Responsibility doesn’t depend on climate change

At some point, for Jesus-followers, the conversation of environmental stewardship ought to move beyond “Do you believe in climate change?” to “What is an appropriate relationship for us to have with all of creation?” I hear a lot of chatter from people who seem excited any time there is a finding that would seem to disprove the observation and/or prognostication of climate change. Maybe some of it is rooted in frustration toward the rise of scientism as the controlling narrative in the West. Still, why would the conversation of Christian environmental ethics be predicated by the climate change discussion? Isn’t the exploitation of creation reflective of systemic brokenness and death, and not systemic life?

Are those who celebrate any possible discrediting of climate change looking to be exonerated from a facet of faithfulness to God that doesn’t really depend on the climate change talk whatsoever?

Take a look at the image below. Why is this data a religious issue regardless of the threat posed to us by climate change?

Reburbanization

Julie and I were conversing yesterday about the use of land in the Midwest suburbs and what it would take to make the suburbs environmentally and economically sustainable, to increase suburban commerce and lower metropolitan commutes.

As more and more people are moving into the cities (I’ve read that never before in history has such a high percentage of people lived in urban centers) there is a need to redefine the suburban appeal for two reasons. First, and most obvious, so that people will choose to live there. The emerging generations seem to have bucked the idea of McMansions, anonymous neighbors, and extreme vehicular dependency. In the next 20 years, the suburbs will need to get their sexy back, it seems. The second reason for concern is that the world is watching our nation. Julie made the point that as China develops a middle-class they are quickly mimicking what they think to be the American Dream — suburbanization. The onus is on the U.S. to create an ideal worth mimicking, to lure our copycats into environmental and economic sustainability.

City planners and local governments will have a lot to say in the matter in years to come, seeing as one thing that will need to change is the way in which our land is coded for permits to build and develop. If the goal is to decrease dependency on vehicles and urban centers, land will need to be re-coded so as to allow everything from corner stores to “third-place” gathering spots to be built in the middle of developments that have previously been entirely residential. It comes down to increasing walk scores, making practical goods and social benefits available to suburbanites within walking distance of their homes, increasingly so, so that more and more family members are not only shopping in the neighborhood but are employed in the neighborhood as well. Neighborhoods become villages. Suburbs become small cities near a big city (which, I should add, are already the most popular suburbs currently in most metropolitan areas I’ve visited or lived in).

As Julie and I were talking about the renewal of the suburbs, she recalled an interesting project she read about this summer, Reburbia. Check out some of the bright ideas for suburban renewal that were entered into their contest. Most of them make me want to hit the fast-forward button so that I can live in a world in which all of these ideas are functioning.

What are your thoughts on this topic? If you’re currently living in the suburbs, would you invite change to the feel of your neighborhood? If you’re not currently in the suburbs (or if you are but have been looking to flee), would the changes suggested by Reburbia make you more excited to live and have community in those areas?

The Pickens Plan

I’ve been a bit spooked by T Boone Pickens, and his media blitz to promote the Pickens Plan. What’s his agenda, you know? Well this National Journal interview with Pickens helped to provide a little bit of the rationale and motivation behind Pickens’ campaigning.

Clearly Pickens’ concerns are more economically founded than my convictions regarding creation care, but true solutions need to be environmentally sustainable as well as economically viable, so creating a hybrid (pun?) of his plan with Al Gore’s agenda could get us on the right track. 

The real distinctive of what Pickens is calling for, as I’m just now reading up on it, is for change that occurs outside of slow D.C. bureaucracy, rather through “business and industry,” as Pickens puts it. There’s money to be had in green energy, and a lot of blue-collar jobs can be created to aid those workers suffering from the demise of automotive and steel industries.

Maybe we’ll start to see change. Maybe America will stop sleeping with OPEC. Wait and see.

Self-righteous cycling

Speaking of King and the cities where I’ve lived or am living (this time regarding Portland):

Oregon. South Dakota. North Dakota. I realized the other day that I’m 51 and I’d never spent appreciable time in any of those states. So I was happy to be in Portland and its suburban neighbor to the north, Scappoose, the other day. Driving through Portland is what it’s like to drive through a European city in some ways, because of all the bikes in such a green-conscious city. So imagine my surprise when I picked up The Oregonian Thursday to read this headline atop page one: “Bike-car clash morphs into melee.”

Seems a driver didn’t like the way a bicyclist was running red lights and driving recklessly in downtown Portland, and he yelled at the guy to stop being so careless. The cyclist got off his bike and told the driver to get out of his car if he wanted to make such a fuss about how he was operating his bike. The driver of the car got out. And the bicyclist started — according to police reports — beating the driver of the car with the bike. Yes, beating the driver of the car with his bike, holding the bike over his head and assaulting the defenseless driver at least five times, leaving the mark of a bike chain on him.

Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it’s not good.

For living here just two months, it seems to me like a fair knock on Portland: people are fairly self-righteous about their cycling. I’m thankful for the decent percentage of Portland cyclists who hop on their bikes while leaving the Lycra get-up at home. God bless ‘em.

California is keeping score in ‘09

This is good news for the green-minded: California will require 2009 vehicles to possess a label containing the vehicle’s global warming score. The rating system is 1 through 10, with the average car scoring a 5.

What I like most in this article is the idea the European Union is tossing around – taxing on the basis of fuel efficiency and carbon emissions. Maybe that idea will catch on in the US. For all the complaining about fuel prices in this country, you would think that the consumer would ditch their feeling of self-importance and make concessions for the good of the economy and environment alike. But no, there are still some people who remain convinced that what needs adjustment is the supply and not the demand.

When President Bush bailed on the Kyoto Protocol earlier this decade, one of the motivations for the decision that he shared was that the American people were not ready to change their way of life to reduce carbon emissions. In 2008 I believe there’s been a degree of change on this front – more and more Americans willing to adjust their lifestyle and purchasing habits (a change driven more by economic incentive than environmental stewardship). At the same time (as I mentioned in the above paragraph), many Americans are devoted to the ideology of this liberal democracy – that nothing in existence is more valuable than the sovereignty of the individual – and still insist that supply will simply need to increase to accommodate more demand. 

In revisiting the President’s mindset about Kyoto, I hope that both presidential candidates will admit that energy-related progress needs to be made. Those changes may not reflect the values of the majority of Americans at the time, but let’s call them “decisions of anticipation,” as more and more Americans are beginning to see the need for better environmental stewardship and economic sustainability.

In anticipating that such a demographic of Americans will only rise, making changes today gives recognition to this gradual transition. Waiting for a majority (to reflect “popular opinion” of the constituents) allows the stubborn to rule the nation. When I see a CNN poll describing the high percentage of Americans willing to drill in ANWR, I translate that to a lot of uneducated people not understanding the long-term ramifications of their actions, leaving the rest of us to pay (literally, with cash) for their slow learning-curve. Are we really waiting for those people to come around? 

Some of us are very ready to pump something other than fossil fuel into our livelihood. Meanwhile we do what we can – drive fuel-efficient vehicles, carpool, and drive and little as possible. Yet we suffer economically because our fellow Americans are hellbent on adjusting supply over demand, and those in power on both sides of Washington let these issues hang in relative limbo for the sake of generating political interest and support.

My hope is that the next president of this nation will do what he can for the group of Americans who have been doing what they can. I’m convinced that allowing tax breaks and penalties to Americans based on their transportation habits is one element to building a better country, an America with a not-so-American mindset.

The McCain Challenge.

Here’s one way to pay off undergrad bills:

 

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91FU4PG0&show_article=1

 

McCain is offering $300 million to a person who can develop an automotive battery that can out-do the present hyrbrid technology and run at 30-percent of the cost of a regular engine. He’ll then offer US automakers a $5,000 tax credit for every zero-carbon emission cars they develop and sell. Helping the environment, the people, and the US auto industry in one fell swoop. You almost get the feeling that this election is going to have such a populist bend that we’re going to see some one-ups-manship – Obama and McCain competing for the people’s “business.” 

 

Sounds good to me – especially if an iota of promised change comes to fruition when one of these guys gets into the White House.

This blows me away.

Our first electric bill came today from Portland General Electric (PGE), the local energy provider in Portland. In addition to learning that the billing can be switched to paperless (online billing – a fairly available accommodation these days), I found out that I could have the apartment powered by wind.

 

For a simple $3.50 per 200 kilowatt hours, PGE will generate your electric from wind power sources. How great is that? For less than what I pay for a drink at Starbucks, I can fund sustainable energy in the apartment each month (we use less than one 200-kWh unit per month, but a larger family might use two or three of those units… still doable).

 

It’d be great if more energy companies made it possible to ‘go green’ this way. The investment on a personal wind turbine is way too steep for most people to pay, regardless of their concern for creation. I don’t know much about PGE and how they run the whole of their business, so I’m not really making a wholesale endorsement of them so much as acknowledging that this wind power business is a step in the right direction.

Florida’s fruit in the Garden State.

The systems are broken and the ideologies are throwing punches. 

