I come today to one of the harder issues for me: what new values do we need to write, or what older ones do we need to affirm in order to move into a rational relationship with our planet? 

The heart of the matter in the West, according to an essay by L. White, in his essay entitled "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis", lies in the way that followers of Christianity and Judaism have been taught for centuries to think of the relationship between people and the natural world. The Bible tells the faithful that they have been given "dominion" over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the seas. In short, humans are the center of all creation and, therefore, humans are allowed to do whatever they want with other species. White argues that we have to get rid of this thinking if we are ever going to grow into a way of life that will allow humans to live on this planet sustainably. He even proposes that we in the West take St. Francis of Assisi as our model and learn to love all of the other species in nature so much that we can't bear to harm them. Francis, he feels, is the only really moral saint in the history of the West.  

On the other hand, it is common these days for us to hear in the media that the native peoples in many spots in the world, but especially in North America, loved the land that their God had given them and sought in everything they did to live in a mutually respectful relationship with all other living things. For the Cree and Ojibway, every hunt was guided by divine powers, and animals that they would be able to kill were placed in their paths if and only if the hunters had grateful attitudes toward them and also toward the environment that they all shared. Perhaps, we can take our cue from native people. 

All of this sounds decent and sensible, especially when we consider how much trouble we are in here on Earth. This planet is heating up at an unprecedented rate, and furthermore, there is no denying anymore that the heating is happening almost entirely because of humans running their machines. Something has to change if we are going to survive on this beautiful world. 

On the other hand, I see the counter-arguments. There are few places more garbage-strewn than some of the native reserves that I have been on in Canada and the US. Archaeologists tell us that this kind of behavior is not really new, on the parts of native peoples of North America anymore than it is anywhere else in the world. Until very recently, people all over just dumped their garbage somewhere out of the way and convenient and then went back to their usual activities.

And the counter-arguments to the whole beautiful view of humans living with and in nature get much stronger than just this rude discrediting of the moral grounds of the native people. 

The neoconservative climate change deniers argue fiercely that industrialization makes comforts and, even more, it makes power. While people in activist groups that claim to be defending the environment are meeting to rail against the abuses of the corporate system, they arrive at the convention in gas-guzzling vehicles, they stay in air-conditioned rooms, they eat in restaurants that offer foods imported from thousands of miles away, and they watch t.v.'s and work on computers made in countries even further off. Capitalism makes power, even for those who say they hate it. All of these hypocrisies, the climate change deniers on the right of the political spectrum love to mock. 

It seems clear to me that a set of rules for a better relationship with the natural world is going to be the hardest part of our new moral code to build. But the guide we need here is easy enough to find. We need the principle of balance, one of the most important principles in the natural world. Our paying attention to that principle gives a small lift to our spirits when we begin to feel that we will never achieve long term stability in our relationship with the natural world. In this struggle to find a sensible, decent relationship between ourselves and nature, we can take our cue from nature herself. 


                        
                                                               farmer, 1931



What I mean is that there will be no going back to the farming communities of a hundred or more years ago, nor to the hunter-gathering way of life that is much older. No living in a more direct and simple way which asks of us only long hours of hard labor each day and peaceful sleeps each night. That picture may seem sweet, but it never really existed. Many of those hard-working farmers lived with constant dread of the hail, frost, blights, and insects that could put a humiliating end  in a few days or even hours to all of their best efforts. Those people lived in fear, at least as much as we do today. Ultimately, they feared losing their farms and ending up starving, along with their whole families, in slums, working at dead-end factory jobs that would let them accumulate nothing that they could leave to their children - if they could even find a job. And lots of them did end up in exactly those straits. Starvation and disease were hovering even closer for the hunter-gatherers. The good old days weren't so good.     

But we also can't let modern capitalism and all of its industries and corporations simply have their way. We know that now. 

The rational relationship, it seems to me, is one in which we all allow ourselves lives of modest comfort, no gross excesses - no maintaining multiple homes we never live in, but heat anyway -and we pay attention all the while to composting, re-using, and recycling every atom of waste we make. Then, with the help of Science, we may even be able to devise ways to get our food, clothes, shelter, and recreation, while all the while supporting our planet's natural systems. 

The part of our new moral code that guides us to live sustainably on this planet will probably not be based on any of the traditional codes of the peoples of the past, or perhaps we can say that code will take its basic outlook from St. Francis and the Ojibway. But it will have to be composed of a thousand small mores and models, nuances guiding our actions in every way every day so that they keep this planet livable. We are going to get most of our guidance in this part of our future way of life from Science. Science that looks unflinchingly - which is what the term "Science" is supposed to mean -  at what is. What does the evidence say? Can solar and wind power replace gas and oil as ways of heating homes? Are organic farms viable in a market driven economy? Will consumers come around in mass numbers to driving electric cars? Will they elect politicians who will push them in that direction by, for example, raising the price of gas until it is not affordable for the vast majority of ordinary wage earners? 

We can see Science here as simply our best insight into nature and how she really works, our guide to finding balance. And Science is telling us to live in balanced ecosystems. There is no reason why we can't fit our methods of food production, travel, housing, etc. into ecosystems that already exist on this planet. There is no rational reason for saying that we can't do the work that needs to be done. We just need to believe, above all, that reason and passion as values can themselves exist in balance in our societies and in each of us. Work. Hard work. Work that is carefully guided and informed. Hard, but not impossible, as projects like urban gardens and products like electric cars are showing all over the world every day.


  
                                                                   Tesla, electric car 



The bottom line is this: can reason guide our passions? Can we love and also think and do? 

How much character does the human species have?  

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a nice day.