Dear Red State Cousin - Keep Your God Off My Country, Body and Earth

The following essay is a response to the recent American Presidential election, in which differences in moral values between the liberal "blue states" and conservative "red states" were widely perceived as decisive. I argue below in an imaginary letter to my "red state cousin" that environmental conservation is the ultimate moral issue, and insist that born again christians keep their god off my country, body and Earth.

Dear Red State Cousin,

I have read with interest your emails full of christian wit and patriotic passion.  This must be a time of heady optimism for the far right faithful, as Christian crusaders are on a roll in America and throughout the world.

I thought it time to respond.  Please forgive me for using this as an opportunity to clarify my own thoughts on god, the Earth, humanity's place in the universe and moral values in politics.  And to take exception with christian extremism.  

Firstly, let me state I do not believe in your god.  I feel the passion of your believe in Christ and know this is so very important to your philosophical foundation and well-being.  But not all share this believe, nor should we be required too.  Diversity in all things is a virtue.

Religious self-righteousness, self-proclaimed omnipotence and blind self-assuredness are but a wee distance from nationalism, totalitarianism, and despotism.  Instinctively I am leery of those who are certain in matters of faith.  I note you and your president are so very sure of yourselves and your moral footing.  

Oh that I could feel such sanctimonious certainty but once in my lifetime. Oh how I long to be sure of anything.  The closest I have come is to be sure that we need the Earth to live.  We come from the Earth, are nourished by her fruits, her waters slack our thirst, and her atmosphere constantly replenishes our lungs.  

No human endeavor - be it economic, political, cultural, social, or religious - is possible without Mother Earth being healthy and stable.  I can think of no more self-evident truth.  I am also as certain as a human can be that religion indeed is the opiate of the masses, as conflicts over gays and prayer obscures the demise of humanity's habitat.

I would not deny anyone comfort found in acts of blind faith, but it should not free its practitioners from critical thinking.  In turbulent and changing times, I would suggest decisions are best based upon scientific knowledge, humanism and ecological intuition.  Not based upon what some Middle Eastern people may or may not have said and done two millennia ago.  

Both muslim and christian fanatics want us to live based upon centuries old rules and an understanding of reality that no longer applies.  Humanity desperately needs a new vision free of the dogmas of the past, and based upon concrete logical analysis of human and ecological necessity.

Religion should be a deeply personal experience, not something forced upon others.  Too many people have died fighting for something that can never be known.  My faith comes from knowing that the sun shines each day, that the seasons pass on schedule and that all types of life abound (however, the actions of your faithful president threaten the latter two).

I recently saw The Passion of The Christ.  I would have been nice to see a bit more on Jesus' teachings, and a little less of him getting beaten up. In seeing Jesus' non-violence, I am at a loss to explain how much war and suffering has been and continues to be carried out in his name.  I do not think Jesus would have bombed anybody, nor given tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

I would never presume to demand that you worship my God.  But under our nation's laws I will insist that you not force me to worship yours - nor to live under laws based upon your religion's tenets.

Regarding moral values: how about a little consistency - do we stop caring about unborn children after their birth?  Thousands of children die a day from bad water and hunger, where is the outrage?  Many, many innocent children have died in our unprovoked invasion of Iraq.  Is it moral that a few children have so much while most have so little?  

Do you grasp the violence and un-ethicalness of grinding poverty and hopelessness which is the norm for most of the world's children?

One of the primary reasons I take exception to christianity is that the focus on the afterlife has, for some, become a reason not to be concerned about the condition of the Earth and all her peoples now.  The demise of the Earth and the presence of grotesque poverty becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, as the faithful wait to be whisked off to paradise after their death.

Climate change, forest loss, water scarcity are all moral issues.  All are various expressions of global ecological un-sustainability that threaten us all.  People are dying from ecosystem collapse every day, and our species and many more are threatened with extinction. 

