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Dissident Heart 
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 Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:00 pm Post subject:
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Frank,
Feel free to move on to something else. The quotations I offer refer to mission statements for religious organizations from around the world...all of which are engaged in changing personal consumption and lifestyle habits, greening congregational and other worship spaces, environmental habitat clean-up, confronting industrial waste, and working to change local, regional, national and international environmental laws. If you take the time to explore these sites you'll discover projects like these all over the world.
Or you can continue to marvel at the imaginative genius and spirital depth that produces the moral courage and ethical insight of your Baboon Butted Monkey god of Flatulence. |
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geo
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:06 pm Post subject:
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| Dissident Heart wrote: |
But that isnt what religious environmentalism does. On the contrary, it encourages full participation and informed political activism towards alleviating a very real ecological threat. |
Real environmental solutions will ultimately have to come from science. Religion brings absolutely nothing to the table. I think it was Carl Sagan who said we can pray for the cholera victim or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours.
Having said that, I suppose a religious-based environmental movement has the potential to instill environmentalist notions in members already steeped in religious traditions, but it would probably do so in a convoluted, bassackwards way. I have heard that some chiropractors engage in actual legitimate, scientific physical therapies which are then framed in some kind of New Age jibber jabber which is what the clients actually want to hear. My problem with it personally is that it's not an intellectually honest approach for reasons already stated. Maybe some people don't want intellectual honesty in their lives. Or, more likely, they simply don't know any better.
Don't get me wrong. I know a lot of religious organizations do a lot of good in the world (along with the bad). A religious-based organization could certainly do some environmentally beneficial deeds. A tree planted is a tree planted. It doesn't matter if a Protestant plants it or an atheist. I just think we need to get to a place where we don't have to rely on supernatural anything to have a sense of wonder and awe of the universe.
-George |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject:
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geo: Real environmental solutions will ultimately have to come from science. Religion brings absolutely nothing to the table.
Obviously, I disagree- and I think I've provided ample examples of some of the necessary (again, not sufficient, but necessary) components that religious environmentalism can and already does bring to the table. Science will be necessary as well- but not sufficient. Science wont tell us whether or not to eliminate the vast majority of human population...it will tell us what will happen if current trajectories continue. But science doesnt tell us why we should change the direction of any one trajectory...that requires something beyond the scientific method. That requires ideology, beliefs, hopes, and visions for what the purpose of human life is, and what our obligations to present and future generations should be. Science can help us understand current trajectories, and provide the tools for changing them: but it doesn't tell us why or for what purpose we should choose any particular direction.
Understand, I am not saying that religion is the only method for doing this (ie, poetry, literature, philosophy, music, art) ...but it is supremely qualified for infusing life with meaning, hope for the future and a value for existence that the scientific method is simply not equipped to provide.
geo: I think it was Carl Sagan who said we can pray for the cholera victim or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours.
Were you aware that AL Gore and Carl Sagan worked together to start the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life?
http://www.coejl.org/~coejlor/about/history.php
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In the spring of 1992 at the invitation of Al Gore and Carl Sagan, the leadership of the major organizations in American Jewish life, eminent rabbis, denominational presidents, and Jewish U.S. senators gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss the creation of a Jewish response to the mounting environmental crisis. Those present agreed that the Jewish community had a responsibility to address the crisis (see founding statement).
In 1993, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life was created and charged with catalyzing a distinctively Jewish programmatic and policy response to the environmental crisis. COEJL was initially envisioned as a time-limited project to “jump start” environmental programs that would become permanently integrated into Jewish institutions.
Established by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (then NJCRAC), the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, COEJL became part of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment to enact a distinctively Jewish programmatic and policy response to the environmental crisis. |
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geo
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject:
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| Grim wrote: |
The planet is hopelessly overcrowded as it is, any humanitarian gains we are able to afford today to extend the life span and quality for desperate people has been sharply subsidized through the use of fossil fuels. Energy that is becoming increasingly costly to manufacture.
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I was wondering if anyone was going to get around to mentioning overpopulation on this thread—and in conjunction with the cheap energy bubble that is allowing human population to burgeon well beyond sustainable levels. That is the real story, isn't it?
I think Grim is right. Does anyone really expect religion to take up that torch?
This column by Froma Harrop barely touches on the issue . . .
http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/parties-afraid-to-face-po pulation-explosion.html
edit note: Just trying to say Grim makes a good point, but my mind was mud last night.
-George |
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Frank 013
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 6:26 am Post subject:
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DH
you take the time to explore these sites you'll discover projects like these all over the world. |
Websites? That’s the best you can do?
