When religious environmentalists offer such perspectives (as I argue throughout this book), they should not be thought of as importing religion into a placidly secular and otherwise efficient and rational social order. Religious environmentalism does not introduce a moral vision where none exists. It offers an alternative to the ones that dominate society now. The mall, the medical school, and (certainly) Wall Street all have their sense of what is valuable and what is not, what we should live for and what isn’t worth the trouble. Describing the drive to globalization, which has accelerated ecological destruction throughout the world, a third world Christian theologian tells us that global development “has its God: profit and money . . . its high priests: GATT, WTO, IMF-WB . . . its doctrines and dogmas: import liberalization, deregulation . . . its temples: the super megamalls. It has its victims on the altar of sacrifice: the majority of the world— the excluded and marginalized poor.” In fact, virtually every large-scale social decision invokes a vision of what is best for society as a whole. It is the task of religious environmentalism to set itself against the reigning social vision, putting forward values that will ultimately serve people and the earth far better than the ones currently in place.
Although few people will respond to appeals for austerity, at least some will be moved if we can offer a comprehensive plan in which something of value takes the place of what we are going to lose. Jewish philosopher Aryeh Carmel spells out the choice clearly: “The truth is that the goal of unlimited physical growth is no longer tenable. The only way out of the human predicament of our time lies in a complete and radical change, not of methods but of goals....There is only one way to avert the disaster which threatens to overwhelm mankind. Material goals must be replaced by spiritual goals.”
This imperative may seem initially appealing. Even a casual glance at the gridlocked cars spewing carbon dioxide, your local multiplex offering endless advertisements for passionless sex and pointless violence, and the steady erosion of basic morality from the corporate boardroom to cheating high school students might well give you the feeling that something pretty basic is out of whack around here. And when we juxtapose the conspicuous consumption of the United States or Western Europe with the crushingly unnecessary poverty of Bangladesh or Guatemala, we sense that a good part of what is out of whack is that our addictive attachments to wealth, power, and gadgets have led us astray. It is not surprising that many would like to see Carmel’s “spiritual goals” brought into such a world.
At this point, however, the Voice of Reason will probably appear. “To begin with,” the Voice will caution, “all this talk about ‘spiritual values’ is a little vague (to say the least). What does it mean when we have to run an economy, an educational system, hospitals, and airports? Besides, spiritual goals vary from person to person and community to community. Do spiritual values mean traditional social roles for women? Biblical bans on homosexuality? Priests and mullahs running the government? Watch out that we don’t replace our materialism and ecological problems with the irrational fanaticisms of people who are all too eager to stuff their spiritual values down your throat, whether you like them or not. All these rather distasteful possibilities show why spiritual values, religious beliefs, and all that, whoever they belong to, are private matters that should be kept separate from political, social, and, yes, ecological matters. Let the religious types soothe their souls any way they want, and let the sober, down-to-earth, practical engineers, politicians, and corporations take care of production, consumption, trade, energy supply, and dealing with whatever environmental problems we have.”
Homo Sapiens: The Intelligent Resident of the Earth
