Hermit Musings: environmental damage

Showing posts with label environmental damage. Show all posts

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Merton on Environment—Part 5

For all of his life Merton worshipped Nature—despite spending some of his formative years in New York City in his twenties. Both his parents were talented landscape painters. His mother died when he was six and he began to accompany his father on painting trips around the world. While his dad concentrated on rendering a still life of Nature, young Tom would wander through the woods. In Bermuda, he wrote, “Day after day, the sun shone on the blue waters of the sea, and on the islands of the bay. I remember one day looking up at the sky, taking it into my head to worship one of the clouds.”

As he was turning from a life of New York licentiousness, in his twenties, toward a religious pursuit, he applied for admission to the Franciscans—primarily because of Francis's love of Nature. He was devastated when they turned him down, because he had fathered a child out of wedlock in England. A friend suggested that he try the Trappists, who welcomed him.

After entering Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky—although he initially fully immersed himself in the discipline of a contemplative monk—he later began to desire a closer connection to Nature. He was given the job of monastery forester, which he treasured. He then agitated to be permitted to become a hermit, living alone in the woods that surround Gethsemani, and was eventually granted the privilege. In doing so, Merton was returning to the roots of ancient Catholic hermetic life.

He had arrived at his destiny! His life in the woods was sacred for him. He wrote, “I want not only to observe but to know living things, and this implies a dimension of primordial familiarity, which is simple and primitive and religious and poor. This is the reality I need, the vestige of God in His creatures.”

Just as Merton came to see the sickness in American culture that had led to massive delusion, media shallowness, and racism, he became increasingly upset with humanity's assault on Nature. In 1967 Rachel Carson managed—against considerable opposition—to publish her seminal book Silent Spring. It was at an auspicious event for Merton, as he resonated with her message of environmental injustice. He wrote to Carson, describing her impact on his thinking. In their resulting correspondence, she helped him to see that his stance on social injustices naturally extended to environmental injustice. This is a good example of how a cloistered monk can become aware of the inequities of society.

Merton became very outspoken on the problem... even vehement. He wrote, “What a miserable bunch of foolish idiots we are! We kill everything around us even when we think we love and respect nature and life. This sudden power to deal death around us simply by the way we live, in total innocence and ignorance, is by far the most disturbing symptom of our time.” With Carson's help he came to realize that the cause of environmental problems was the same as the societal problems that he'd been addressing.

Thus, with this last of a series of five posts on Thomas Merton's critique of society's assault on each other and Nature, I have attempted to describe his insights and influence on my thinking. I find it disheartening that 50-60 years after his prophetic voice attempted to awaken us to the damage we were doing, the situation has deteriorated further. I am convinced that he would be deeply discouraged. None of the essential and basic changes he called for have yet occurred.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Change Blindness—Part 2

There are several reasons why we humans are not taking action to do something to deal with the climate crisis. One reason is the denial on the part of those who live lavishly and refuse to reduce their consumption. A second is the interests of energy corporations to keep their profits coming in. A third is the lack of will of political leaders to take radical action, especially since many of them are beholden to those wealthy business interests. A fourth is the reluctance of most of humanity to admit that its economic belief system—capitalism—is causing the environment to degrade, and must be fundamentally transformed.

But there's yet another reason why we cling to our old ideas—a reason rather similar to why Darwin faced hostility, over 150 years ago: The human species has known nothing but a tranquil environment for some 12,000 years now. It began long before recorded history, and hence there is no documentation of the ice ages and droughts that occurred for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years prior to that—a span of time way beyond that of human memory.

The closest traumatic climate event in human prehistory is the Biblical story of Noah's flood. But when that was over, didn't God promise a new and pleasant day? (The fact that several other ancient cultures had similar flood stories suggests that such a cataclysmic event many indeed have happened.)

Americans especially are prone to cultural amnesia. We tend to forget the hard lessons of even a few decades ago, so we repeat the mistakes of history and seem inclined to view recent climate stability as enduring. It's much easier to bury one's head in the stable sand of today, rather than face the uncertainty of impending and erratic change.

What I find tragic is that many of those who cling to the idea of an unchanging world respond to the news of climate change by targeting the scientists who bring the bad news. Even more disturbing is that the groups who have led the opposition to the message of global warming are most often those who are the major cause of climate change. Energy corporations—who have become rich and powerful because of their sanctioned exploitation of fossil fuels—have lied and obfuscated the issue.

Thus many people lurch into the future—blissfully ignorant of the hard times ahead; which will bring climate difficulties way beyond what our species has ever encountered. We are half asleep—lulled by the present mild climate. It's as if we are waddling forward, into the times ahead, overweight, undernourished, and indifferently unaware. We appear to be blind to the changes about to happen.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Restoring Nature—Part 1

We humans—supposedly the smartest critter on the planet—have been industrially fouling our nest for centuries. Back when we were primitive and our numbers were few, these environmental attacks had minimal impact on the natural world. But as our big brains conceived of ever-increasing ways to advance our technology, we became increasingly adept at causing damage. Add to that a population explosion that has sent our numbers sailing past seven billion, and we're becoming very adept at environmental damage.