There are websites that offer advice on how best to fend off a zombie hoard, what makes the ones you posted any more legitimate?
I told you before I want to see something real... apparently you can't point me to anything of worth.
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DH
you can continue to marvel at the imaginative genius and spiritual depth that produces the moral courage and ethical insight of your Baboon Butted Monkey god of Flatulence. |
The great rainbow butted monkey god has as much evidence supporting him as your god!
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Frank 013
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 6:33 am Post subject:
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| In 1993, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life was created and charged with catalyzing a distinctively Jewish programmatic and policy response to the environmental crisis. COEJL was initially envisioned as a time-limited project to “jump start” environmental programs that would become permanently integrated into Jewish institutions. |
You’re telling us that they left this in the hands of the Jewish church in 1993 and we haven’t seen any headway yet?
That’s 15 years!
What the hell are they waiting for?
Is this the kind of rapid response we should expect from other religious organizations?
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geo
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 8:22 am Post subject:
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| Frank 013 wrote: |
You’re telling us that they left this in the hands of the Jewish church in 1993 and we haven’t seen any headway yet?
That’s 15 years!
What the hell are they waiting for? |
Be patient, Frank. They're still working on the web site.
-George |
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geo
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 8:26 am Post subject:
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| Dissident Heart wrote: |
Obviously, I disagree- and I think I've provided ample examples of some of the necessary (again, not sufficient, but necessary) components that religious environmentalism can and already does bring to the table. Science will be necessary as well- but not sufficient. Science wont tell us whether or not to eliminate the vast majority of human population...it will tell us what will happen if current trajectories continue. But science doesnt tell us why we should change the direction of any one trajectory...that requires something beyond the scientific method. That requires ideology, beliefs, hopes, and visions for what the purpose of human life is, and what our obligations to present and future generations should be. Science can help us understand current trajectories, and provide the tools for changing them: but it doesn't tell us why or for what purpose we should choose any particular direction.
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Carl Sagan's (apparently limited) involvement notwithstanding, what exactly does The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life do that any organization can't, secular or otherwise? In other words, what does religion bring to the table that the NAARP or the American Wiccan Society can't? We're clearly getting into Gould's "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" (NOMA) territory here, the idea that science and religion deal with two separate realms. (One real and one imaginary, I would say, but that's beside the point). So why would you take a real world problem and try to mix religion into it?
Promoting environmental awareness is fine for what it is, but real solutions will come from science and an understanding of our place in nature, which religion can't offer. In fact, as has already discussed, religion frequently tries to throw up roadblocks to an actual understanding of the real world. Religious ideology is fixed and immutable, and tries to stay that way even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. That's why Galileo was tried for heresy and why Creationists, even today, try to pretend evolution isn't real and that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Science does need a moral framework, but it definitely shouldn't come from religion. Which religion would you select to provide such a moral framework? Buddhism? Judaism? Christianity? Wicca? And from within each of those religions, which sect? And, again, why would you want religion, which deals with the metaphysical, to be part of a moral framework that we would use here in the real world?
And because I think I can predict where this conversation will go next, I would argue that morality has never come from religion at all despite a great pretense from an awful lot of people that it does. (It's that cognitive dissonance again.) We have an instinctive repugnance against things like murder and stealing and going to bed with your neighbor's wife. It came about through millions of years of evolution. Religion has nothing to do with any of it.
-George |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 11:55 am Post subject:
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Geo: So why would you take a real world problem and try to mix religion into it?
Because the real world includes religious people...lots of them. That may be a terrible inconvenience to those who would wish it away (or remove it like a cancer), but for those who are willing to work with the real world, that means working with religion. Religious environmentalism brings religion to the table and challenges it to respond to our ecological crisis with moral urgency and hope: reminding those who are religious that they draw from traditions that hold nature as something worthy of the utmost care, and that love of god and reverence for the sacred cannot be separated from care of creation.
Again, you can choose to approach these many billions of religious folk and work to change deep rooted behaviors and structures of understanding about self, nature, and human destiny without the help of religion. I think it will fail. I know it will fail if the approach involves denigrating their religious beliefs as delusory imaginary nonsense...and it is certainly no help in devaluing attempts at finding the eco-justice and care of creation ethos that is available in many religious traditions.
Why this approach if others can do just as well? Well, more power to anyone, anywhere doing whatever they can to get people to live more simply and with greater ecological awareness. If others are able to mobilize religious individuals and communities to make substantial ecological adjustments, then I would think those in the religious environmentalist movement would support their efforts, and even join in common cause projects when possible.
