Sun May 20, 2012
Plinio Lepri, AP Images
"La Creazione" fesco by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistene Chapel
Environmental Offenders Defy God
Ah, Those who call evil good
And good evil;
Who present darkness as light
And light as darkness;
Who present bitter as sweet
And sweet as bitter!
Isaiah 5:20
By Gabriel Greenberg, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, NY – December 2009
When a Fox News reporter refers to global climate change as a “shocking scientific fraud,” and efforts to reduce carbon emissions, a “socialist ploy,” we must conclude that advocates of this position are indeed presenting “darkness as light and light as darkness.” For it is rhetorical strategies like these said in advance of the upcoming conference on global warming (Copenhagen, Dec. 2009) that perpetuate a naïve and ultimately fatal worldview: one that supports interests of industry while subverting the Godly imperative to be a responsible steward of the Earth. Such a world view allows us to sacrifice the rights of future generations of life on earth for our own current gain.
Indeed, our responsibility is powerfully articulated in the opening chapters of Genesis, the great creation story of the Torah. By first describing humanity’s emergence as subsequent to the rest of creation, the Torah proposes an interdependent ecosystem with human beings as one part of a much larger framework – no more or less important than other creatures and creations.
We are marked, however, by a crucial difference: only humans are created “in the image of God”, and only humans are commanded to “rule over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, and all creatures on land” (Gen. 1:28). In contrast to the egalitarian language running through the first chapter, which describes the creation of all species, in the second chapter mankind is placed at the top of the hierarchy and given an ethical imperative as to how we must relate to other creatures and the environment.
Plant-life cannot exist without his agricultural toil, and animals are anonymous until he names them. The central narrative turns to the primordial humans, Adam and Eve, and their relationship to each other and to their surroundings.
Yet just as these passages demonstrate our primacy in the world, we are nevertheless never allowed to abdicate our responsibility as proper stewards. For as much as we may want to believe that the story is just about us and taking care of our own selfish needs, we are nonetheless interconnected with the rest of the natural world in very fundamental ways.
Quite tellingly, man was “formed from the dust of the earth.” The name Adam, in fact, simply means earth – the Hebrew “adama” – Adam and Eve are, quite literally, the first “earth”-lings. And not only does humanity biologically emerge from the earth, we are ethically enjoined to stay in intimate relationship with it; Adam is originally placed in the Garden of Eden “to till it and to tend it.” That is, humanity’s primal and foremost ethical imperative is one of service to the earth.
In fact, American Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik defines this ethical imperative as a kind of contractual relationship man has with nature, which commands that he live up to certain natural standards. “By the slightest error, man forfeits his rights to dominate and becomes an outcast,” he writes. “This is man’s freedom: either to live at peace with nature and thus give expression to a natural existence in the noblest of terms or to surpass his archaic bounds and corrupt himself and nature. Man’s freedom is embedded in his confinement to his environment, in his coexistence with nature.”
Walking this fine line demands humility, modesty, long-term vision, sacrifice, and hope – attributes that, at least in recent history, we as a species have forsaken. Cheap coal heats our houses; CAFOs to grow our meat easily and cheaply while they pollute the land and water with excrement; cars, trucks and planes with poor fuel efficiency standards; industrial agricultural systems whose chemicals run off into our streams, rivers, and oceans.
With these faulty systems, we “corrupt ourselves, and nature.” Continuing on this path will necessarily lead to apocalyptic results: biologists predict as many as 50% of the world’s species becoming extinct by the end of the century. The expansion of the “Dead Zone” of the Gulf of Mexico, is already where most aquatic life cannot exist in the oxygen-deprived ocean depths.
More countries, like the Maldives and Tuvalu before them, will have to consider abandoning their homelands due to rising sea-levels. Communities will suffer from more regular forest fires, and on a larger scale, as we’ve started seeing in Australia. Massive flooding, droughts, and diseases are also spreading to greater ranges.
We are past the point of subjecting the fact of global climate change to debate. Overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that we are on the brink of disaster. Up until now, humanity has been the catalyst for this phenomenon. As such, we have a duty to re-think how we use the world’s resources. Different countries, peoples, communities, and faith groups need to come up with local answers to protecting and sustaining the world around them.
In the academic world, institutions like the Center for the Study of Science and Religion (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cssr/), are encouraging conversation between our religious sensibilities and the scientific method in pursuit of an integrated, strengthened approach to creating sustainable environmental solutions.
In the Jewish world, a contemporary response to global warming is being formulated, emerging from millennia-old traditions and values. As one part of its educational program, The Jewish Climate Change Campaign (http://www.jewishclimatecampaign.org/) is using the concept of the Sabbatical year as a model for articulating what our stance towards the natural world might be. The Sabbatical year – taking one year out of every seven to let agricultural fields lie fallow, and to eat seasonally and locally supports a world that benefits humankind, but it does so in a sustainable way that is as healthy for the land as it is for us.
Initiatives like these will help us to move forward. We must acknowledge the unparalleled power that we as a species have, while learning to understand and accept that our future on this planet lies in our ability to harness that power, use it wisely, and when the situation demands it, not use it at all.
If we can do this, then perhaps we’ll be able to uphold God’s vision for the world: “So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Summer and winter, Day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22).
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