We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
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Why Earth Day Failedby Harold W. Wood, Jr.As I write this, the newsmagazines of a dozen environmental groups report that Congress is steadily abolishing 25 years of environmental progress. The Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, even laws protecting forests from over-harvesting, public pasture lands from over-grazing, and even the very existence of some national parks, are all slated for extinction. The new Republican "Contract with America " uses the ideology concerning "takings", "unfunded mandates", and "cost benefit analysis" to overturn environmental safeguards. Twenty five years after the first Earth Day, how have we come to this? As a college student, I thought that Earth Day heralded a new beginning for our country's relationship with nature, and I envisioned continual, ever-growing progress toward our society learning to live in harmony with the Earth. Over 25 years, I've learned that progress is not linear, that things come and go in cycles and that environmental protection is not considered as Mom and Apple Pie as I consider it to be. But I really believe that environmentalists have no one to blame but themselves. The first Earth Day was founded on passion, true enough, but it was a passion fueled by fear, not by love and respect. The oracles of the day were what are now considered (at least by business school types like Julian Simon and the current powers of Congress) "false prophets of doom" like Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb), and the students who wore gas masks in protest of pollution and buried cars were doing so out of an honest fear that the future would not be livable if pollution and over-population were not controlled. And so, we adopted a few laws, wrote a few environmental impact statements, tinkered with cars so their pollution levels decreased, and now the passion is not merely over, but the new oracles of our day, people like Julian Simon and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Resources Committee Chair Don Young can say with a straight face that the "doomsayers" were wrong after all, that profit is a better moral value than conservation, that the values of prosperity and protecting the rights of private property are more important than the values of practicing stewardship and developing a virtuous life; and that in fact resources are meant to be used, in fact; the New Right cries out for what they term wise use, of the Earth, rather than protection, respect, or love. Ironically of course, the current congressional leadership who deride environmentalists as "pagans" and "tree-worshippers" are right. Those of us who were actually what are now called "environmentalists," before Earth Day, founded our values not upon fear, but instead upon love and reverence for the Earth, in something even more all-encom-passing than mere "stewardship". What we were about was nothing less than a vision of Ecotopia. It seems clear that most of those environmentalists that Earth Day created were motivated by fear, but that most of those before that time - the Muir-Leopold-Carson school -- were motivated by love instead. Oh, there was the Rooseveltian-Pinchot "conservation of natural resources" school, who merely feared that resources would run out if not conserved, and for that reason should be "conserved" but not "preserved". But as Joseph Wood Krutch pointed out in the mid 50's, "The wisest, the most enlightened, the most remotely long-seeing exploitation of resources is not enough, for the simple reason that the whole concept of exploitation is so false and so limited that in the end it will defeat itself and the earth will have been plundered no matter how scientifically and farseeingly the plundering has been done." This is why Pantheism - seeking a renewed reverence for the earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence - is a better paradigm than what we know of today as "environmentalism". Modern environmentalism is based on fear, especially insofar as the public perception of it is concerned, and if the thing we fear doesn't come to pass right away, it is easily dismissed and laughed off as a hoax played by "green-on-the -outside-red-on-the-inside" environmental "extremists" (ie. liberals). Society can now justify profit as a value over sustainability because fear can easily be dismissed in the light of economic "reality", political "reasonableness", the evident prosperity reflected by everyday television commercials, and the jibing "wit" of radio commentary. What Pantheism has that mere "conservation", or "environmentalism" lacks is the recognition that the world was not created for man's use only, and so we take delight in the beauty and variety of the world for its own sake, rather than predicating our vision upon the negative values of fear and dismay. Events have shown us that while modern environmentalism has sowed seeds of fear, the opponents of stewardship have sowed seeds of distrust, and we now reap what was sowed in the last 25 years - nothing more than ongoing political rancor. If we are to attain any vision of man living in harmony with nature, we must embrace the positive values of love, respect, reverence, and inspiration; we must return to sowing seeds of reverence and hope. People don't need something to fear, but they do need something to love. There was a kernel of that love at the beginning of Earth Day, especially symbolized by the view of the entire Earth from space, sometimes depicted on posters with the phrase, "Love Your Mother". If environmentalists are to overcome being castigated and brushed aside as "mere liberals", they need to re-invigorate their ranks with a renewed vision of love and reverence for the Earth. Mere political efforts have shown themselves to be insufficient, and is too easily manipulated by the radio commentator pundits. What Pantheists are about is not a mere political movement, which waxes and wanes with the ebb and flow of the national economy and the popularity of whatever social attitude is currently in vogue, but is a philosophy, a religion, with roots deep in antiquity but whose relevance today is as modern as the latest computer wizardry. The reverence for the Earth and all the universe that is the Pantheist credo, is not a current fashion-plate; it is a world-view that will outlast the ages. We need to cherish the Earth. To do that, we will need to fulfill the Pantheist mission, to revise "social attitudes away from anthropocentrism and toward reverence for the Earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence." Exerpted from Pantheist Vision, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer Solstice, 1995. |
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