Environmentalism in the Light of Creation and Advent Hope

Along with his endorsement, Pope Benedict as teacher brings correction and centering to the valid movement known as environmentalism, a.k.a. global warming, a.k.a. climate change, a.k.a. Al Gore. Specifically, the movement tends towards anxiety, false ultimacy, pantheism, scarcity-consciousness, false autonomy and unresponsiveness to the poor. These can be balanced by the Holy Father’s sense of Advent Hope and of Creation.

Anxiety: About this entire concern there is a sense of panic and imminent doom. We have been here before: in the 50s it was the Red Scare and in the 60s the Population Bomb; the turn of the century threatened the great computer crash; 9/11 anxiety stampeded us into the Iraq War; and many today live in fear of our brothers from south of the Rio Grande. Anxiety is a killer. Such toxic fear is always rooted in a lack of trust in God. The antidote to this is simple: faith in God, in Divine Providence, in His active and loving presence in the flesh, in time, in history, in the here and now. The climate change movement is largely associated with liberalism and secularism: with those who do not believe, don’t know if they believe, or at least don’t think too much about God and the supernatural. Relax! Take a deep breath! Armageddon is not imminent! There really is Somebody up there that likes you!

False Ultimacy: We are only here for a while: we are on our way to heaven (or the other place.) The last things are the ultimate things and they put everything else in perspective: not to worry. What matters is the salvation of our souls (as well as the entire created realm.) In this light, climate change is of interest and of concern, but it is not of ultimate concern. Much of the worry about the environment lacks this transcendent, eschatological depth and offers an alternate apocalypse: the world is going to end, disastrously. It takes on the appearance of a “new age” religion of its own: no transcendent God but the earth-animate-human life becomes the absolute. Like all forms of idolatry, this will finally trap us in fear, despair and anger.

Pantheism: The foundational Christian belief is Creation. This world we inhabit is itself a creation, a gift, conceived out of nothingness, motivated purely by love. It is neither necessary nor random. All of its goodness, truth and beauty are contingent, temporary and expressive of an infinitely greater and absolute Personal Goodness, Beauty and Truth. The beauty and goodness of nature and human life awaken within us a longing for this Greater. The sunset, the seashore, the splendor of another’s eyes…these are all good in themselves even as they point to and promise the Greater Good.
Much of environmentalism implies the disbelief and despair of pantheism: This is all we have; life as we see it is holy and sacred; let us enjoy and cherish it; desperately let us make the best of it because there probably is nothing after this. This is a great sadness.

Scarcity: The movement shares with the Population Explosion Crusade (of not-so-happy memory, though there are still zero population extremists among us, many of them now environmentalists) an anxiety about the scarcity of goods available to the human community. The earth is so limited and fragile that we need to stop burning oil; stop having so many kids…before we kill ourselves. To heal this worry we need a renewed sense of the abundance, generosity, and resiliency of Creation. We speak of Mother Nature out of an intuitive sense of her (definitely feminine!) nature as nourishing, protective, inclusive, competent, wise, and generally solicitous of her children’s every need. Belief in a Providential God provides a trust in the abundance of His creation.

False Autonomy: Implicit in much of the literature is a “soft atheism” that exhorts us: the earth is in our hands; there is no outside help; we had better clean up our act or we will destroy ourselves. We sense here “man come of age:” the Secular City of Marx, Darwin, Freud and Modern Scientific Man; the Drama of Atheistic Humanism. Our Pontiff exhorts us to again become childlike: trusting, innocent, filled with awe before Creation as Mother and God our heavenly Father. After this primal trust and hope, the quintessential virtue becomes obedience as “listening and responding in love:” obedience to the splendid and brilliant order of Creation; obedience to the personal voice of the Father as it speaks to every human heart; and obedience to our original vocation to become fertile and multiply and to tend to the Garden of earth.

The Poor: The obsession with climate change is specific to the affluent and can entail an indifference to the plight of the poor. Many of the more radical proposals to limit man-made emissions would hurt the poor most. Al Gore himself is notorious for his personal “carbon footprint” and a lifestyle typical of the rich and famous. By contrast, a more Franciscan appreciation for nature is married to a preferential love of the poor and a preference for simplicity of lifestyle. We need a Catholic “Prosperity Gospel” that announces the abundance of the Kingdom, primarily for the little ones and the poor, in a manner that is modest, simple, generous and joyous.

Imagine that a woman receives a beautiful bouquet of roses and delicious chocolates from an admirer. She enjoys the bouquet and munches on the candy without even reading the note. Enjoying the gift, she ignores the giver. Maybe she thinks the commodities arrived at her house out of randomness, through some process of chance selection. Maybe she suspects the giver and does not want to even think of him. Maybe she senses they were given out of necessity, not gratuitously. Maybe she has so many suitors and is indifferent to them all. Nevertheless, there is a sadness here: the very meaning of gift is frustrated if the giver is not acknowledged and “received” through the gift. The gift has its own beauty and value, but is full and complete only in light of the love of the giver. In this way, the gift moves on to gratitude, joy, hope and communion.

May we appreciate anew each day, with childlike wonder, the beauty and kindness of Creation, deepening our love for and longing for the Beauty and Goodness of our Creator Himself.