The collapse of human civilization (such as it is) into barbarism and anarchy is a near certainty if the dominant culture - based largely upon christian traditions - continues to view rapid diminishment of the Earth's riches as a desirable norm.  But if I accept Jesus as my savior, then everything is all right?

Yes I am a liberal, a free thinker, a bit of a bohemian, and a worshipper of the Earth.  This is what I believe: there have been, are, and will be many prophets, a spiritual force that is good exists, and humans are on their own to live their worldly lives without divine interventions or a mystical afterlife.  I find inspiration in christian values, as well as those of buddhism, islam and multitudes of pagan faiths based upon intimate knowledge of the Earth.  

To presume that all human knowledge regarding what is and ought to be is tied to one rather insignificant messianic cult from way before the middle ages is dangerous and cult like thinking that will not meet the challenges of the coming millennia.

Further, I believe women are the only legitimate authority over their body.  In a world rife with hate, loving relationships between adults should be supported wherever found.  It is obscene that some have so much while most struggle to meet basic needs.  The world will not long survive such gross economic imbalances.  

Equity, justice and sustainability are universal values that must be embraced now for the world and our children to have a chance.

There are some people very angry with America - including those that terrorize innocent people.  Such anger results from our opulence and arrogance, and we had best understand this fury is more than just islamic fundamentalism.  

Personally, I would certainly fight to protect my family and our Earth, and perhaps even my country, but not for your or anyone else's god.  Unilateral war = state sponsored terrorism, and while I feel pity for the plight of American soldiers (and their victims) overseas, there is little heroism in their brutal occupation.

Given our utter dependence upon the Earth for our every physical need, clearly we would be wise to realize that the Earth is the best representation of the father figure found throughout religious faiths.  

I believe the Earth is alive and is godlike.  We come from and are one with the Earth.  Gaia heals our wounds, provides for our needs, and we return to her upon death.

I am writing to ask that you keep your God off my country, body and Earth.

May Gaia bless you and yours.

Everything and Everyone is Connected

The global environmental crisis requires holistic approaches, based upon the revelation that all of the Earth's life is sacred and connected.  All environmental ills that threaten the Earth and her life are illustrative of the same issue - too many people, consuming too much, while having lost touch with their oneness with the Earth.  The Earth and her water, forests, air and oceans have been afforded little worth and are treated as little more than expendable trash dumps.

Environmentalists are doing valuable work on single issues such as climate change, forest and water conservation, and toxics.  There are good reasons to focus on more scoped and manageable issues in isolation.  Solutions are easier and less intrusive, lending themselves to reformist policies that do not threaten the status quo.

However, it is highly unlikely that any single major environmental issue facing the world will ever be solved without progress on all the others.  Forests will not be sustained if climate change is not addressed.  Soils will continue to be eroded and water diminished as long as forests and wetlands are lost.  

Recent flooding in Asia and Haiti illustrates comprehensive collapse of ecological systems in whole.  There climate change brought intense rainfall, water run-off was exacerbated by poor land management, and great human suffering and further ecological decline resulted.  Numerous studies have recently shown that air pollution is global, i.e. America receives Asia's pollution, while itself polluting Europe.

The global ecological whole - which I like to refer to as Gaia - is a tightly coupled system composed of ecological sub-systems that cycle nutrients and energy.  This finally honed ecological apparatus of immense complexity makes life possible.  Thus photosynthesizers release oxygen while consuming carbon dioxide, and animals do the reverse, completing the cycle.  Oceans and terrestrial ecosystems effect and are effected by climate.  Water is the life blood of all life.  

Failure of any one ecological system reverberates through the whole.  The realization that forests are connected to the well being of virtually every other ecological system, and vice versa, has turned this forest conservationist into a global ecological sustainability crusader.  Forests, climate, water and oceans - and the Earth in total - will only be sustained if there is more emphasis upon the big picture and the interactions between these issues.

