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Earth Day 2007:Vulnerability & Response-Ability Rev. Paul Beckel First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org April 22, 2007
Following another week of
nonsensical violence, our prayer today is our anguish… and our desperate
hope that we not settle into resignation. We know that we live in a
violent world, a changing world, an unpredictable world. We steel
ourselves to loss, we steel ourselves to emotional pain. We steel
ourselves to the barrage of self-imposed hurts that human beings bring
upon themselves, upon each other, and upon the earth that sustains us.
We cry “no more” but we know there will be more. We cry out “why?” and
we know that the answers will continue to elude us. And still, we gather
to celebrate and to mourn and to wonder.
This is Edna St. Vincent
Millay's poem, "Dirge Without Music:" == Joy and woe are woven fine. What a week we have had with a remarkable auction last night, fabulous weather to bring us out of late winter gloom. And visitors here today. You are a joy to us, whatever brings you: come be welcome. GATHERING SONG We Sing of Golden Mornings #44
READING from Collapse by Jared Diamond The book, Collapse, is about human societies that have utterly imploded, sometimes after thriving for long periods… sometimes leaving behind only great monuments and deep mysteries. Diamond writes:
Are the parallels between the past and present sufficiently close that the collapses of the Easter Islanders...Anasazi, Maya, and Greenland Norse could offer any lessons for the modern world? At first, [we] might be tempted to object, “It’s ridiculous to suppose that the collapses of all those ancient peoples could have ...relevance today.... Those ancients didn’t enjoy the wonders of modern technology.... Those ancients had the misfortune to suffer from effects of climate change. They… ruined their own environment by doing obviously dumb things, like cutting down their forests, overharvesting wild animal[s], watching their topsoil erode away, and building cities in … areas likely to run short of water. They had foolish leaders who...couldn’t learn from history, and who embroiled themselves in expensive and destabilizing wars, cared only about staying in power, and didn’t pay attention to problems at home. They got overwhelmed by desperate starving immigrants, as one society after another collapsed, sending floods of economic refugees to tax the resources of the societies that weren’t collapsing. In all those respects, we moderns are fundamentally different from those primitive ancients … there is nothing we could learn from them. MEDITATION Träumerei Schumann MESSAGE A few nights ago Jane and I heard an owl as we were about to go to sleep. It was awesome. But it was also a little odd. For several minutes the owl sang “Who cooks for you.” And then, something called back – something that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. I told Jane it sounded like a hyena! The calls went back and forth for several minutes. The next morning, Jane went downstairs to talk to her dad right away. He’s the one who puts out food for all kinds of birds around the house we share. She was excited to tell him about the owl but apparently he’d heard it too. In fact, he said, he had called back to it.
This week we’ve also had flying things in the new atrium. Bats at twilight, circling; birds during the day, winging their way through the sunbright heights.
This morning, this Earth Day morning I woke up and looked out onto a glorious and wounded landscape. A human landscape, an ecological landscape. And looking, I felt more than a little overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by complexity, overwhelmed by insignificance, aware of my vulnerability, and my limits. Looking out onto this landscape -- this ALL, this SO MUCH -- I cannot help but wonder if my role is to save the world … or to savor it. And this makes it hard to plan the day.[1]
Last night at the service auction I felt enthusiasm, hope, camaraderie. I felt deep gratitude for you and for this place on earth where we are rooted. And I thought about our potential …and our fragility.
I am not resigned to making this sermon into an Earth Day dirge. Let me begin with something good, something to remind us of the power that rises from within our midst. Like the gifts given last night at the auction, power and beauty that sprouts and grows in places/ in people/ where we had no idea such passions such talents reside.
So: I
heard from Kent Saleska this week. Kent is the son of Charlotte Saleska,
who was interim minister here six years ago. Kent wanted to share some
good news about his brother Scott, who is an environmental scientist in
Arizona, and his wife, Kirsten Engel, an environmental lawyer. A while
back they jointly wrote a brief (he wrote a "friend of the court" brief
with other scientists and she wrote up the legal arguments in
collaboration with many states who were suing the Environmental
Protection Agency, which has refused to consider carbon dioxide from
auto emissions to be an air pollutant subject to EPA regulation.
Kent, following in his mother’s footsteps, has just completed his training in ministry, and says that he’ll try to get to Wausau to preach for us this summer. But joy and woe is woven fine. Those of you who knew Charlotte will be sad to learn that her Alzheimer’s disease is progressing significantly. She’s now living near Milwaukee and getting rides to the UU church in Brookfield from people in the church.
== My primary source for today is the book Collapse by Jared Diamond. Diamond asks: Why would any society undermine itself, why would people destroy the very basis of their own survival? And yet it happens. Easter Island in the Pacific, the Maya civilization, the Anasazi in what is now the American southwest, The Norse who settled Greenland for a time.
