Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

A gloomy outlook for the environment

The September Scarboro Mission Magazine focused on the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative in year three, which deals with renewal of the earth.

Mark Hathaway, in the lead article entitled Righting our Relationships, argues that since "God so loved the world," we too are called to love and care for the earth. He describes in terms of years and minutes how God's creation is being undermined as a result of human activity.

His graphic depiction of the ecological crisis bears repeating. You might have seen the statistics before, but seldom if ever in this compelling order. Abbreviated, the salient points are as follows:

• In the past 50 years humanity has released over 60,000 new chemicals into the air, water and soil, poisoning the processes that sustain life.
• In the past 25 years, humans - particularly the wealthiest 20 per cent - have depleted about one third of the earth's total natural wealth.
• In the past 10 years, greenhouse gases produced by humans have caused global warming, provoking flooding and severe weather around the world.
• In the past year, between 20,000 and 100,000 species of plants and animals have been lost forever, constituting the greatest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
• In the past day, we have produced one million tons of hazardous waste.
• In the past hour, we have converted 30 square km of productive land into desert.
• In the past minute, pesticide poisoning has killed 50 people.
• In the past second, we have destroyed an area of forest equivalent to a football field.
• No more than a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost, according to a 1992 statement by 1,600 scientists, including 102 Nobel laureates.

In the article - which deserves wider distribution in schools, parishes, boardrooms and parliaments - Hathaway reminds us how God is revealed in all of creation. He examines the connection between justice and ecology, debt and environmental destruction, our values and beliefs and the biblical notion of the Sabbath.

He emphasizes our responsibility as co-creators and holds out hope that confronting the true condition of the world has the potential to profoundly change our way of thinking, acting and perceiving reality.

While the critical scenario unfolds before our eyes, minute by minute, we cling to a collective denial. Like a frog in a pot of water slowly heated to the boiling point, we remain motionless, waiting for the water to cool off.

Ironically, the disappearance of frogs and other amphibians on a global scale is the first indicator that something is drastically wrong.

In our rush to greater efficiency - a euphemism for squeezing more profit out of dwindling resources - we have allowed deregulation of public services, including those involving the fair distribution and safeguarding of the four elements: air, water, earth and fire, or energy.

In Canada and the U.S., where energy consumption is the highest in the world, environmental concerns don't rate as an election issue. In fact, Al Gore's book on the environment is seen as a liability.

The platforms of the main contestants in either country are almost indistinguishable as they promise tax cuts, more globalization and unlimited economic growth. A good slice of the voting population has never had it so good and they don't want to know the party is over.

As the minutes tick away, the fate of the earth will depend not so much on political vision, but on an inspired public determination to turn things around.

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