City-dwellers care about the environment because they can afford to, and the poorer rural people who have to deal with nature in real life know better than to get all sentimental over a little habitat loss. That much seems self-evident, but spending some time in a real-live poor rural area changed my thinking a little bit.
From 2004 until 2006 I did agricultural field studies during in French Polynesia during the summers (or is that winters?). I wouldn’t call Tahiti “Third World,” but it definitely ain’t First World either, especially anywhere besides Bora Bora or the capital city itself. The outer islands are just plain out in the middle of nowhere and “underdeveloped.” There’s no population for businesses to serve, and thus little employment besides what we’ll call “land-based self-employment.” Or “subsistence agriculture,” if you want to make it sounds like they’re wretched and starving, which they’re not.
Maupiti, an island a couple hours west by boat of Bora Bora where I spent most of the study time, is a little volcanic mountain surrounded by a shallow lagoon held in by motu, coral atoll islets. It’s kind of like an island and atoll in one, which is a pretty common scenario in Tahiti. People tend to live “in town” around the flat coastal edge of the central island and have farms out on the motu. Your average Joe farmer Tahitian gets up in the morning, does some weeding, spraying, and fertilizing on some days, and goes out fishing in the lagoon other days.
The thing about a motu is the “dirt” is nothing but coral sand and gravel. It has to be fertilized quite a bit to yield anything. It’s also very porous, and there’s nowhere on the motu that’s more than 100 feet away from the sea and maybe 2 feet above sea level. That’s a lot of fertilizer going into the lagoon, my friends. I think I might know where the algae blooms are coming from! You’ll also see on a typical Tahitian motu farm a number of discarded pesticide containers clearly labeled “Do not use near water: Has been demonstrated toxic to fish.”
When the farmer-fishers get together they all complain a lot about how much worse the fishing is than it used to be. I’d be pretty miffed too if that was all the dinner I could afford.
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So there we have it, citydwellers love the environment because they’re rich and they can afford it. Rural people don’t care because their living depends on trashing the ecosystem that feeds them. It makes sense to the Tahitians, but I have to admit still being a little lost on that one.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Earth, schmearth?
If you've already navigated yourself to a blog called "mormonsfortheenvironment.blogspot.com," then this post just might be preaching to the choir. But if you still want to look at what interest conservation could possibly have for those of the LDS persuasion, let's discuss.
First, the purely theological reasons- less abstract ones to follow. Moses seems to indicate the earth as having more of a presence than just a rock to stand on (7:48; also DC 88:25-26). Does this mean there’s a prophetic basis for the Gaia hypothesis? I can’t say I’d go that far. But in terms of seeing our place in the physical universe and our relationship with the resources we live from, it certainly gives you something to think about.
Then there’s a great line of thought (or Reagan administration policy) reasoning that with the Second Coming happening soon, and the earth being renewed then, isn’t worrying about the environment a waste of time?
Good point. Of course, the expectation of having brand-new resurrected bodies doesn’t stop us from following the law of chastity or Word of Wisdom out of disregard for the one we have now. In fact, rather than treat our current bodily estate as disposable because of our belief in a resurrection, we recognize the sacredness of our physical place. If we think it’s a good idea for the earth to be at a lovely Edenic state someday, then it’s a good idea now.
Or for a slightly different angle, one fellow I know once said: “Weren’t we the ones who did the creating? So when it’s time for the big cleanup, who d’you think’s gonna be doing that?”
The stewardship principle looms large in the LDS thought towards the environment. The earth was given to us for our benefit and like all of God’s other gifts, we will have to make an accounting of our use. Of course there isn’t much in the way of scriptural counsel on what exactly constitutes “responsible stewardship” of the earth’s resources. What exactly will we be accountable for? Regrettably, the one scripture that is often cited by ourselves and Christianity at large, Gen. 1:26 appears to have been dramatically mistranslated. (And considering what else has happened to the book of Genesis, perhaps this isn’t surprising). The terms translated into English as “dominion” and “subdue,” it would seem, come from the Hebrew equally well as “stewardship” and “cherish.” But again, still not much word on precisely what kind of reckoning our stewardship and cherishing will be accounted by.