Scientists have understood for a few decades now that we are headed towards big problems, if we continue our profligate ways. They have tried to inform the public and those in power that something needs to be done to alter our course, before we smash into an environmental brick wall and suffer the many dire consequences that our behavior is leading to. Unfortunately, the leaders and the majority of people have turned a deaf ear to the warnings. Worse yet, powerful interest groups have dominated the media and convinced many people (especially in America) to carry on with business as usual: not to worry, no need to back off from the pursuit of whatever appeals to us. Go buy another car; build a bigger house.

Even worse yet, these powerful forces have attacked scientists and have attempted to show that the scientific findings and predictions about climate change are specious and irrelevant. The unfortunate consequence is that many scientists have been forced either to go on the defensive, or consciously mollified their statements, or even have abandoned their attempts to inform humanity of the truth of the matter. They find it too painful to tell the truth.

This last point has led to a very disturbing development that has recently emerged: the inclination for some scientists to give up the struggle and pursue a dangerous alternative tack. They recognize that it's already too late to correct course—that we've gone beyond the point of no return (we haven't been able to check ourselves), and we must therefore look to technology to get us out of this fix. Their thinking seems to be: we can't convince people to change their ways—to back off on their relentless pressure to consume and proliferate—and it's getting too late, so maybe the only alternative is to use our powerful technologies to try to compensate for our damage.

I find this last argument very troubling, because it continues to avoid and/or deny the truth of what we are doing. Worse yet, it's a form of playing God—as if we think we know enough to restore the environment to the condition it was, before we upset it; without having to change our problematic ways. Many of these ideas seek to tinker with the environment, in an attempt to counter what we've done. This approach is arrogant enough to think that we understand the complexities of nature, to the extent that we can engage in worldwide experiments to reduce or counter the effects of all the CO₂ we've dumped into the atmosphere—simply by a creative technological fix.

One of these schemes is to dump huge quantities of iron into the oceans. Another would purposefully scatter particulates into the atmosphere to cool things down. Yet another would rocket jillions of tiny mirrors into space to reflect some sunlight away from us. While these notions could theoretically bring about some global cooling, they will also likely cause side effects that could make things worse, or send the whole delicately-balanced atmospheric system spiraling out of control. Yes, we've developed an impressive understanding of how Earth's climate works, but as yet we have the most primitive grasp of the nature of the many complex interactions going on. You'd think that maybe we'd have learned from some of our past catastrophes (remember DDT?) of unintended consequences, but it seems that we haven't.

More on attempts to restore nature next time...

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Amiable Earth

There is a sad irony about what is recently happening to planet Earth. For most of the time that our planet has existed (some 4 ½ billion years), the environment was too harsh for humans to thrive—let alone even survive. Earth has gone through extremely hot or cold periods, has had an atmosphere that was poisonous to us, was once dominated by monstrous critters who would have easily gobbled us up, or was subject to natural disasters such as meteorite or asteroid collisions, earthquakes, or horrendous volcanic blasts.

In the last million years or so the planet has gone through numerous alternating glacial and torrid periods. Finally, in just the last 10,000 years—since humans have settled into a sedentary lifestyle—Earth has calmed down and become a very gentle and benevolent place; much like a Garden of Eden. For our entire written history, that congenial ambience is all we have known. We have had no exposure to the harsh conditions that prevailed for most of Earth’s past. We have been spoiled.

The sad irony is that we humans seem hell-bent on destroying this amiable Earth—and the tragedy is that we are either in denial about it or blissfully ignorant of the extent of our damage. During this last 10,000 year period—just as Earth was becoming congenial—we became the top predator and, in doing so, came into possession of an unimaginable amount of power. Rather than wisely use that power to nurture our planet, we have been foolish; fouling our beautiful nest. In the wink of a geological eye, Earth is turning uncongenial—and this time we are the cause.

The even sadder situation is that we blindly continue our foolishness as conditions worsen. We are playing with a type of fire that is far more powerful than we are. Our shortsightedness and disinterest in the larger reality of our world keep us numb to the consequences.

There is no question that we are steering this beautiful planet into grim times. No one can predict what the future will bring. Conjectures span the range from little change at all (believing that our undeserved comfortableness will somehow continue indefinitely) to the end of the world approaching. I believe that the latter guess is overly extreme. Planet Earth has weathered unimaginably tough conditions in the past—far nastier than we humans could ever bring about. Gaia will survive the next harsh period, and we humans also likely will. Our habitat, however, will become far more unpleasant than we’ve ever experienced. It’s not going to be fun.

What’s sad is that it needn’t be this way. We needn’t have been so irresponsible.

Hermit Musings