I don't see much evidence of strictly secular environmentalist movements making much headway with changing the behaviors of religious communities. Nor do I see them changing the behaviors of many others either. There is a lot of work to be done on all fronts...secular and sacred need to get beyond their attachments to ideological purity.
Ideological purity is no ally in the environmentalist movement. What we need are better ideas for how to get large populations to revaluate their relationship to nature and future generations. I think religious environmentalism is one important, necessary but not sufficient ally in that struggle.
Frankly, the notion "you must think exactly like me about religion" is no help...whether it is expressed by Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists or Atheists. All of us, no matter our ideological attachments, need to find common ground along the lines of eco-justice and protection of the biosphere.
Geo: Religious ideology is fixed and immutable, and tries to stay that way even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.
For some religion that is true. But not all. Actually, religious history is really a story of the struggle between heresy and orthodoxy: change versus permanence...the challenge to retain what is valuable while accepting what is new and necessary. Some religious systems harden into calcified orthodoxy that is kept in place via threats of expulsion, physical harm and eternal hell. But there has always been an underground, subterranian, outside the bounds of accepted norms, evolving impulse that has bubbled up, risen to the surface and forced a revaluation and at times revolution in religious systems and traditions. Religions have always changed over time, are changing now, and will undoubtedly continue to change. I think religious environmentalism is one of the most timely and exciting changes in history.
I think the atheist attempt to dismiss anything valuable or worthwhile about religion (especially as it relates to the environmentalist movement) has become another calcified orthodoxy...and is in need of substantial change too. |
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geo
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:06 pm Post subject:
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Fair enough. That was a thorough and thoughtful response and I thank you for it.
We all know how ingrained religion is in our culture and history and we all know that such deep, entrenched patterns are slow to change. Unfortunately, in other ways, our world is moving at an incredibly fast pace. We will need to adapt and do it quickly. |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:06 pm Post subject:
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The Nathan E. Cummings Foundation http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/ejp/resources/cummings.shtml awarded the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Environmental Justice Program two-year funding to assist five major projects in Connecticut, Michigan, Florida, Iowa and California as well as two other smaller projects.
All five special projects were to meet four specific goals:
- To build more comprehensive vision, projects will address multiple conditions as experienced by diverse constituencies
- To address concrete issues which closely link social and economic justice and environmental protection
- To build on broad institutional engagement, coalition with citizen groups, and reliable research
- To integrate broad social teaching and education with direct public policy activity |
Here are the five projects:
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The CenterEdge Project in Connecticut
The CenterEdge Project was designed to begin a state-wide dialogue focused on the impact of sprawl on low-income communities and on water quality. The Project involved all four Catholic dioceses in the state as well as the Connecticut Catholic Conference. Bishop Peter Rosazza of Hartford was elected Honorary Chairman of the CenterEdge coalition serving as its public spokesperson and was directly involved in many of the key meetings and in planning the coalition’s strategy. With the involvement of so many diverse groups in the goals of this project, the coalition became a major player in the state on these issues.
The CenterEdge project published of the Connecticut Metropatterns by Myron Orfield and Tom Luce. The included “sprawl maps” offered detailed depictions of urban sprawl and subsequent impacts on low-income residents and on the environment.
In addition, the Connecticut Catholic Conference published a pastoral statement on April 1, 2003 Common Ground, Common Good: Toward Greater Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice in Connecticut. It was announced by Archbishop Daniel Cronin (retired), and was mailed to every Catholic pastor in the state. This statement and the Connecticut Metropatterns report generated an enormous amount of dialogue about urban sprawl, the resulting environmental damage of uncontrolled sprawl, and the impact of both on low-income populations.
The project helped swell the ranks of Catholics connected with the state’s Catholic legislative network and they joined a state-wide coalition to identify policies that can move the state in a more positive direction. These included: cooperative land-use planning to strengthen communities and preserve the environment; tax and state aid reforms to stabilize fiscally stressed schools, help communities pay for needed public services and reduce competition for tax base; an enhanced role for state government, councils of government or other regional organizations to help solve regional problems while ensuring that all communities have a say in decision-making. Taken together, the state-wide coalition and the Metropatterns report have provided serious and sustained direction for continued work on a more sustainable, more just and more livable state. |
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Large-scale Animal Feeding Operations in Iowa
This project focused on the environmental, economic and social impacts of large scale hog-farming. As the project unfolded, a broad alliance comprised of diverse constituents—from family farm advocates to animal rights groups and from academic research institutions to citizens’ councils—became engaged in a state-wide dialogue. The dialogue and resulting coalition has tackled a range of environmental issues including the impact on the quality of community life, human health, as well as safety and sustainability of the water system.