To me, and this is where we enter the realm of Gospel According to Myself, a big huge part of our stewardship over the earth is social. How do you figure? It’s pretty simple: We’re carbon-based life forms. We breathe. We drink water, and get sick when it’s full of sewage. We have also been known to eat from time to time. Doesn’t it seem a little like poor stewardship to mess these things up for other people if we can avoid doing so?
One of the misconceptions I would like to discuss is that the environment is only a concern for the rich who have already had all their basic needs filled. In my experience—and I feel I cannot say it strongly enough—this is absolute fallacy, and an unfortunate one. The most basic needs like food, clean water, shelter, and fuel are the ones most closely tied to the productivity and health of land. This is especially true for the poorest who often live more off the land than in a cash-based trade network like we do. Land that is abused loses its productivity. End of story.
Except it’s not, because that’s the topic of next week’s post. Optional reading: Collapse by Jared Diamond.
First, the purely theological reasons- less abstract ones to follow. Moses seems to indicate the earth as having more of a presence than just a rock to stand on (7:48; also DC 88:25-26). Does this mean there’s a prophetic basis for the Gaia hypothesis? I can’t say I’d go that far. But in terms of seeing our place in the physical universe and our relationship with the resources we live from, it certainly gives you something to think about.
Then there’s a great line of thought (or Reagan administration policy) reasoning that with the Second Coming happening soon, and the earth being renewed then, isn’t worrying about the environment a waste of time?
Good point. Of course, the expectation of having brand-new resurrected bodies doesn’t stop us from following the law of chastity or Word of Wisdom out of disregard for the one we have now. In fact, rather than treat our current bodily estate as disposable because of our belief in a resurrection, we recognize the sacredness of our physical place. If we think it’s a good idea for the earth to be at a lovely Edenic state someday, then it’s a good idea now.
Or for a slightly different angle, one fellow I know once said: “Weren’t we the ones who did the creating? So when it’s time for the big cleanup, who d’you think’s gonna be doing that?”
The stewardship principle looms large in the LDS thought towards the environment. The earth was given to us for our benefit and like all of God’s other gifts, we will have to make an accounting of our use. Of course there isn’t much in the way of scriptural counsel on what exactly constitutes “responsible stewardship” of the earth’s resources. What exactly will we be accountable for? Regrettably, the one scripture that is often cited by ourselves and Christianity at large, Gen. 1:26 appears to have been dramatically mistranslated. (And considering what else has happened to the book of Genesis, perhaps this isn’t surprising). The terms translated into English as “dominion” and “subdue,” it would seem, come from the Hebrew equally well as “stewardship” and “cherish.” But again, still not much word on precisely what kind of reckoning our stewardship and cherishing will be accounted by.
To me, and this is where we enter the realm of Gospel According to Myself, a big huge part of our stewardship over the earth is social. How do you figure? It’s pretty simple: We’re carbon-based life forms. We breathe. We drink water, and get sick when it’s full of sewage. We have also been known to eat from time to time. Doesn’t it seem a little like poor stewardship to mess these things up for other people if we can avoid doing so?
One of the misconceptions I would like to discuss is that the environment is only a concern for the rich who have already had all their basic needs filled. In my experience—and I feel I cannot say it strongly enough—this is absolute fallacy, and an unfortunate one. The most basic needs like food, clean water, shelter, and fuel are the ones most closely tied to the productivity and health of land. This is especially true for the poorest who often live more off the land than in a cash-based trade network like we do. Land that is abused loses its productivity. End of story.
Except it’s not, because that’s the topic of next week’s post. Optional reading: Collapse by Jared Diamond.
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