Humanity cannot continue to procreate and consume as if the Earth does not matter.  The Earth does matter - other species and emergent ecosystem processes make humanity and our society possible.  There are real physical and biological limits to the Earth's capacity to provide sustenance and maintain a habitable environment for humans.  Increasing numbers of people are being faced with this reality as their water supplies falter, climatic patterns fade, land becomes desert, and oceans are made lifeless.

Humanity and all that we have been able to achieve has been by and of the Earth.  Wal-Mart parking lots do not sustain us - the wind, water and trees do.  Any suggestion that the Earth's intricate ecosystem services can or should be engineered is misguided foolishness.  The Earth is a tightly honed system perfected for one purpose - to provide for all her life.  

Why tinker with the perfection found in a seed?  All the Earth requires in return for making our lives possible is an acknowledgement of our oneness with her, and that we not dismantle the ecological machinery whereby the Earth is maintained, regulated and restored.  This seems reasonable.

The Human Nation

It may be easier to accept that we are all connected to the natural world than to accept we - all of humanity - are deeply dependent upon each other.  As ecological, political, social and technological trends converge, the idea of nation-states has become antiquated.  For globalization to be sustainable, desirable and successful the concept of the human nation must be embraced.  

I am a strange messenger to be delivering the message that the fate of all humans is linked.  I do not much like people, and have spent much of my life feeling depressed and alienated.  Yet my experiences have led me to conclude that what happens to a poor child in Bangladesh is intimately bound with my and my Planet's fate.

In the globalized world there is no such thing as another country's problem.  How much longer can the luxurious over-developed world expect billions to peacefully suffer a fate of acute human need and desperation?  It is greedy and evil for American and other mega-polluters to demand that peasants in China limit their carbon emissions before Americans work to reduce their much larger impact.  

An expenditure of some 40 billion dollars a year would provide basic health services, clean water, and primary education to everyone in the World.  This is some 1/10 of what the United States alone spends on its militaristic solutions to world conflict.  Might does not make right, and security in a globalized world will not come solely from the barrel of a gun.

Liberal democracy and market economies need not be synonymous with militarism, Earth devouring industrialism, nor continuation of massive economic inequities and other social injustices.  

We are one human nation.  For the Earth to have a future we can not afford to think otherwise.

Life Journeys

Realizing that everything and everyone is connected, and thus sacred, has been a long journey for me.  I first caught a glimpse of this in my young adulthood spent in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea.  I was faced with, and tried to make sense of, the evil of huge logging concessions of ancient rainforests to make cardboard boxes and toilet paper while local peoples continued to live in abject material poverty.  

During this time, I crudely sought to synthesize what I was learning of life's meaning with spirituality and ecology.   I wrote that given "Truth is God" in the Ghandian tradition, and that I was coming to realize that "Earth is Truth", then it must be that "Earth is God".   

These first attempts to enunciate the ecological intuition that all life is connected and their sum - Gaia - is holy, met with a wide range of responses.  These ranged from appearances on public radio, to speaking events; to derision, ridicule and incomprehensive by naïve and consumerist relatives.

I love the Earth and all her life very much.  It is this love that restores me constantly.  Never, ever let the laughter of the consuming heathens thwart your deep emotional attachment to Mother Earth.  As goes the Earth will go us all.

America's Gasoline Dangerously Inexpensive

Oil's true cost: cheap gas kills the Earth and diminishes society

Gasoline in America is dangerously inexpensive, threatening the ruin of society and the environment.  Consumers generally have little idea how much fueling their automobile actually costs, or the impacts it has on national security, the environment, their health, and their quality of life.

America's current national outrage over gasoline prices that remain historically low is ill-advised.  Car owners must recognize that government subsidies to petroleum companies and users, and environmental, health, and social costs associated with gasoline use, place the real cost of gasoline at around $10 a gallon - or at least five times current prices. 

Factors not reflected in the price of gas include the destruction of 60 million year old rainforests and other ecosystems during exploration and drilling, military adventurism to secure supplies, marine oil spills during transport, unprecedented climate change as consumed, and political corruption throughout - to say nothing of crashes, pollution, noise and congestion. 

