It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny our situation is desperate. Serious observers of trending conditions, even the optimists, now sound like Chicken Littles, pointing to perfect storm forming on the horizon: climate chaos, water wars, crumbling infrastructure, income inequalities, toxic body burdens, food riots, mass extinction and the host of other sky-is-falling trends reviewed in the previous blog.
Paths for navigating through these challenges are visible in the contours of popular culture. Each path leads towards a different future with different opportunities and risks. One path, popular because it resonates with the can-do American ethic, and because it is easy, advocates accelerating development of economic and technological capacities. This path requires supreme confidence that capitalism will reward innovative solutions to all challenges such as those reviewed above, no matter what scope or scale. Geo-engineering, for example, will control climate change by dispersing sun-blocking sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere or fertilizing oceans with iron. Rising oceans will be held back by dikes. Crops faltering in hotter, dryer, saltier conditions will be re-invigorated through genetic engineering. Depleted inland aquifers will be replaced by pumping in desalinated saltwater. Civil unrest spurred by food riots will be solved by freer trade and greater corporate profits that trickle down to float all boats. People taking this path are asked to be wise consumers, hard workers, to trust that the market will make wise decisions about our future, and to pass forward wealth so that future generations have more economic and technological capacities to deal with any messes left behind.
Another popular path places confidence not in human ingenuity, but in the Supreme Being. God will provide. People following this path worship, work, and evangelism in preparation for the next life rather than worry about end of oil or climate change in this life. Free will requires fighting evil and resisting temptation. It demands minimizing pain and suffering of people currently on earth by reducing poverty, improving access to clean water, and providing shelter, nutrition, and salvation. It does not require global treaties on climate change that might jeopardize American power by weakening its economy with regulation. Scientists suggesting that humans can endanger the climate or disrupt the biosphere are deemed arrogant and blasphemous because suggesting so implies that humans have god-like powers to re-direct the Almighty’s Plan for Creation.
A path increasingly, and unquestionably, ridiculed by neoliberalists, but fortunately still well tread, asks a paternalistic state guided by wise science to fix market failures and impose limits on excessive, harmful behaviors. State and national laws and international treaties define acceptable behavior. The inefficiencies and mild corruption associated with any large organization are tolerated, as are the invasion of privacy to track down and punish rogue elements and the restrictions of personal freedoms required for a regulated system to function. People on this path are asked to vote the right people into office, obey the law, and staff bureaucracies with honest and well-trained technicians assigned the difficult and thankless tasks of manage our problems.
An unpopular path, but the one advocated here, celebrates sacrifice and responsibility. People on this path are asked to weigh the impacts of their actions on the larger community, which includes the land. Reduce your ecological footprint and improve rather than exploit the quality of life of others. Share resources and opportunities. Pursue status and self-identity through family and community service, not materialism. Promote literacy, sport, art, and giving and shun excessiveness, aggrandizement, entertainment and greed. Find meaning in life through improving the beauty, resilience, and vitality of the community.
The first three options have in common absolution of individual responsibility. They allow us to ignore the implications of our actions on the impending moral, social, and environmental holocausts. They also are risky. We have one planet and thus only one shot at getting things right. What happens if the market or government bureaucrats get it wrong? What happens if God expects more of our stewardship than we have thus far interpreted? Or what if no supernatural shepherd exists and fate is of our own making?
The forth option is harder but safer, and ultimately far more rewarding. It requires compassion for others and for the larger land community. More importantly, it requires engagement. We must participate intentionally in making the world a better place. Economic growth, blind faith, and scientific regulation are important and powerful tools, but they are insufficient for the tasks at hand. A meaningful and good life requires us to do more. It requires accepting responsibility; it requires caring about the consequences of our actions on all of creation; it requires stewardship; it requires land care.
Critics of this path claim it will take us back to the Stone Age. They call its advocates luddites, socialists, and anti-American. These shallow and rhetorical critiques ignore that the market, on occasions such as toxic pollutants and child labor exploitation, has been misdirected, or deny that some technological advances have created more problems than they solved. They ignore that the Bible also speaks about tending and caring, that God values the creation independently of its utility to satisfy human wants, that Jesus spoke clearly about treating others equitably, and that wealth accumulation can make access to heaven difficult (as difficult as it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle). Critics of an alternative path celebrate only indulgence and growth, they fail to recognize that sacrifice is part of our culture. Americans donate time and money to church and community. We send our children college. We allow loved ones and neighbors to stand in harms way protecting our country and our ideals. We resist temptations. We do these things because we believe the prize is worth the sacrifice: community, family, freedom. Celebrating sacrifice does not mean wearing hair shirts and failing flesh, it does not preclude comfort, convenience, or entertainment. It just places limitations on wants. It questions entitlements. It demands we ask questions of our life and our actions, that we be engaged in the community and not selfish, and that we care.
Sacrifice is hard. We need good reasons to do it. We need to know it won’t be in vain. Today’s challenges are daunting. Why should we walk the difficult path? Why should we invest our personal energy and attention caring about the impacts of our actions on the land? Life is already too complicated, we already have too many demands on our time and resources. And besides, how can one person make a difference?
Landcare requires the will to act, which is the topic of the third blog in this series.