The New York Times weekend magazine is doing its "green issue." Seems everyone is doing green these days. The marketing agency I work for is also getting into the green thing, aiming to help our clients effectively tout their green initiatives. But for all the hype, there remains for me, at least, a nagging sense that we're not doing enough.
Say what you like about man-made climate change being real or not. I believe it. It's simple as this: You can't just continue to change an ecosystem without causing some serious imbalance. I've raised fish long enough to know this. Fish tanks, even mature ones, need some help to maintain healthy levels of pH, amonia, and nitrates. As it is, we humans continue to increase, nevermind level-off or reduce, our consumption of oil and other natural resources in order to fuel our consumer-driven lifestyles. It's as if I kept buying new fish every week. The ecosystem wouldn't sustain it.
Anyway, I read a very thought-provoking article in the NYT magazine that argued we need to take personal action in our own lives in order to make real change. Market-driven solutions and legislation are important, but won't be enough. We need to change our culture, our world's culture, so that the 1.3 billion proto-consumers in China and 1 billion in India might become a less wasteful version of ourselves here in the West.
The article offers a bold vision of a changed culture that is improbable, but appealing: "Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries."
From a Christian standpoint, I think it would be beneficial for us to stop hanging our happiness on things that we can purchase--fancy houses, most-up-to-date gadgets, beefy autos, or ever-bigger TV screens.
2 comments:
You are DEFINATELY 100% correct and I agree with you entirely. I know a famous Christian scientist who's a close family member and he says there's no doubt that global warming exists. He is saddened that environmentalism has been hijacked by the liberals and atheists when it shouldn't be! After all, WE were given dominion and responsibility for the earth.
Thanks for the affirmation, Saur! It's always nice to know other Christians acknowledge this scriptural responsibility.
I like the part of the article that I quoted that goes like, "Not having things might become cooler than having them." We need that type of attitude in the church, where we "use the things of the world, but are not engrossed in them," as Paul writes in 1 Cor 7.
Anyway, thanks for visiting and God bless!
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