Energy prices, climate change, terrorism and childhood asthma are all symptomatic of the same problem - overdependence upon oil, a polluting and finite resource.  And oil is simply not worth killing for - yet this is precisely what is being done in Iraq. 

American over-consumption of artificially cheap oil and other sources of natural capital - notably water and land - has fueled a huge and precarious bubble economy that will eventually unravel.  Implications of the bubble's burst will depend upon actions taken now to reduce and eventually eliminate petroleum products as the basis of our society.

America and the rest of the industrialized world's prosperity are based upon unsustainable rates of energy consumption.  Americans are 4% of the world population, yet consume about 25% of the world's petroleum - much going towards feeding their automobiles.  Oil provides transportation, grows our food, and provides warmth and cooling - though there are alternatives.

Europeans and others have routinely paid twice the amount Americans pay for oil.  Are Americans so exceptionally noble of mind and character that ever cheaper oil in real terms is our birthright - while the rest of the World must be content as lesser beings using less energy for which they pay more?

Many Americans have become lazy and addicted to mechanized mobility, believing it their right to drive a small room sized vehicle whenever and wherever they wish, and at the expense of massive government subsidies and the natural ecosystems upon which life depends.  And as a result, the American government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil oligarchy - government for, by and of the petro-pigs.

If Americans are unwilling or unable to come to terms with their petro-addiction, they deserve the profound societal ills that will follow the bursting of the petro-bubble economy.  If every last bit of oil is to be ripped from the Earth and burned before alternatives are seriously pursued, large natural ecosystems and the global atmosphere will cease to function in the manner they have throughout history.   A post-petroleum World will face widespread poverty, persistent environmental problems and a dearth of energy adequate to meet basic needs.

Breaking the deadly addiction of cheap oil will require that consumers eventually see the entire cost of burning gasoline reflected in the price they pay at the pump.  Only then will it prove more difficult to ignore the harmful effects that their addiction has to the Earth, society and their children's prospects.  Only then will alternative means of energy be competitive and flourish.

Clearly gasoline prices can not immediately rise to their true cost to society and the Earth.  But rise steeply they must.  An initial 50 cent a gallon increase in the federal tax on gasoline would result in more conservation and decreased oil consumption.  Carbon and other energy taxes need not increase the overall tax burden - as income taxes should be reduced by an equal amount. 

A steady, incremental incorporation of external costs into energy prices is exactly the stimulus needed to promote conservation, energy independence and renewable alternatives.  And a whole slew of other benefits will follow such as less international conflict, more intact ecosystems, and more livable communities.

Though only a few generations old, not many Americans can imagine a non-automobile centered society or community.  It is time to take back our cities, by designing people centered communities, where the needs of roads and cars are secondary.  Americans must set an international example of moderation in the use of petroleum resources - striving for efficiency - before the rest of the World mimics our gross wastefulness.

Sustainable living is about reducing your energy use: live close to where you work, travel using your feet and bike as a first priority, buses and trains when possible, and a rented fuel-efficient car when necessary.  Kill you car while coming alive personally.  If America can not learn to live as though oil is dear, our addiction will soon cost us our and the Earth's future.

Living as if the Earth Matters

Why you are responsible for Climate Change and the Western drought, and what you can do about it

Think environmentalists are a bunch of whacked out hippie communists?  Perhaps some.  However, if you eat, drink, breathe or crap - what they know and espouse has importance to you and your children's lives, indeed, your very existence. 

Dark Greens realize that the Earth's processes and life diversity are required to maintain ecosystems and all aspects of human life.  Forests, water, the atmosphere and oceans remain in a delicate balance that provides the conditions for life. 

Perhaps nowhere are failing ecosystems more readily evident and acute than the western United States.  The region, including California, is in the grips of a severe drought and annual large forest fires - the result of climate change, poor land use, faulty water management and over-population.