 

Everywhere from the newspaper to YouTube to the classroom, we come in contact with messages that promote a particular ideology while damning another. Whether the topic is gas prices, climate control or global poverty, there are a lot of people who are convinced that solutions to modern crises are contingent on their personal ideology overpowering that of their opponents. 

 

We’ve all witnessed the variety of ideologies expressed in such forums; we’re versed in their lingo and typical arguments. By our decisions, we choose to align with certain ideologies. 

 

Suppose you need toothpaste. The pearly whites are getting a bit ivory-meets-canary, so you embark on a trip to a big chain store instead of a small general store in your neighborhood. The voice of one ideology sits on your shoulder and says, ‘Listen fool, you’re supporting the corporate machine. A lot of corners are cut to make that toothpaste affordable for you.’ But, just as you’re ready to boycott all big business, another ideological voice starts to clamor. ‘Are you going to just buy locally instead? Mom and Pop stores provide fewer jobs in your town. And you’ll pay more for the toothpaste. Consume everything from local business and you’ll be out of date money, or (even more compelling) the money used to sponsor your Compassion International kid.’

 

The tensions are everywhere. They exist when some kid in Taiwan is working for junk wages to make your hi-tops. How’s that working out for him? Or maybe you live in New Jersey and want to buy some nice Florida oranges from the grocery store in the thick of winter. How’d those oranges make it up I-95? Probably not in a Hybrid.

 

Again, you always have choices and alternatives. You could stop buying from chain stores, avoid your Taiwanese kicks, and not have Florida’s fruit sent to the Garden State. Congrats, big shot: you’ve effectively worked toward the unemployment of all those workers the chain store employs. The kid in Taiwan has gone from poor to dirt broke. And in your quest to fight global warming, you’ve hurt the families of the Floridian orange grower and the truck driver who carried citrus up I-95. This ideological crusade has thinned your wallet– and you’re running low on Vitamin-C.

 

Our problems are awkwardly interconnected. Ideologies compete. Full of broken people, this world has broken systems. 

 

Every single day we find ourselves in situations where we contribute to some large-scale wrongdoing, regardless of the way we handle our given situations. We have rivaling stewardships – environmental, humanitarian, financial, etc. – and we find ourselves constantly betraying one to honor the other. And as the global nature of progressive culture increases with each passing day, the tug of war for our ideological (a.k.a. stewardship) allegiance gets worse by the moment.

 

The world of politics showcases this tension. Ideally, we’d vote on political issues in an a la carte fashion, but it’s not happening. Instead we choose political platforms – environmental care and abortion versus economic feasibility and a quick trigger to war. (These examples are overly-general, but we’re lying to ourselves if we don’t admit the problem of platform politics.)

 

We need God to forgive us for the inevitable wrongs that exist in our world of broken systems. And, as selfish as this might sound, we need God to lift the paralyzing heaviness of guilt from us.

 

Enter Yom Kippur.

 

This Jewish holy day (also known as the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 23:27) is a time when people gather for fasting and repentance of sin. The day is divided into different prayer focuses, and, in addition to personal repentance, a portion of the day goes to corporate repentance. Why? Because in addition to the dirty words and thoughts that infect all of us, each of us plays a part in larger collective wrongs – every time we buy shoes and oranges, vote for a politician, and drive our cars to church. Collective destruction requires collective atonement. 

 

Yom Kippur offers us a balance between two extremes. If we really examined the implications of our decisions, we’d be mentally and emotionally paralyzed by fear of ever making decisions, and that’s no way to live. The other extreme would be to blow off any responsibility we have in corporate wrongs – tossing up our hands and hiding behind the word inevitable. By taking a day to give recognition to our corporate predicament, we are admitting that we are guilty of contributing to some of the pain in this world, while realizing the need to go on living.

 

As Christians, we’d do well to join our Jewish friends for collective repentance, whether that means joining them for this holy day (it falls on October 8-9 this year) or by simply taking a day to fast and pray for collective sin. Recognizing the purpose of Yom Kippur helps to break us of the Jesus-and-me mindset that dilutes the faith of Christians to a belief that sin and repentance are about every individual doing their own business with God – handling their personal sin with their personal Savior. There are no such things.

 

This isn’t an excuse to carry on in broken systems; this repentance isn’t about final products so much as the while-we-fix-it state of things. Christ’s Church is supposed to carry shalom to the whole world – all of its systems. We’re in the process of finding ways to get a fair wage to the people who make our shoes, while leaving their employer with reasons to create jobs in their town. While we look for eco-friendly ways of getting Vitamin-C to New Jersey, Yom Kippur is our acknowledgment that we need God’s forgiveness for participating in the very mess we’re working to repair.