During the second year of funding, it became apparent that the social dimensions of the issue were as prominent as the environmental issues. Many Catholics are directly involved in the controversy: CEOs of large pork processors, small independent hog producers, property owners in proximity to a large-scale feeding operation, local elected officials, and low-income workers in large-scale hog confinements.
The Cummings Foundation grant enabled the lead agent of the project, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, to put together facilitator and participant guides entitled, Swine Production: Who is my neighbor? With these tools, staff traveled throughout the state conducting meetings in parishes and demonstrating how the parish can be a place for civil and reflective conversations on issues of this complexity.
Project staff consulted widely to develop the materials and increase their own knowledge of the issues around large scale animal confinement operations. Consultations included experts from the University of Iowa, Iowa State, North Carolina State, University of Minnesota, and Cornell University. Several other institutions, including the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minnesota, the National Institutes of Health, the Humane Society and Iowa Citizens Council were also brought on board. Many of these groups and have joined with others to form Rural Advocacy 2002, a coalition which worked to represent rural residents at the Iowa statehouse on a variety of issues including environmental issues and regularly convened by the project staff. All four Catholic dioceses in the state are engaged in the effort to combat the negative effects of large-scale animal feeding operations.
Finally, six study papers were developed by staff of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (three dealing with the effects of large-scale animal confinement facilities and three outlining the Catholic Church’s teaching on these issues). These papers became the basis for the ongoing education efforts of Catholics and others across the state. |
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Trasportation Equity Project, Detroit, Michigan
The first year of this project began with a seminal speech to an ecumenical group (1,200 people) on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by Cardinal Adam Maida, the Archbishop of Detroit. In that address, he highlighted a number of the problems Detroit faces from its inattention to mass transit issues: the lack of economic opportunities for inner-city residents (they cannot reach better jobs in the suburbs), a segregated city, more traffic congestion, increased air pollution, and an inability to attract businesses to the city center, among others. From this speech and groundwork already laid by some of the Archdiocesan staff, Detroit’s Transportation Equity Project began. The goal of TEP was to reach a broad array of groups including citizen and environmental groups, government and academic experts, among others.
As they proceeded, archdiocesan staff targeted three spheres of influence: (1) the leadership of the Catholic Church in Southeastern Michigan, including clergy, laity, and diocesan administration; (2) Catholic leaders beyond the metro Detroit including the five other diocese across the state and the Michigan Catholic Conference in order to replicate their experiences and develop an effective public policy voice in the state capitol; (3) all people of faith and other like-minded secular organizations, i.e., anyone who shares in the principles of Catholic Social Teaching on issues related to land use, the environment, transportation, and economic development.
Through this Archdiocesan leadership and the coalition that is the Transportation Equity Project, citizens have begun to address the social, economic and environmental consequences of sprawl in metropolitan Detroit.
In the first year of the project, Archdiocesan staff engaged over 25 religious and community groups in an effort to move forward with the goal of creating the nation’s largest new mass transit system. From the Sierra Club to the University of Detroit, and from the Farmland Trust to Transit Riders United—not to mention nearly a thousand citizens and pastors trained and united to form this coalition—staff connected with an amazing array of partners all united in the goals of the Transportation Equity Project.
The first objective of the project was to create public support for a tax hike to fund a new public transportation system. Despite a significant setback (the outgoing Governor vetoed a transportation bill) the educational efforts may still pay off—even the mayor of Detroit now talks about regional equity and the need for a top-rate regional public transit system. However, another key policy goal for the project was met: the governor established a task force on land use and equity. |
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The Inheritance Project, Florida
The Inheritance Project began in response to a massive Army Corps of Engineer water project considered by many to be harmful to the Everglades. The water project never came to pass so the key leaders shifted their focus to address a broader array of water problems in all of Florida. Through educating Catholics and developing a broad coalition of interested organizations, including government officials, many more Floridians are now much clearer about the urgent environmental concerns around water and water quality.
A key early success engaged young people in a contest to name the state-wide project and design a logo. Next, through a series of exploratory meetings, many other citizens and government officials joined the effort and began to explore workable solutions to water quality and sustainability issues.
As The Inheritance Project continued, a seven-member state Environmental Justice Committee was convened under the auspices of the Florida Catholic Conference. The focus was still on water resources, specifically, aquifer depletion and other water quality issues. Through the development of a networking coalition of government agencies, water experts, and secular and faith-based environmental advocacy groups, the state committee has gained a greater understanding of the use of Aquifer Storage and Recovery Units, the need for new and renovated water treatment plants, the threat of emerging contaminants in water supplies and their impact on public health, and the continued need for understanding of better growth management and sustainability practices.