The response thus far from the Oil Presidency is to heavily log the forests so they don't burn - his "Healthy Forests" initiative, and to propose massive rollbacks of air pollution rules - the likewise Orwellian "Clear Skies" program.  And he has turned his back on climate change by rejecting the Kyoto Treaty while offering no alternatives. 

President Bush has no grasp of ecological fundamentals, and rules as if the Earth has no value.  These programs are a fraud being waged upon the American people and environment for the benefit of industry.  How could fragmented, over-managed, dry forests that are fire adapted do anything but burn? 

The not so Wild West's ecosystems have been severely degraded and are nearing collapse.  It is wrong to spend millions of dollars to fight fires every year.  When possible, let them burn.  Fires are an integral part of the region's natural history and are responsible for ecosystem regeneration including making healthy, natural baby forests.

A more effective approach to Western drought and forest fires would emphasize land use planning, reduced logging, restoration of old-growth forests, and an aggressive national climate change policy.  Residential sprawl into forested areas must be restricted, fragmented landscapes reconnected through targeted restoration activities, and degraded forests allowed to regenerate - thinning and burning naturally as they mature and acquire late successional old-growth characteristics.

Solutions exist.  All Americans and other affluent nations are going to have to change the way they live.  Sprawling automobile dependent suburbs will give way to compact walking communities - with smaller houses and cars, but a larger sense of community and well-being. 

There are a myriad of personal actions all persons - particularly the affluent - must take to achieve personal ecological sustainability.  Choose quality over quantity of consumption.  There are many ways to consume wisely including buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs and using 100% recycled paper.  Have fewer children, no more than two.  Buy and love a piece of land, and help it to rest and restore itself.

Our cumulative actions have caused climate change and fragmented forests, leading to the present crisis in the West and elsewhere.  Only immediate remedial action on all of our parts will repair failing ecosystems.  These and other measures can be taken now while affluence is relatively high and sustainable options to achieve a comfortable and meaningful life abound, or they can be made under duress as ecosystems fail in times of great scarcity, limited options, and civil strife.

It is not simply whether our civilization survives.  How will we do so?  Will it be through imperial militarism and pillaging of other countries, or by reforming our excessive consumption and becoming more efficient?  Will we restrict freedoms, or enlarge them?  Will there be prosperity for the few, or the many?

Global ecological sustainability depends upon diffusion of a new code of conduct.  Respecting and caring for the Earth must become the highest judge of an individual and the merit of their actions.  Living for and of the Earth must become the foundation of an honorable new way of life. 

The Earth is truth and beauty and sacred.  The Earth is God.

As the West and Earth burns, the Emperor fiddles and bombs.  Failure to recognize, acknowledge and reform your life's impacts upon the Earth makes you the petro-bomber's second fiddle, and implicates you in the burning and demise of Gaia.

Living as if the Earth matters, indeed, is worthy of reverence, must be your code of conduct and become the fundamental organizing principle of society.

Today in America - Conservative Fascism and Environmental Decline

Key American Ideals Are in Conflict with the Earth and Other Nations

America - land of plenty as well as the free and brave - is pursuing military solutions to environmental scarcity.  The American lifestyle depends upon tremendous resource inputs from the rest of the world.  Accessing these resources; i.e. oil, timber and minerals, while marketing the American lifestyle, products and morals - including cars, Coca-Cola and Britney Spears - is a major cause of global conflict.  America's war on terror has become a masquerade that seeks to maintain a level of affluence at the point of a gun that the Earth cannot sustainably provide, and does little to identify and address the most serious underlying threats to global security. 

For example, four percent of the world's population cannot consume twenty-five percent of its oil without conflict.  Some one billion humans live with chronic hunger, while being bombarded with American marketing/propaganda that highlights the good life to be found in democratic consumption.  Billions more eke out a meager living in landscapes scarred by industrial capitalism and terrorized by American corporate client governments. 

