
"We are sitting on the toxic time bomb," says Tom Sine, because until recently we have not monitored waste disposal. "Numbers of Americans have been placed at serious risk . . . and most of them don't even know it."29
One who thinks he recognizes the danger of burying nuclear waste is Jerry S. Szymanski, a government geologist working at Yucca Mountain, a barren ridge rising out of the Nevada desert. The government wants to dump the most highly radioactive waste in the nation inside the mountain; the project will cost up to $15 billion, and it may be completed by 2010. The government thinks Yucca Mountain — the last candidate after "a stormy, decades-long, multi-billion-dollar search . . . that eliminated dozens of other potential sites" — is the ideal place to bury the atomic debris for the next 10,000 years.30
Szymanski is convinced otherwise, and lately other geologists
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have been listening. "At the very least," one told a writer for The New York Times Magazine,
the radioactive material would go into the ground water and spread to Death Valley, where there are hot springs all over the place, constantly bringing up water from great depths. It would be picked up the birds, the animals, the plant life. It would start creeping out of Death Valley. You couldn't stop it. That's the nightmare. It could slowly spread to the whole biosphere. If you want to envision the end of the world, that's it.31
Dominion or doom?
Indian reservations also seem attractive to entities that want to dispose of toxic waste. The reservations are isolated and relatively free from state and federal regulations and political pressures.
Tribes across America are grappling with some of the worst of the nation's pollution: uranium tailings, chemical lagoons, and illegal dumps. Among the most troublesome is a Mohawk reservation in Massena, New York, where a General Motors Corporation toxic waste site has fouled a river which used to provide the Indians with perch and pike. "These days, they buy their fish from New England vendors who ramble through the reservation in refrigerated trucks."32
Who Holds the Key?
Religion, not science, holds the key to dealing with the ecological crisis in the next millennium, says an increasing chorus of experts.
By Earth Day, 22 April 1990, organized religion had joined the front lines of the environmental movement, providing a potent army of activists among the 200 million participants in 140 countries ready for the fight to save the earth.
"Until recently," I wrote in April 1990 in a Los Angeles Times series about the environmental movement, "most religious groups had concentrated more on social issues such as racial discrimination and poverty than on the deteriorating environment. But that has changed
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with the growing realization that the environmental crisis has put human survival on the line and that ecology is a spiritual issue."33
One measure of that commitment was observed on Earth Day when church bells pealed for the health of the planet, sermons stressed the urgency of responsible environmental practices, and tens of thousands signed conservation declarations, pledging to recycle products, save energy, and vote for ecology-minded public officials.
But even more dramatic than the greening of religion is the way conservationists and environmentally conscious politicians have jumped on the spiritual bandwagon, embracing ecofaith. A vision of the "sacred" is critical to safeguarding the planet, many are saying now, sounding more like preachers and theologians than earth scientists or legislators.
"There's something different going on," affirms Jan Hartke, the religious liason for Earth Day 1990, a follow-up of the first Earth Day in 1970. "Corporate, scientific and political leadership is feeling that the faith communities are needed very badly in this awakening of the spiritual and sacred dimension of environmental concern."34
EPA chief William K. Reilly told a gathering of Roman Catholic leaders in Washington that "natural systems have an intrinsic value — a spiritual worth — that must be respected for its own sake." A new "spiritual vision" of conservation and "an ethic of environmental stewardship grounded in religious faith . . . could be a powerful force."35
Meeting in January 1990 in Moscow, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival issued a declaration that called for a "spiritually wise, technologically sound, ethical and farsighted stewardship of the planet." This appeal for joint efforts between religious leaders and scientists came from a group of international scientists invited by the event's organizer, U.S. astro-physicist Carl Sagan.
Even Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking at the Moscow forum, talked about the "ecological imperative" and noted that much of the damage already inflicted on nature "may be irreversible."
"Only recently," Gorbachev said, "has the U.S.S.R. realized the seriousness of the ecological threat. We were focused on our military and industrial growth. The country's vastness and material wealth
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permitted us to be insensitive . . . Man needs to view himself as a part of nature — not above it." He went on to propose a six-point plan that included a binding global code of ethics for environmental preservation and the reduction of pollutants, and a "Green Cross," established through the United Nations, as an "International EPA."36
Meanwhile, the theme of environmental quality and "peace, justice and the integrity of creation" were heralded from church socials to the highest depression and/or war, ecofaith may become the "in" topic of the mainline religious chic between now and 2001.
That would be a change, for not too long ago environmentalists and religious leaders looked upon one another with antagonism, and hints of suspicion still linger.
In 1967, three years before the first Earth Day, historian Lynn White wrote a scathing article in Science magazine attacking the religious community for an interpretation of the Bible that seemed to give humans license to exploit nature, based on the Genesis 1:28 passage that speaks of man's superiority and gives the mandate to subdue and control nature.
But more recently, theologians as well as the people in the pew have reconsidered this "dominion theology." Now the passage emphasized is Genesis 2:15, which says God put humans in the garden to cultivate and care for it.
"While the environment is not to be worshiped, nor environmentalism to be made into a religion," says Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch, "the created world is a source of revelation to be revered, respected and fiercely protected."37
Although some religious activists fear that putting a major emphasis on the environment in the 1990s may dim the church's attention to social justice issues such as homelessness, health care, and racism, others reason that if people trash the planet, they also trash the food-production system, which hurts the poor. Also, as we have noted, the poor often end up living near toxic-waste dumps and working in pesticide-laden fields.
On the opposite end, some conservative Christians are afraid that the ecological movement has been co-opted by New Age environmentalists who worship the earth instead of its Creator and place concern for the environment above care of human beings.
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Indeed some, like maverick religious scholar Father Thomas Berry and fellow Catholic priest Matthew Fox, speak of a "biocentric" theology and "creation spirituality." These concepts de-emphasize humanity's distinctiveness as the most important species on Earth and emphasize "the creative powers of the universe" over against redemption from sin and the need for personal salvation.38
Berit Kjos warned about some New Age ecologists and pantheists in Focus on the Family magazine, published by Christian psychologist James Dobson. They "believe in the living, evolving, self-regulating Earth. Some call her 'Gaia,' after the Greek earth goddess. Gaia can only be healed if humans will listen to her voice and connect with her spirit."39
I agree that it's time to end the romantic nonsense about primitivism and mystic "nature people" advanced by some "eco-theologues." People who want to do something about the environment, counsels Martin Marty, "will have to do it in connection with technology, not in utopian escape from it."40
Personally, I go with Dean Ohlman, president of the Christian Nature Federation of Fullerton, California, who tells Christians to "be there with bells on" for ecological concerns, even if events like Earth Day do provide a platform for those who hold contrary worldviews.
If we truly believe the God we worship was the Creator of the Earth, we need to show our concern . . . Secular environmentalists tend to see man as the only entity that can save our planet. We believe only God can do that, but that He has chosen to use us as His servants who are expected to treat the Earth as a trust . . . What we need to do as Christians is to clean up our stewardship act! . . . Believers need to step out of the isolation created by modern technology and begin to relate to the natural world . . . [A]s we learn to respect it more, we will abuse it less.41