These people did not consciously go out one day to fell their last tree. They lost the resources they depended upon gradually. And they survived, they thrived and even expanded until – pushing the boundaries of a fragile balance – they were struck with crises that had once been manageable. Crises they could weather when their resources were deeper… and when conditions suited the values that had originally enabled them to build that society.
Living on the edge, not in weakness but in a fine balance of strength and vulnerability, they were surprisingly susceptible to hostile neighbors, or to the loss of friendly trading partners, or to environmental damage or climate change.
None of these societies collapsed due to environmental change alone; each had other contributing factors. And one of the factors always present, both in cases where human societies have proven fragile, and those cases where we have proven resilient… one factor that is always present is our response.
== Why do societies fail? There are four ways it can happen: 1. We can fail to anticipate a devastating problem in advance. 2. We can fail to perceive it once it is upon us. 3. We can fail to attempt to solve the problem once it is noticed. Or 4. We may try to solve it and still fail.
Does this have to be a depressing conversation? I don’t think it does. Because if we can understand why groups make bad decisions in response to environmental stress, then we can learn from their experience to make better collective decisions about the problems we are facing today.
Let’s consider some examples. Under (1) failure to anticipate a problem, there was the introduction of non-native species, rabbits, into Australia. So far this mistake has cost billions of dollars and has created incalculable damage. Were these people stupid or did they just lack imagination in not being able to anticipate the consequences of this decision? Or were they too imaginative? Today as we develop environmentally friendly alternatives, we need to remain humble knowing of the potential for unexpected consequences to well-intended efforts. We have to remember that creativity involves risk.
(2) Failure to notice when a problem has already arrived. Societies that fail to notice problems are not stupid. Problems can begin thousands of miles away from us, or above or below us, or out of sight. Lots of environmental destruction is invisible to the eye. And even when measured with refined instruments, patterns of change may take decades to become clear. Even those living within view of a glacier, receding a couple of feet per year, aren’t likely to notice. The Easter islander who cut down the last tree was probably not aware that the island had once been covered with trees and that the civilization had been rich and complex and dependent upon those trees for fishing boats.
(3) We sometimes fail even to try to solve a problem once it has been perceived. Why? There is a perverse logic that plays out when conditions are right for a few people to reap huge immediate benefits while the majority –as individuals -- lose comparatively little. In these cases we shrug, figuring it isn’t worth the trouble to interfere when our suffering is really only 1/6 billionth of a rape.
This is “the tragedy of the commons” which plays out again and again, because it makes sense, it is perfectly rational: when goods are held in common we take what we can because if we don’t someone else will. The tragedy is not inevitable, however. At least 3 broad solutions exist, though which one is going to work in any particular case will depend upon the details. One solution is government regulation of the commons, though this is pretty hard in relation to global resources, such as the ocean, that spread beyond the jurisdiction of any government. Another solution is privatization: divide up the world and trust that private owners will be motivated to take care of their own property. But of course resources like migrating birds don’t stay on any one property. A third solution is for consumers to recognize and to protect their common interests – such as Montana ranchers who elect their own water commissioner knowing that they’ll be better off if they can agree to voluntary limits.
== So environmental damage results from rational behavior when people act in their individual self-interest. But it can also result from irrational behavior. For example, when we know that our behaviors aren’t going to help, but we continue anyway because we’ve invested so much into a custom that we are reluctant to abandon it, regardless of the consequences.
And we can act irrationally when we are swayed by religion. For example the deforestation of Easter Island resulted in part from the use of logs to hoist and transport 397 giant stone statues created as objects of veneration.
Is it possible that the values we have cherished as a society, values that were once beneficial to our survival, could wear out? Our spirit of pioneering independence and self-sufficiency has proven useful in overcoming past challenges. In fact it has became a deep part of our American identity: well-armed cowboy lone rangers. But to cling too tightly to that self-image today may prove disastrous. Diamond writes:
“It is painfully difficult to decide whether to abandon …core values when they seem to be becoming incompatible with survival. At what point do we as individuals prefer to die than to compromise and live?
...All such decisions involve gambles, because one often can’t be certain that clinging to core values will be fatal, or (conversely) that abandoning them will ensure survival. In trying to carry on as Christian farmers, the Greenland Norse in effect were deciding that they were prepared to die as Christian farmers rather than live as Inuit; they lost that gamble.
...In the last 60 years the world’s most powerful countries have given up long-held cherished values previously central to their national image, while holding on to other values. Britain and France abandoned their centuries-old role as independently acting world powers; Japan abandoned its military tradition...Russia abandoned its long experiment with Communism...the U.S. has retreated [in part] from its former values of legalized racial discrimination, legalized homophobia, a subordinate role of women, and sexual repression....”
It takes courage to re-examine core values. It takes strength to change. It takes luck to win the gamble that such efforts are worth the risk.
Are people stupid to choose the wrong values? No. Desperately poor people are going to cut down their last tree to make a fire even if they know they are destroying their future. Governments whose constituents pressure them to deal only with immediate crises will inevitably focus on short-term rather than long-term concerns. Terrorized, anxious, and grieving people will lose focus and make poor decisions.
