Care for Our Common Home

6/17/21

Jun 17, 2021

Hi everyone: I have family visiting this week, so I’m taking a bit of a break. Rather than writing a full original piece, I’m providing an introduction to some remarkable - and hopeful - reading.

Introduction

I am not a believer. I have been inside churches and other sanctified structures far more often for weddings or museum visits than for any kind of religious service. As a child I went to a few Christmas Eve services with my Baptist grandparents, and I recall attending an Easter mass with my Episcopalian neighbors because it was a neighborly thing to do. But church experience and religious narratives never made sense to me as a child, and I haven’t developed an interest in the subsequent half-century.

Which is not to say I haven’t had revelatory experiences of the power and mystery of the universe. I’ve been awestruck in wild places and felt the trappings of mind and culture stripped away in fleeting but powerful moments. I’ve had the luxury of feeling a deep, resonant joy while inhabiting extraordinary beauty in the Himalaya, the Transantarctics, New Zealand, and here in coastal Maine. I’ve lost myself – which is really finding myself part of something larger – sitting quietly above tree line, hiking above the clouds, camping on a vast ice cap, walking amid ferns deep in an old forest, canoeing along the shore of a remote island, or just watching intently a small native pollinator doing its ancient work in a summer meadow.

But these were not religious, or even spiritual, experiences. They were revelatory open-hearted glimpses of the beauty and strangeness and complex glory of the world beyond ordinary human concerns. They were reminders of the vastness of what we don’t know or sense or understand. As much as I sought to find the right language to describe these experiences, I knew I wouldn’t turn to religion to help me articulate my connection to life on Earth.

This is all to say that I have never had reason to quote a pope. Until now.

In Drawdown there are several short inspirational essays. Some talk about revelatory CO2-reduction research or successful activism, but one is a brief excerpt from a 2015 encyclical (a letter of guidance for all 5,100 Roman Catholic bishops) on the environment by Pope Francis. Laudato Si’ is a substantial 184-page, 37,000-word document, remarkable in its full and honest accounting of the threat from climate change and of human harm to the environment more generally. Pope Francis is working to ensure the church is particularly conscious of how these harms disproportionately make life harder for the poor.

To give you a sense of how blunt the Pope is on this issue, here he is, on Twitter, back in 2015: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” Perhaps it’s a bit more judgmental than helpful, but at least he’s paying attention.

Citing his namesake, St. Francis, known for his love of nature and his habit of calling all natural things Brother or Sister – whether moon, sun, bird, or tree – Pope Francis summons the believers (and the rest of us) to work together to protect the “sister [who] cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will… This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.”

There are volumes of things to say about the role of the church in the history of plunder, but Francis has done a fine job of repositioning the church in relation to ecological reality, and in framing the climate/biodiversity crisis as a moral issue. And this matters. Or at least I hope it does. If ecologists and climate activists can truly harness the power of religious communities around the globe to make a daily effort against the harms of the Anthropocene, the shape of the battle would quickly change.

The Vatican had extensive consultations with outside experts in the writing of the encyclical – I think of them as (holy) ghostwriters – and so the document is a fascinating mix of articulation of scientific reality and religious argumentation based on biblical and papal references. The Pope seems to have gone to great lengths to reach out to conservatives (in faith and politics) in order to most effectively bring everyone together.

Perhaps this letter will be helpful for those of us with conservative friends and family members who need some persuasion to face up to the climate crisis.

I am using the brief excerpt from Drawdown (which avoids religious references), though there is so much more of interest and value in the encyclical. Link to the entire document below, as usual.

Enjoy the beauty and importance of this writing, and have a good week.

Excerpt from the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home:

“The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they hamper the escape of heat produced by sunlight at the earth’s surface. The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system. Another determining factor has been an increase in changed uses of the soil, principally deforestation for agricultural purposes.

Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. Its worst impact will probably be felt by developing countries in coming decades. Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to warming, and their means of subsistence are largely dependent on natural reserves and ecosystemic services such as agriculture, fishing and forestry. They have no other financial activities or resources which can enable them to adapt to climate change or to face natural disasters, and their access to social services and protection is very limited. For example, changes in climate, to which animals and plants cannot adapt, lead them to migrate; this in turn affects the livelihood of the poor, who are then forced to leave their homes, with great uncertainty for their future and that of their children. There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world. Our lack of response to these tragedies involving our brothers and sisters points to the loss of that sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded.

Given the complexity of the ecological crisis and its multiple causes, we need to realize that the solutions will not emerge from just one way of interpreting and transforming reality. Respect must also be shown for the various cultural riches of different peoples, their art and poetry, their interior life and spirituality. If we are truly concerned to develop an ecology capable of remedying the damage we have done, no branch of the sciences and no form of wisdom can be left out, and that includes religion and the language particular to it.

The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all. If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others.

Ecology studies the relationship between living organisms and the environment in which they develop. This necessarily entails reflection and debate about the conditions required for the life and survival of society, and the honesty needed to question certain models of development, production and consumption. It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation. Just as the different aspects of the planet – physical, chemical and biological – are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network which we will never fully explore and understand. A good part of our genetic code is shared by many living beings. It follows that the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality.

When we speak of the “environment”, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it. Recognizing the reasons why a given area is polluted requires a study of the workings of society, its economy, its behavior patterns, and the ways it grasps reality. Given the scale of change, it is no longer possible to find a specific, discrete answer for each part of the problem. It is essential to seek comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions within natural systems themselves and with social systems. We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.

What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up? This question not only concerns the environment in isolation; the issue cannot be approached piecemeal. When we ask ourselves what kind of world we want to leave behind, we think in the first place of its general direction, its meaning and its values. Unless we struggle with these deeper issues, I do not believe that our concern for ecology will produce significant results. But if these issues are courageously faced, we are led inexorably to ask other pointed questions: What is the purpose of our life in this world? Why are we here? What is the goal of our work and all our efforts? What need does the earth have of us? It is no longer enough, then, simply to state that we should be concerned for future generations. We need to see that what is at stake is our own dignity. Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. The issue is one which dramatically affects us, for it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.

Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change. We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared with everyone. This basic awareness would enable the development of new convictions, attitudes and forms of life. A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal.

We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment.”

Field Guide to the Anthropocene

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