It is far from certain that democratic capitalism can provide plentiful, equitable, just and sustainable livelihoods to the world's teeming masses.  Islamic and other revolutionary responses capture well the frustrated aspirations of those that know only grinding poverty, violence, environmental damage, and life outside of the American safe zone of conspicuous consumption.  Unmet human need, environmental decline and an absence of justice in the face of American opulence and power fuels criminal acts of terror.

The American lifestyle is not currently sustainable - nor can it ever be universalized to the global population.  Institutionalized over-consumption has caused looming ecological crises of mammoth proportions - including collapse of terrestrial ecosystems, water scarcity, climate change, and ocean dead zones - that threaten the existence of key human habitats and thus the very ecological foundation of being. 

Perspective is dreadfully lacking in post-911 America.  Loss of life in the attacks upon New York by a band of Islamic criminals, while horrific, is less than how many humans die each day from lack of clean water - a situation that is easily reconciled with modest investments.  This is an example of environmental failures that are killing now and will do so more in the future.

American style liberal democracy - one of the greatest political philosophies of all time, particularly in terms of individual and minority rights - has been nearly totally usurped by conservative fascism, an unholy alliance of government, business interests and Christian fanatics.  Islamic and Christian fanaticism are two sides of the same coin - forcing ones spirituality upon others, and seeking power to do so.

In particular, outdated resource oligarchies responsible for so much environmental and social damage (big oil with a Bush mouthpiece) have successfully lead a coup de tat to gain control of America's federal government, and have preemptively launched an imperial war under false pretenses to protect their narrow interests.  America's military adventures may keep the oil spigot flowing a bit longer, but at the cost of 1) continued global economic inequities which breed terrorism and 2) further pushing the Earth's environment past its capacity to support humanity well. 

How then should America address the connected issues of conservative fascism, ecological sustainability and criminal terrorism?  First of all, the body politic must come to terms with the war criminal George Bush.  One act by a bunch of lunatic thugs does not legitimize further crimes against humanity including unilateral perma-war, erosion of civil liberties (spying on citizens and indefinite detentions), nor corporate welfare at the expense of environmental protections. The reign of a tyrant must be ended and America's recent past critically examined, as many nations including Germany, Japan, Italy and France have done in the past.

America's future freedom, material well-being, and safety from a world that hurts, depends upon dramatic political, economic, social and environmental reform.  The following agenda would provide a start towards a demilitarized and environmentally sustainable future, devoid of both criminal violence and shocking human misery:

* Immediate military withdrawal by the United States from Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere.

* Major investments in energy conservation and renewable alternatives; including doubling energy taxes and new car energy efficiency requirements.

* Renewed vigorous support for international legal institutions and tribunals to punish criminal acts of terror, genocide and military adventurism.

* Launch major international initiatives to support community based sustainable development, and to slow and then reduce human population growth through non-coercive means.

* Eliminate corporate subsidies and gradually reduce military expenditures, channeling these resources towards conserving, protecting and renewing the land, air, water and oceans.

At a personal level, in addition for advocating for the above, there are a number of things each American can do to build a plentiful, just, equitable and sustainable future.  Americans must be challenged to develop a personal notion of enoughness.  Such voluntary simplicity distinguishes between consumption for consumption's sake and human needs and reasonable wants, focusing upon quality rather than quantity. 

American citizens' dreadful detachment from the World, as evidenced by lack of geographic knowledge, must be redressed.  The world is a village - and reasonable aspirations of other peoples for a fair share of the wealth, and freedom from the American cultural monolith, are ignored at all our peril.  America must engage with the World non-militarily.

And finally, the author challenges all Americans to reexamine their relation with the Earth.  Human societies and economies are entirely dependent upon the Earth's ecosystems for our biological needs.  We can no longer live as if the air, water, land and oceans are garbage dumps; but instead, must recognize them as human habitats required for life.  Our life.  As goes the Earth will go humanity.