The Moral Environment

I recently read an article in Crosslight, the newspaper of the Uniting Church in Australia (Synod of Victoria and Tasmania), on the issue of climate change. The article detailed a report by the Uniting Church’s Justice and International Mission Unit which stated that climate change was “not only” an environmental crisis, but a humanitarian issue, as it will mean suffering and death for millions, especially in the Third World. This being the case, there was a moral responsibility to undertake the necessary changes to prevent the worst effects of climate change from occurring.

I certainly agree with the assertion of moral responsibility, especially since the First World has historically caused much of the pollution over the last two hundred years that has precipitated climate change. But I am puzzled - and frankly frustrated - by the apparent separation of the fact of climate change - “only” an environmental crisis - from its moral dimension. As if the impact of climate change - the death and displacement of millions - was somehow separated from its advent; or, at least, was separated until such time as the effect started impacting on humans.

A quote attributed by the Crosslight article to the director of the Justice and International Mission Unit encapsulates this point: Climate change is as much a humanitarian issue as it is an environmental one.

But this immediately raises the question: when was climate change never a humanitarian issue? Was there ever a time when climate change was “only” something that impacted on the environment? How is it that we see ourselves as somehow separate from the ecosphere in which we live - which is, indeed, responsible for our being here (and for our continued survival)?

It seems to me that this dichotomy, however unintentional, exposes the great fallacy in the thinking of many Christians (and, indeed, of most humans, irrespective of their faith perspective). This is the fallacy of human “superiority” over (ie: separation from) other forms of life. Most often, this superiority manifests itself debates over abortion and euthanasia, wherein it is posited that human life under all conditions and circumstances is “sacrosanct”. However, it more insidiously manifests itself in this notion that humans are somehow “above” the natural world, and that life on planet Earth exists solely and exclusively for the benefit of humankind - indeed, that life on Earth somehow could not exist without human life.

But this is a fatal delusion, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, climate change was a humanitarian issue from the moment human actions started disrupting the natural weather systems. Mass technology combined with mass population has resulted in mass pollution; and that has overwhelmed the environment’s ability to rid itself of human-produced pollutants. Thus, while the quality of human life may superficially have improved vastly over the last two centuries, the truth is, we have been all the while rushing headlong toward ecological disaster and all that implies for the dignity and ongoing integrity of human life - in other words, the humanitarian issue was there from the very beginning.

Secondly, it is simply nonsense to conceive of the effects of climate change as “only” environmental, or “only” limited in its scope to non-human life. Humans might very well “sit on top” of the food chain, but that only means that we are utterly dependent on every other form of life on this planet. Remove enough of those life forms through climate change, and the “food chain” collapses, even if extinctions “only” occur among those species upon which humans are, generally speaking, not directly dependent (such as insects and small amphibians). The result will be the inevitable extinction of the human species, because the plants and animals upon which we are dependent will have lost their sources of food and life.

Thirdly, the continued pollution of the environment and its consequences represents a failure of humanity’s moral understanding of our relationship to creation. The earth does not exist for the purposes of our unlimited exploitation or “dominion”; we exist as part of the creative expression of God, as part of the cosmic act of loving creation that brought the universe into being. This does not mean that the advent of the universe and its life forms was just a “creaturely event”; rather, it implies that creation, being an act of love from God, was also a moral occasion, an ongoing process of inter-relationship that has an unfolding moral narrative. We can choose to respond to that moral narrative by understanding and entering into our relationship with the rest of creation; or we can reject that narrative. And this rejection, as with any rejection of any other moral narrative in our lives, has a necessary consequence: in this case, the destruction of our environment and, ultimately, ourselves.

This moral narrative of creation was brought home to me when I watched a television interview in the 90’s between Clive James and the renowned evolutionary scientist, the late Stephen Jay Gould. Gould stated quite specifically that life on earth - indeed, life in the cosmos as a whole - is not dependent on the continued existence of the human species. If we annihilate ourselves through nuclear war or environmental destruction, life on earth will continue. We cannot wipe out micro-organisms, for example; and there are creatures living on the bottom of the sea and in the depths of the earth for which events on the surface have no meaning whatsoever. The failure of the human species to enter into the moral narrative of creation will result in our annihilation; but life will continue, and maybe, evolve one day into a species that does grasp the invitation God has issued through the universe.

The choice is ours.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. (Stephen Jay Gould)