As a result, the Inheritance Project has begun to implement a three-fold approach toward responding to the pertinent issues: (1) The Florida Catholic Conference is becoming more directly involved in environmental legislative advocacy, particularly as it addresses public health issues and low-income and marginalized communities. (2) The bishops of Florida will update and re-issue a pastoral statement regarding environmental stewardship which will include a primary focus on Florida's water concerns. (3) Several diocesan representatives developed and began implementing educational initiatives for parishes and schools in their communities. As a result of a recent state conference, this educational component has expanded to include environmentally sensitive landscaping and building practices in three of seven dioceses (Pensacola-Tallassee, Venice, Miami) individual parishes and, in the case of Pensacola-Tallahassee, resulting in diocesan policy changes where construction and land development is concerned.
As a result of the strong first-year education efforts in Central, Southeast and Southwest, the Inheritance Project helped stimulate efforts to develop and/or renovate water treatment facilities, which have subjected marginalized and fixed-income communities to substandard drinking water quality. In municipal and regional forums relating to water supply, the Inheritance Project joined other advocacy groups in expressing concerns over how increased water rates will impact low-income communities resulting in discussion of the development of community collaborations to enhance these targeted areas. The Florida Catholic Conference also is taking a closer look at Brownfield development projects currently before the state legislature and has taken a leadership role in many of the environmental issues in the state. |
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Sprawl Education Project, Los Angeles, California
The Los Angeles project focused primarily on the important moral consequences of uncontrolled sprawl, unsustainable development, and economic inequality in this enormous metropolitan region. In the first year, Cardinal Roger Mahony, a recognized major community leader—and spiritual leader of over 3 million Catholics—provided a vision of how the Los Angeles area can begin to address the serious environmental issues facing a very crowded metropolis. He did so by convening major stakeholders to initiate a serious dialogue around environmental and economic equity. The Archdiocesan Office of Peace and Justice continues to engage community leaders to discuss issues about regional economic equity, sprawl and associated environmental issues in light of Catholic social teaching.
Over three million active Catholics in the Los Angeles region are a potent force for change in this sprawling metropolis. The impact of sprawl has created many problems in the area including: diminishing the amount of available green space in undeveloped land, increasing the spiraling cost of housing—making it unaffordable to low-income residents—increasing the number of poor working families, stressing the ability to sustain the area’s natural resources, and fragmenting government structures and services. These issues, as well as sprawl’s impact on health care, education, and social services, were surfaced by policy staff when invited as a respondent to a seminar convened by the University of Southern California’s Urban Policy Center.
The project has place a primary emphasis on the development of a school curriculum on environment and sprawl issues. This curriculum flows directly from the mission of the Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission which is to educate, advocate and build a constituency for justice. Focusing the curriculum on poverty, pollution and participation, created a vision which clearly links justice and the environment.
Two Catholic high schools in the Los Angeles area, and with the inspiration of the environmental awareness curriculum, identified concrete issues within their own communities that link environment and justice. As they gathered information about which issues strike the deepest chord, they came up with innovative, community-based solutions to address the problem.
The possibility of a pastoral letter on environmental justice in Southern California continues to be discussed among members of the Peace and Justice Commission. They envision a process that: 1) identifies concrete issues that clearly demonstrated the relationship between social and economic justice and the environment; 2) facilitates listening sessions in each of the five pastoral regions throughout the Archdiocese to hear the lived experience of the diverse communities around these issues; and 3) the production of a pastoral letter that contains specific public policy recommendations to respond to the ethical dimensions of the regional environmental justice issues facing Southern California. The Commission believes that this process is as important, if not more important, than the product. The listening session process will promote broad institutional engagement, as well as build a constituency around environmental justice issues. The product will connect Catholic social teaching to these issues and will inform and influence the public policy debate. The pastoral letter should have a positive impact on ensuring that the poorest members of the community do not suffer disproportionately from congestion, pollution, unemployment, lack of recreational opportunities, and segregation. |
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geo
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject:
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| The last two of your "projects" caught my eye or at least got caught in my throat. I'm sorry, but I'm pretty skeptical about seeing any kind of meaningful change coming from the Catholic Church. That's almost a bad joke. The Catholic Church still requires its priests to be abstinent (though clearly they're not), still doesn't allow women to become priests, and still preaches that birth control is wrong. I mentioned slow to change in my last post. The Catholic Church epitomizes slow change and irrelevance. |
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