Smithology

I’ve been noticing more and more how some of my environmentalist friends keep doing things that remind me of the behaviour of some Christians, especially fundamentalist Christians that I’ve known. I think it all comes down to the way ideology and moral codes tend to make us act certain ways.

For example, many environmentalists feel that people who drive four wheel drives are doing something wrong and will tend to form a negative judgement of those people. Christians also tend to think like this about people who are homosexual or transgress some closely held Christian value. The common ground is that both Christian and environmentalist ideology creates a set of behaviours which arise from values and form a moral code which is in tension with the mainstream moral code. So while the majority of people live by a mainstream moral code which accepts (even celebrates) four wheel drives and is becoming more accepting of homosexuals, those who identify with a certain ideology end up subscribing to a moral code which brings them into conflict with the mainstream moral code.

I suppose I’m being obvious but here are a few other things:

• The need to create an “us and them”: You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.
• Withdrawal from mainstream society: Christians boycott films and products produced by “satanists”, environmentalists boycott shopping centres and products which cause environmental damage.
• Narrowing of social circles: only wanting to associate with other Christians / environmentalists
• Development of fashion: Christians dress neatly and conservatively, environmentalists wear organic hemp
• Jargon and indoctrination: Environmentalists reduce, reuse and recycle. Christians lay it at the foot of the cross.
• Preaching
• Paranoia: a tendency to think that someone is pulling strings in the background to oppose you

I suppose what I’m getting at is that environmentalists need to make an effort to avoid some of these behaviours which become barriers. Are you being an environmentalist because you want to take some high moral ground and just feel good about yourself or do you actually want to see things change? I’m not saying environmentalists need to stop doing what they do, it’s about a small tweak of the consciousness and approach that makes all the difference.

I have some friends who often inspire me with their environmental choices and I find that when I hang out with them, I feel a little more motivated to try changing my own lifestyle. It’s not that they judge me and make me feel guilty, it’s not that they preach to me. It’s that I see them living a different life which they enjoy.

The hardest part of environmentalism is that society just seems to go on doing the same things forever, but we can look to a Christian parable to feel more hopeful: Jesus once told his disciples that only a little bit of salt is needed to make the meal salty, the salt spreads through the food, just a grain here and there and changes it without you even being able to see it. The path to environmental change is not in moralising, preaching and putting “eco terrorist” stickers on four wheel drives: those approaches don’t work for Christians and they won’t work for environmentalists. THe real recipe for change is in living an example and being ready to bravely discuss and gently debate your beliefs with others and listen as much as rant about the things you feel passionate about.

[tags]christianity, environmentalism, morality[/tags]

Uncategorized environment, religion

The recent announcement by Kevin Rudd that Australia’s greenhouse gas reduction target will only be 5% made me a little bit angry but not very angry. I wasn’t surprised, nor do I think that a higher reduction rate would make a difference. To me, the climate change battle is pretty much lost until it starts to actually affect the economy directly, e.g. perpetual drought or flooding of major business centres and even then, the gradual nature of the change will probably mean that we can keep doing the same old stuff until our planet resembles a burned out cigarette butt and we are all living in plastic bio-domes (but still writing in our blogs). This is called the “frog in the kettle” affect which is the idea that a frog will jump out of hot water if you drop it in there but if you put it in a pot of cold water and then heat up the pot, the frog will stay in the pot until it is cooked.

I think I might be in one of the first generations to be educated from primary school about climate change (or the greenhouse effect as it was called back in the day). In the twenty years since I started caring about environmental issues, very little has changed. Sure there’s been a lot of awareness and talk but we continue to run trucks and cars along big roads all day, power generation is still mostly coal based and I continue to hear day after day about another study coming out to show that human industrial activity correlates with increases in global average temperatures.

As far as I’m concerned the damage is done. Maybe the damage was done a hundred years ago. We are all on a very large ship called the global economy and it doesn’t steer very fast even though it continues to accelerate towards the iceberg.

I used to get really angry and I used to care. I was part of a local environmental group here for a number of years and I know that plenty of people care about the environment but also every one of us is completely dependant on greenhouse gas polluting services. I know people who have decided to “unplug” as much as possible from this system but they are very few and it is naive to think that society in general will suddenly start generating their own electricity, growing their own food and riding a (wooden?) bicycle to work every day.

I like to think that I am a hopeful person and I do remain hopeful that things will change, but I can no longer bring myself to make any effort whatsoever to change the way I do anything in order to help the environment. Until I can see that our leaders take the problem seriously and that our economy and industry is somehow changing, then why should I bother? (But I will still buy those compact fluorescent bulbs and continue to fill my recycle bin for what it’s worth)

[tags]environment, fatalism[/tags]

Uncategorized environment