== So, we may fail to anticipate a problem. We may fail to notice when it arrives. And we may fail to try to solve it once we notice. Finally, (4) even if we do try to solve a problem we may still fail. We may not have the capacity to solve some problems. Or our solutions may make the problem worse, or create new problems. Or we may do too little too late.
But usually we succeed. Here we are. We have made it and with luck we will continue. With luck, that is, and increasing knowledge, courage, commitment AND good collective decision-making processes.
To go on, to overcome our shared threats, I do not believe that we need big business to suddenly acquire a social conscience. The work of public corporations is to maximize profits. It is our job as citizens and consumers to create the conditions in which businesses will find it most profitable to behave in environmentally friendly ways. When we care, and when we are aware, clean businesses will outcompete dirty ones.
These are not things we’ll accomplish in the next couple of years. We need to continue to educate ourselves and continue to support local and global organizations working to set these conditions.
We also have the opportunity, a sacred opportunity, to teach another generation -- those who will become the CEOs and engineers who will create powerful machines and chemicals and processes … and teach our children who will become the farmers and the janitors who will use these products responsibly. We have a sacred opportunity to pass on our sense of reverence, to teach another generation about the value of paying attention, and to model the difficult but rewarding ways of acting in good conscience, and accepting the consequences of our choices.
We have the sacred opportunity to ensure that the next generation will learn science, and history, and the communication skills that will enable them to be responsible consumers and effective participants in the decision-making that will shape their world.
And we have the sacred opportunity to help them learn the difference between that which is impossible and that which is difficult.
== “The most inconvenient truth about global warming is that we cannot stop it.” Fareed Zakaria writes that global warming is a given. To some degree. It’s something we should strive to minimize, but not something we can completely reverse. He says this “not to induce fatalism or complacency.” Our lack of thoughtful energy policy is scandalous, and we need to do better, but we also need to prepare to Adapt. This is a huge discussion, one that will take many years and would best be done without denial or delay. Moving toward adaptation will be “costly and fraught with uncertainty and error,” and yet we’ve done it before. The costs will be high, but they will be higher if we wait another 20 years.
This is not to say that the work of the environmental movement is unimportant. We need to move on both fronts: slow down climate change AND adapt. Together these responses could complement and re-enforce one another.
Global warming is an inconvenient truth. And it calls attention to something perhaps even more difficult: inconvenient questions. Questions like: How will we proceed in this conversation without doctrinaire attitudes? How do we progress rather than retreat to our predictable defensive positions? Can we reframe the still emerging questions to approach them with “both-and” solutions? Both-And: market and mission; ethical and practical; global and local….
Like the seeds of the sower, some of our efforts will take root and spring forth a thousand fold. Earth has taught us this. But we need to scatter our seeds without despair. For some -- not all, but some -- will fall on fertile ground.
== There are important differences between us and those past societies that collapsed. We have much larger populations and more potent technology. For better or worse, we have much larger populations and more potent technology. Our modern global interconnectedness means that there won’t be collapses of isolated societies that affect no one else. Globalization, for better or worse, means that we cannot disregard human or ecological troubles that seem remote. Who would have guessed 30 years ago that poor, remote, and seemingly insignificant countries like Somalia and Afghanistan would play a role in humbling the mighty U.S. military? Who would have guessed that they would ever matter to our wealthy, seemingly independent nation?
The risks we face today are large, but they are not all beyond our control. When we have dared to re-examine our values we have found enormous benefits in our investments into long-range planning, investments in public health, clean air and clean water and endangered species legislation that have made a positive difference in our lifetimes.
But we may need to give up on some cherished illusions and misplaced values.
One-fifth of the Netherlands is below sea level -- as much as 22 feet below! They have a saying there: “God created the earth but we Dutch created the Netherlands.” Nearly 1000 years ago the Dutch began draining these lands (polders) with windmills powering long lines of pumps from the inland areas out to the sea. The water still comes back, year after year, century after century.
The Dutch have another expression: “You have to be able to get along with your enemy, because he may be the person operating the neighboring pump into your polder.” It’s not that the rich live safely up on tops of the dikes while the poor live down in the polder bottoms below sea level. In 1953 nearly 2,000 rich and poor drowned together. Not surprisingly, the Dutch are among the most environmentally aware people on the planet.
Ancient societies separated by thousands of miles collapsed in isolation -- unaware that they were following similar patterns of self-destruction. Now they are gone. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. SHARING OUR GIFTS Our collection today is for the North Central Conservancy Trust, an organization that provides assistance to landowners in this area who would like to ensure that their land is held in conservancy trusts. SENDING SONG Spring Has Now Unwrapped the Flowers #63BENEDICTION The word “benediction” means “to speak well.” Can we speak well of this week, this day? Can we speak well of this human family so diverse, so fallible, so complex, so easily misunderstand? Can we speak well of this world and our place in it? Let us begin by speaking well of those on whom we depend: one another, and one world. Be well. |