I’m not sure what I think about the whole Peak Oil issue, but Georgetown political scientist Patrick Deneen has thought a lot about it and has a – “sobering” is too mild a word; “apocalyptic” maybe? – post up about the relationship between oil and food and the implications that might have for world population.
Category: Environment
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All theology is animal theology
Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or Sanctification. Indeed, to set up one’s “serious” theology in such a way that one can ignore, dismiss, or deride creatures great and small, organic and inorganic, is a sign of the Fall and the effects of sin, alienation and division. The rest of Creation pays dearly and regularly for our lack of relational recognition and failures in thankfulness.
Maybe this is just special pleading on my part, but I think he’s absolutely right. In fact, I’m not sure Christian theology, much less Christian practice, has even begun to move from a thoroughly anthropocentric perspective to one that is more properly theocentric. Even churches that pay lip service (or more than lip service) to “the environment” remain steadfastly human-centered in their concerns. To some extent this is inevitable, but I wonder if we end up pushing a very thin gospel that essentially addresses only human concerns, and that often in a very therapuetic individualist way. And, if so, isn’t this a denial of the Lordship of Christ over all creation?
What would theology and practice look like if they genuinely incorporated the cosmic aspect of the biblical story that we so frequently downplay? My sense is that we in the mainline ignore this cosmic dimension out of embarassment. After all, a faith that is confined to fostering psychological well-being or political action is much more respectable than one that talks about the redemption of all creation. We have very little idea, I think, of what that would even look like.
If mainliners want to criticize fundamentalists for believing that we’re about to be whisked away in the Rapture, leaving the earth a smoldering cinder, maybe the proper response is to have a counter-story about the destiny of creation. Not to mention a counter-story to the post-Enlightenment industrial view of nature as a vast repository of resources for our exploitation. After all, isn’t there ample biblical and theological warrant for saying that creation – including our animal cousins – has a destiny in God’s kingdom? And doesn’t that imply that it matters now what happens to creation, since those aspects of the present age that serve God’s purposes will be preserved and transfigured (in ways we can scarcely being to imagine) in the age to come?
I actually am not sure how far we can push the de-anthropocentricizing (is that a word?) of Christian theology; this strikes me as still relatively unexplored territory. Some eco-theologians have tried it in ways that seem to me to sacrifice too much of traditional Christian belief. On the other hand, someone like Andrew Linzey is doing it in a way that builds on traditional orthdox trinitarian theology. I think this is the more promising route for a variety of reasons, maybe most importantly because traditional doctrines of creation and incarnation provides what I think is the strongest foundation for taking the created world to have permanent value for God.
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Carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade
I missed this when it first came out, but this is a good article explaining the debate over the best way to reduce carbon emissions.
It’s also heartening to see Reason of all places running articles that take the reality of climate change as a given. I’m not suggesting that some measure of skepticism can’t be justified, but I’ve been baffled at the response on much of the Right, which has consisted of little more than snarky dismissal and jokes about Al Gore.
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A food bill, not a farm bill
Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) writes about the unprecedented amount of attention the farm bill has been getting this year from environmental, health, and international development groups. Unfortunately, he says, the traditional interest groups have largely managed to craft a bill to their liking. They did this by adding on some programs as sops to farm bill critics, but leaving the subsidies – the heart of the problem – untouched:
But as important as these programs are, they are just programs — mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.
The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.
And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?
However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed — until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.
There remains a chance that a better bill will be crafted when it comes to the Senate floor. Pollan is optimistic that business as usual is no longer a viable option. The way the subsidy system shapes American’s food choices has become apparent to a lot of people, and so have the deleterious effects those choices have on our health, the environment, and struggling farmers in poor parts of the world.
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Newt the environmentalist?
Apparently Newt Gingrich is seeking to reinvent himself as a conservative environmentalist. David Roberts at Gristmill is skeptical, and contends that Newt-brand conservatism will always sacrifice the environment to its economic agenda when push comes to shove.
Personally, I say with the endless parade of Bushes and Clintons dominating our politics, the last thing we need is another 90s re-tread. Shouldn’t Newt be hosting something on VH1 at this point?
A Thinking Reed 